If we like to bring a someone with big following he would like to monetize his followers, and usually this is done trough adds.
It's not only ads that pay. To be honest, for a lot of people that's a business model on its way out the door. Sure, ads pay, but they also add restrictions to what kind of content can earn, plus the platforms that pay in ad revenue keep majority of the generated revenue to themselves. Generic G-rated nonsense. Cancel culture is in full effect these days and only getting worse. It's hitting the arts pretty hard, especially comedy. Creativity is often stunted and even some basic opinions are not allowed. One slip and people can lose their entire revenue stream. Ad revenue also fluctuates even when one follows all the 'rules'.
Content creators accept ad revenue, if they qualify. In the meantime they sell merch, fire up special memberships, receive direct payments from fans/followers, they set up their own sponsorship deals, probably throw in a few affiliate marketing links as well. Even with all that setup they're still often walking on eggshells. Their platform can still give them the boot and when that happens they lose that valuable market of followers. Moving anywhere else means starting from scratch but still having to work under strict guidelines.
I could begin talking about the benefits of this place again. I could mention how the paying content consumers get the best deal around if they support creators on Hive. I could mention the job security here. The problem with that though is I've been doing it for years and sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a wall.
Hive perks aren't hard to explain at all to someone who knows the business but when its someone who doesn't know the business doing the explaining, we run into problems.
Hive as it stands now is a blockchain for social applications. But then socials apps have a wide spectrum. Long form content, short form content, photos, videos, short videos....
The main social app on Hive that is running for more than four years is the closest to Medium. IMO. We have some apps for the other types of social, but none of them haven't exceled yet.
Social media, content production, content distribution, games. These are all different things. Social media is what consumers of content typically use to distribute content at not cost to the creator, for instance. Yet for some reason here people think writing an article or creating a video is social media. What happens under this content in the comment section has elements of social media but we don't call comments under a news article on a mainstream site 'social media'. We do see several large buttons above the comment section and the line, "Share on social media," though. Those link sharing consumers who distribute content to their outside followings are something this platform has always been missing. Who's onboarding consumers? Most of the time people lure others here with the lame, "Get paid to produce content," spiel and those who arrive give up within weeks because they realize it's actually hard. They thought they could show up and get paid for social media posts and we're not even distributing social media here.
Sure we could add in some social media elements on top of all this. Some are even trying with other apps. And that's turning into a problem. I wrote about it here. We're attracting folks who are more suited to be consumers, placing them in a role they're not good at, showing them a front end like hive.blog or PeakD, and those frontends don't even include easy access to the rest of the features Hive offers. One could be here for three months and not even know about the games, the attempt at emulating twitter, the video streaming platform or threespeak, and some don't even realize they can get a return for supporting content if they pay a fee of their choosing. A great deal. They do it everywhere else for free with no chance of ever earning anything, plus get nickel and dimed to death by middlemen when it comes time to pay. None of this is presented to them in a streamlined fashion. Everyone wants to go in their own direction instead of tying it all together and allowing potential consumers to spill over onto everything else the chain has to offer.
It's one thing to be concerned about getting people here. Not being interested in what they'll do once they get here is a problem in itself.
Apologies for this longwinded rambly comment.
Not at all long :) I appreciate the detailed comment.
I think where we are struggling is explaining what hive is and what it offers to people outside of hive. People here are already sold, so just like the post of mine... this one that we are commenting on is fairly useless. Don't get me wrong. It's great for discussion amongst ourselves and we should do that. But it's reach is less than 50 people. Zero outside hive. There lies our problem.
Yeah, internal memos and platform politics stand no chance of getting passed around outside. No 'Hive is awesome' post will attract anyone unless it's created by a marketing genius. You already mentioned how the alternative apps, games, etc. here haven't gone far outside of this realm and I mentioned how many go unnoticed even by active members. That endless stream of twitter spam seems to be doing very little since I assume most using twitter have a near identical following as they would on this platform, along with a few on the outside who've become annoyed with the spam.
Actual content though, when produced with an audience/viewership/readership in mind; that stuff has a fancy way of attracting outside eyes. Arts and entertainment is often a hit. I see game reviews here but honestly, people can read thousands of those on the Steam platform. Yet when a game streamer goes into character, they attract thousands and sometimes millions of eyes and even dollars. Recently a group of gamers signed on to Hive. Majority of their posts ask consumers here to leave this space and view content elsewhere, rather than the other way around.
Many content creators on the outside are already established on their platforms. Joe Rogan's case is a fine example of what happens when someone moves to a different platform. Many of his millions of Youtube subscribers are not too happy about moving to Spotify. Consumers are loyal to their favorite platforms. You'd have to sweeten the deal to get them to move. Hive comes with those perks but most established types with a large outside following never bring up the fact even content consumers can earn on this platform. We Are Change, Press for Truth. Those groups are here, they have thousands of followers on the outside, no comments under their posts here. That's a clear sign they haven't even tried to attract one consumer. Their consumers don't need to come here to view that content and won't if they can see it elsewhere, especially if they don't know their tip/donations and engagement goes a lot further here in the form of rewards. Maybe they'll add a Hive link in their signature somewhere but that doesn't mean people will click without a genuine explanation.
So I ask, "Who's onboarding consumers?" Nobody. And every one of these crypto meets content platforms makes the same mistake. They want to fill their platforms up with content. The inside crowd supports it even if it's not exclusive and can be found everywhere else. Creators see no need to bring in their own outside following. These crypto payments just become bonus money to them, as they focus on building more on the mainstream platforms.
Creators will go where the largest group of people is. Remember a few months back when genuine content produced by artists, photographers, entertainers and the like was being heavily downvoted? Annoying internal memos and 'Hive is awesome' content was the in thing. What attracts outside eyes was being pushed away. Just recently someone made over half a million in five minutes with NFT art. Here they were pouting if an artist managed to earn $50. That half a million comes from consumers. Chase content away, that chases potential consumers away, which means the platform doesn't see any of that consumer money roll in. That consumer money has been ignored on Hive since day one. People sit around wondering how to attract investors while waiting for that magical crypto lottery to just suddenly happen outta nowhere. They say, "This content stuff isn't working." It works everywhere else because those platforms focused on attracting consumers, not just content.
I'm certain I could sit and ramble for days.
Just to let you know I read the comment a few times, but not sure what to answer :)
I agree with all what you are stating above. Content creators earing in more ways than ads. Platform cutting them off.... Hive not being just a social media ... I agree with this and at this point I would say Hive is Hive and maybe just stop compering it with exciting concepts ... And at the end I 100% agree we need to attract consumers not just content creators ... I have seen you mentioning this a "few" times :)
I believe it's a mistake to attempt to emulate. Even the idea of an entire community depending on a third party source for ads is sketchy. Becoming highly dependent on a middleman is dangerous. One could put all that work into establishing a business model that could suddenly vanish because of one individual decision.
More and more I'm seeing the removal of middlemen; creators earning directly from their consumers. But even a platform like Patreon could suddenly stop providing services, or change direction, or demand higher fees. Hive removes so much of that uncertainty. There's far more potential in disconnecting from the classic crypto scene and tapping into consumer buying power. Sure it's good to have connections to both at all times, but there's no reason our token value should follow market trends and drop when the rest drop, all while we're providing a product or business model that extends beyond the crypto sphere. Content, games, apps people actually use; those are only successful when consumers and consumer money comes into play. These upcoming tokenized communities will struggle without a consumer base to tap into as well.
Blah blah blah enough talking about it LOL!