At HiveFest 2024, I (Khal) talked about the mission of INLEO. We're here to empower small to medium-sized creators who are under-appreciated and under-rewarded on Web2 social media platforms. They put in all the work to build these multi-billion dollar corporations but receive almost none of the benefits.
At INLEO, we empower them to put their data on chain and reap two critical benefits:
- Earn Crypto
- Censorship-Resistance
Our motto at INLEO is "put it on chain". We've built the entire INLEO platform around the idea of putting as much data and content on the blockchain as possible. Ditching centralized servers for the decentralized Hive blockchain.
With https://inleo.io, you can put so many different types of content on the blockchain
- Threads
- Blogs
- Shorts
- Paywalled Content
Today, we're releasing Creator Subscriptions. Following with our mission of putting everything on chain, Creator Subscriptions allow you to use Hive's encryption features to encrypt content and put it behind a paywall so that only you and your subscribers can see certain content.
Subscriber-only content is a revolution in earning rewards on Hive. It allows anyone to monetize their brand on this platform and start earning liquid HBD each month.
In this post, we'll dive into all the juicy details and features of how Creator Subscriptions work.
This release is a massive overhaul to the INLEO platform. Both frontend and backend have transformed in many ways to make this possible.
It's a whole new type of content and a whole new type of engagement. We've added so many rich features with this update.
How it Works
At launch, there are two forms of subscriber-only content that you can create / consume:
- Threads
- Blogs
In the future, we'll be adding video support as well as encrypted messaging between Subscribers and Creators.
- When a creator makes a sub-only thread, it's added to the normal Thread container as on-chain encrypted text
- When a creator makes a sub-only blog post, it's added as a comment to a new LeoSubs container post as on-chain encrypted text
When a user subscribes to a creator, they immediately get access to all of the sub-only content made by that creator.
Features
Subscribe to Your Favorite Creators
Creators have to manually enable Creator Subscriptions on INLEO. If they have it enabled, you can subscribe to them for 5 HBD per month. This will instantly grant you access to any subscriber-only threads & blog posts that they have published in the past / publish in the future.
Auto Renewal
We've built an auto renewal system so you can enable auto renewals on the 5 HBD per month to keep your subscription active to your favorite creator.
There is one critical caveat: we're using the auto-send feature on the Hive blockchain. As it stands, you may only have 1 auto-send active on Hive. One of the upcoming features in the next hard fork of the Hive Blockchain (update) is that you'll be able to have more than 1 auto-send. When that goes live, this limitation on auto-renewals will be removed and you'll be able to have auto-renewal enabled for all the creators you're subscribed to.
Subscriber Crown
If you're subscribed to any creators on the platform, you get a new "Crown" badge next to your username. This Crown indicates that you have an active subscription to at least 1 creator on INLEO.
If you hover over a user that has a Crown, then you can see all of their active Creator Subscriptions. In the image above, you'll see that I have two subscriptions active to @indiosyncratic1 and @tsunsica.
New Subscriber-Only Feeds
There are now two new feeds:
- Subscriber-Only Threads Feed
- Subscriber-Only Blogs Feed
You can access the Sub-Only threads feed via the homepage dropdown menu. Selecting Subscribers Only will show you all of the sub-only threads created by all of the creators you are actively subscribed to.
The Subscriber-Only Blogs Feed can be accessed by visiting the "Articles" page and then clicking "Subscriptions". This wills how you a live feed in chronological order of all the sub-only blogs made by creators you are actively subscribed to.
Creator Features
Enable Creator Subscriptions via Settings
To get started as a Creator who wants to post subscriber-only content, the first thing you need to do is go to your Settings page and enable "Creator Subscription". Once you've done that, you'll unlock all the new Creator Subscription features!
A Subscribe button will appear on your profile page and allow other users to subscribe to you along with all of the features below.
Create Subscriber-Only Threads
Now that your Subscription Features are enabled, you can start creating Subscriber-Only Threads by going to the homepage for Threads and using the "Subscriber-Only" button to toggle between Sub-only and Public threads.
Create Subscriber-Only Posts
In addition to sub-only threads, you can now make sub-only blog posts. Just head to https://inleo.io/publish after enabling your subscription features and you'll find a new toggle for when you want to make a sub-only post.
VERY IMPORTANT: Sub-only blog posts live as encrypted comments on the Hive blockchain. This was very important to me as we are able to keep the encrypted blogs off of your main Blog Feed on Hive. For many authors, they don't want their normal L1 Hive Blog Post Rewards to be effected by other forms of content. Our workaround for Threads (Short-form microblogging) is very similar to what we've now created for encrypted blogs. Instead of pushing to the base-layer and interfering with Hive Social standards around blog posts, your encrypted sub-only blogs will get posted as comments and live outside the standard Hive L1 blog feeds.
Claim Creator Subscription Revenue Via https://inleo.io/dashboard
Subscriber revenue is instantly claimable. You'll find a new section in your dashboard (if you have creator subs enabled in settings).
When you get paid by a subscriber, you can claim the revenue at any time. After claiming, the platform fee will get auto-paid to the @leopool account and the remainder (95% - 99%, depending on your Creator Tier) will be sent to your Hive account instantaneously as HBD!
Promote Your Subscription!
Creator subscriptions are what you make of it. The revenue potential for creators is limited only by your ability to convince other users to subscribe to you for exclusive access, content, etc. Provide value to your audience, promote your subscription and increase your monthly recurring revenue.
This is a dream come true for many of us on Hive who want to earn more money for what we create on this blockchain. Monetize your brand! It's finally possible!
Platform Revenue
There are many reasons why we built Creator Subscriptions. The first and foremost is that now your Hive account is truly a business.
Platforms like Substack and Patreon have been wildly successful by allowing audience members to pay creators for exclusive content/access. Why should Hive be any different?
We built Creator Subs to supercharge the monetization potential of your Hive account. In the past, you were capped by what you could earn via the rewards pool on Hive / LEO.
Now you can earn with infinite potential on Creator Subs. The amount you earn is determined by your ability to sell your audience exclusive content and access to you for $5 HBD per month.
We also built this as a new means of revenue for LEO Token Buybacks. The platform earns an autonomous fee that is paid out of every subscription. There are 3 fee tiers and the amount of subscribers you have is what determines the fee LEO charges you.
- Tier 1: 0-10 subscribers = 5% fee to LEO
- Tier 2: 11-49 subscribers = 3% fee to LEO
- Tier 3: 50+ subscribers = 1% fee to LEO
Get more subscribers, pay lower fees.
100% of the fees buyback LEO and perma-pool it in the LEO-CACAO Liquidity Pool on Maya.
FAQ
Is Encrypted Content Eligible for Rewards Pool Rewards?
In short - yes - similar to Threads, encrypted blogs & threads do not get posted as an L1 Blog Post on your main feed. This means that they live outside of the normal auto voters as well as social standards around "how many posts per day" you're allowed to make on Hive.
This being said, the encrypted content are comments on the Hive Blockchain. This means that any user can still upvote them normally and as long as they are posted via https://inleo.io, they are eligible for both LEO and HIVE rewards pool rewards.
What happens if I'm a creator with subscriptions enabled and my INLEO Premium subscription expires?
As a creator, you must have INLEO Premium in order to enable Creator Subs. If your premium expires, all current subs will run out the rest of their 30 day subscription to you and the claim subscription rewards button on the dashboard will be disabled after a short grace period.
Your creator sub will essentially be slowly phased out if your Premium expires. If you renew premium, the features get re-enabled.
What Happens if a Non-Sub Tries to View Sub-Only Content?
This screen appears if you try to view sub-only content and are not actively subscribed to that creator.
Why Would Anyone Pay for Content?
Look no further than Substack to understand this (other great examples are Twitch TV Subs and Patreon Subs). The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make over $25M per year from audience subscribers.
People like exclusivity and they also like having a connection to Creators that they admire and respect. Why should INLEO and the Hive blockchain be any different?
The key difference we are leveraging here is blockchain technology:
- Your private content is all on-chain as encrypted content. While Substack could - in theory (and this has happened before - boot you from the platform, kill your subscriber-base and delete all your content, INLEO cannot. All of your content is on-chain as encrypted text that you can decrypt even if INLEO no longer existed / removed your from the platform
- Crypto payments - we have on-chain crypto payments with the Hive-Backed Dollar (HBD). This is incredibly powerful for so many reasons. Many people in the world are unbanked and many others are interested in doing less business with TradFi. We have crypto payments on INLEO Creator Subs and this is going to be a huge point of promotion as we try to bring existing Substack/Patreon Creators onto the Hive Blockchain via INLEO's Creator Subs Feature
Time to Get Busy
It's time to get busy using Creator Subscriptions. If you're a creator, make a content schedule and talk to your audience about why they should subscribe to you.
If you're a user, keep track of your favorite Creators and get ready to subscribe to them.
I - Khal - already have my Creator Subscription LIVE as of right now. You can head to my profile - https://inleo.io/khaleelkazi and check it out. I will lead from the front on this and show you how I believe a successful Creator Subscription can be run. This is the content schedule I'll be launching mine with. As a Subscriber, you'll get access to all of this:
- At least 3 Sub-Only Threads per day showcasing INLEO Development behind-the-scenes (early looks at new features, designs, etc.), my personal crypto/stock trading activity and updates to my crypto portfolio
- 1 long-form Investment Newsletter per week
- 1 sub-only video per week talking about the markets/inleo/my portfolio
- 1 private AMA + GitLab Roadmap Session per month - similar to our public AMAs but it will be only for me and my subscriber base. The GitLab Roadmap Session is where I will actually take your live feedback and give you exclusive early access to the INLEO Roadmap. Not only will you see what no other INLEO user sees in terms of the upcoming features, but you'll actually be able to give me real-time feedback and guide the development of the project by telling me your thoughts on my internal roadmap for the dev team
This is my content schedule for my personal Creator Subscription. I'll be going in heavily on making this a success so that I can provide a template for all other Creators who may want to come to INLEO and grow their audience/be a successful paid author on the platform. If you're reading this, you can head to my profile and subscribe now. In addition to all of this exclusive content, I plan on running a lot of other initiatives withy my subscriber-base. Jump in and join the fun!
feel free to use me as a template or get creative with it. Creator Subscriptions are what YOU make of it as a Creator and User