All my adult life I have made a living from creating content online. I've made music to be sold and streamed online (iTunes Spotify etc), created video content and built mid-large youtube channels and designed products for which I earn sales royalties through sites like Zazzle and RedBubble. As somebody in this line of work, the potential of Steemit is incredibly exciting to me, so much so that I invested into the platform with a lot of enthusiasm and confidence. This potential has since been increased even more with the inception of platforms such as Dtube and Dsound, which are to video/music creators what Steemit is to bloggers. The traditional ad-based model of monetisation is in many ways broken, and wastes a lot of time and data for viewers, who are often uninterested in the products and services they are being pitched.
However, at the moment I would still rather create content for YouTube than I would for Dtube, and for Spotify than I would for Dsound, and no it's not because of having a larger user base. When I create content I'm hoping that it will be something that will become a passive income stream for me. Music that I created in 2011 is still selling without me doing anything, youtube videos that I uploaded 3 years ago are still earning ad revenue, and This Christmas I'm once again selling T Shirts on Zazzle which I designed for last Christmas. If I write a Steemit post, or upload to Dtube or Sound I will earn for 7 days and no more, even if that content continues to get viewers thereafter. This is a vastly less desirable business model for most creative people. Imagine for example if the Beatles had only been able to earn revenue for the first 7 days after releasing their songs! That's a lot of lost income.
Steemit is great in many ways, but to REALLY attract top content creators, artists, YouTubers etc to the STEEM blockchain the payouts need to continue forever and not just stop at 1 week. STEEM needs to be BETTER and more appealing than the status quo and at the moment it just isn't. The user base will come, and we are seeing more and more new users joining the platform everyday, but the issue of payouts stopping after 7 days is a big one, especially when it comes to Dtube and Dsound. I'm sure I'm not the first person to address this, but the STEEM development team need to take it seriously. Users like @jerrybanfield are spending a LOT of time creating long posts which will be favourable in the Google rankings, but anyone who finds his post after 1 week of the posting date will not be able to reward him for it, whereas his YouTube videos can earn him ad revenue indefinitely.
Sure, Steemit is not just about the money, but for this to be a success it will be important to make the platform as appealing as possible for people who are considering using this blockchain as a way to share their creativity with the world. I hope that some of the more influential people here on Steemit will get to see this post and consider using their voice to call for this change, because without it Steemit will never fulfil it's potential.
I have seen this as a potential problem for a lot of content creators and it most be even more problematic and clear within your genre.
While i know little about the exact options and possibilities coming up with smart media tokens. I had the thinking maybe the people who decides to create these tokens would be able to make a reward system exactly as you describe it? hell, maybe steemit will change it, we have seen others big changes so why not this? as said i am far from sure this is even possible but was just a thought.
guess it all comes down to patience and keep discussing the topics we would like to see changed so they are not forgotten.
Yeh I'm sure it could be changed and hopefully they will consider it in the future because I think it's important, as I'm sure you can tell from my post haha. As for the SMTs I'm not sure on all the details as I haven't read the white paper, though it would of course be useful if the creators of the tokens are able to edit the parameters and change the tokens to act as they wish. By the way, have you heard about the Vice SMT? All STEEM holders are going to get some for free apparently, I think it launches it's ICO next month
no never heard of that, something we have to sign up for?
I'm not sure but the whitepaper states that STEEM holders will get 10% of the tokens
https://vice.org
get paid to watch porn? loool. now I have seen it all.
Haha yeh it's a funny idea
It both has advantages as well as disadvantages. It raises for me personally the question whether a payment 5 years later from an article of mine is something I think of "deserving" it. Then one could argue that there are always people who still haven't found my work and the day they find it, they would like to give reward or payment. Therefore it is irrelevant what I think and more of what THEY think about my work.
I often thought how sad I find it when I read an older article and would have loved to give my up-vote but time window was over. That leads to establish the habit of NOT reading older articles and within only three months after joining the platform I got so used to it that I am now sticking to the habit only to read new stuff. Which kind of sucks.
I put much effort, love, care and sweat into my articles and most of them I would consider of good and high quality. Not getting depressed about it, it helps to think outside of steemit and what advantages this could have, I cannot think of right now. I am imagining much more business opportunities even with my old articles and people will come up with them, I bet! WITHIN steemit, so much is clear for me. As many see the above described disadvantage they will invent ways to overcome the obstacle of "7days"
My assumption is that my content here on steemit sits for good. Some day the reward will come, in this or that form.
If not: Well, then my world will not crash. But if yes, I am going to be delighted and maybe my son will have his fair share of my work ;-)
I wouldn't call more influencial people for a change but creative people to find smart and appealing ways out of the narrow schedule.
I am thinking to promote my best articles and make a competition out of it, calling the community to read and to vote for their favorite one. Once I have collected enough SBD (because I changed them all in the recent days) this might be a benefit and motivator for people reading my stuff. I know that is kind of a trick and I must think more in depths of it. But I just wanted to offer spontaniousley a thought to curve around that obstacle.
Great comment, I agree with pretty much everything you said. The ability to reward somebody for a great article more than 7 days after it was posted is good for both writers and curators. Sure the reward pool distribution will have to change and posts obviously won't earn as much in the first week as they do now but we'll be working towards a fairer and more incentivised system.
Very interesting perspective. I never expected to make much money if any from blogging. It was more of a release, a break from the grind so I am happy with Steemit's current model.
LBRY has a model in which content creators can be rewarded as long as the content is up.
@captaincanary, I agree the Steemit is not just about the money.
BUT when you monetize a platform, the users hope to receive an ongoing benefit for the time and effort invested.
Because of the 7 day limit, Steemit can not be an ongoing passive stream of income. If you are not actively creating, commenting, or curating then you will not earn.
The income you are receiving from other platforms still have a passive element to them - which is something that I am working towards.
Spot on
Yes I understand the problem. In the beginning times of Steemit you haev gotten money from the upvotes two times. First was after 24 hours and second was after 30 days.
I see the disadvantages that are created from receiving money only for seven days, but I couldn't think of a solution for this.
Do you have any ideas?
Yes, make the payouts every 7 days rather than just after the first 7 days.
Y. E. S.
Yeah, the top Youtubers get tens of thousands per video on Youtube. Hard to persuade them to Dtube.
Also dtube is filled with piracy and nothing can be done about that, people could easily steal their videos and re-upload
Yeh and you don't even have to be a top youtuber to earn a decent amount of money over a longer time period. A payout on Dtube might beat Youtube for the first week but over the course of 5 years for example it's much more likely that the YouTube video will have earned more income
Yeah it's ridiculous. Still early days. Youtube has been out for like 11 years haha
Yeh exactly, still plenty of time to come up with the best formula
WOW. I never thought of it from this angle. That's a really interesting perspective, that you should be able to continue generating an income, not just up to one week. I wonder why they made it this way. There must be a reason, but is it the best reason? Now I'm really curious. Thanks for your insight into this situation. You just made a digital friend out of me. xo
Yhea I hope this idea will be spreading itselve.