As far as I'm aware, YouTube was the first major platform to allow its users to make money from the content they shared on the platform. I remember four years ago reading Dan Larimer's Steemit whitepaper whereby he stated that the Steemit website would be the first to reward users for content creation and engagement. Whilst I realised he was wrong, I did notice that the revenue model was different and I was excited to see how that was going to play out.
Well, I've seen it play out, and I'm not that impressed. However before that, let's take a brief look at the Youtube model below.
You Rewards
Youtube started out as a fun site where you could share your videos, after it became the most popular video sharing site in the world, it was acquired by Google for circa one billion dollars (seems cheap now). The tech giant set about improving the site, mainly by making it easier to find videos by improving the search function and tweaking the algorithm that determines what videos a user sees on their homepage.
Once the tweaks were made, YouTube became a great way for content creators to earn money, at first it was simply the advertising that was used to boost content maker revenue, nowadays there are other ways to make money on the site, however for the purposes of this article we'll stick to the advertising model as that is the most prevalent revenue generating method on the site.
Adtastic
Let's imagine you have a YouTube channel about the internet's most popular subject; cats. Each week you post several videos about the 37 cats in your life and how they just make everything adorable. After a while your channel starts to grow in popularity and you regularly get ten thousand views on a video.
YouTube sends you an email and asks if you'd like to start monetising your videos, so you think 'why the hell not' and you sign up to their ad revenue program.
Once this has happened YouTube start to insert autoplay adverts into your videos, because pets are a popular subject you find yourself earning about $25 for every thousand people who watch your videos, giving you an average revenue of around $250 per video. This pleases you and you continue to grow your channel, adding subscribers and getting more clicks.
After a while you get a bit burnt out, you are putting out a video a day and it starts to take its toll on you. However you have been earning almost $2000 a week before tax and that has enabled you to save some money and chill, so you take a break and don't make any content in a couple of weeks.
However much to your surprise, you see that your videos are still making money. Yes, they make the most when they are first created, however there is still a trickle effect of people watching your videos and clicking on the ads. You find that you are still making $200-$300 a week just from your old videos, which actually spurs you on to make more.
Blown Up
Imagine now that your channel is four years old, you have become the YouTube authority on cats and your videos regularly get half a million views. You now make an average of $10,000 per video and you release two per week, you're happy because you now make over a million dollars a year before tax.
The best thing about blowing up you realise, is that old videos that didn't get much traction when you first started are actually as popular as some of your new ones. You smile as you see a video that barely made $5 at the time of release, has now made a few thousand bucks.
Can The Block Keep Up?
On the HIve blockchain rewards are divided up into two parts, the creators' rewards and those of the curators. For some reason spending a tenth of a second pressing a button is given equal weight to someone who may have spent four or five days crafting a short story, but that in itself is another story. Let's stay on point for now.
So let's look at the same scenario above, we can even get a like-for-like comparison because on the Hive blockchain we have our own version of YouTube called 3Speak.
Okay, so this time you set up your channel on 3Speak, the views you're getting are less of course because there are less eyeballs viewing your content, but that's okay because you're a defender of decentralisation and you don't fancy being held to the terms & conditions of big evil centralised Google.
In this scenario when your channel is successful you are regularly getting a couple of thousand views and more importantly you have about ten Hive Whales voting for your stuff regularly meaning that you are getting about $500 per post, with $250 getting paid in HP and the rest given to you in liquid Hive Dollars (HBD).
The devs have finally stopped trying to make HBD a stable coin and it regularly trades at around $10 USD for each one, so you're earning about 2500 USD for each one of your videos.
The difference in this scenario is that when you get to the point whereby you feel burned out, as soon as you stop making videos, your revenue also stops. People are still watching your videos, and just like before, the fact that your channel has gained popularity mean that people are watching your old videos, and you can see this because you are getting new comments on stuff you made months ago. However you are not being rewarded for this.
A Future Of Rewards
A couple of years ago I made a post detailing how we can redress this balance. What prompted me to make this post was the fact that Steemit had decided to add Google ads to all blog pages, but none of the revenue was being paid to the content creator.
My post essentially said that it might be a good idea if we could somehow reopen the reward windows for popular posts, so years down the line if an article or video you have made suddenly blows up and gets a million people's attention, then you should get some kind of reward for that.
Unfortunately because the Hive search function is embarrassingly broken, I can't actually find the original article, but I'm sure you get the gist.
A Matchup Too Far?
I think even with some kind of retroactive reward system in place, Hive, 3Speak and all the rest will not match the ad revenue model, simply because the clicking of those ads leads to product sold, which in turn leads to profits which are able to be shared.
Also when I go onto YouTube I can be logged in to watch or not if I fancy, however whether I'm logged in or not does not affect the content creator's rewards if I click on an ad, they get paid whether I'm a subscriber to YouTube or not, something which is not the case for Hive.
So the question begs, is it possible to get a fair rewards model using the current system? If not, what is the answer?
WHAT DO YOU THINK GUYS? IS THERE A BETTER REVENUE MODEL OUT THERE? IS SEVEN DAYS TOO SHORT A TIME FOR A TOTAL PAYOUT? HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE SYSTEM?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash
Cryptogee