If you’ve ever posted a photo on Instagram or uploaded a video on Youtube, you are a participant in the creator economy. Large platforms like Youtube, Instagram and TikTok have built businesses around user-generated content. They own the supply (content) and demand (users), and help creators distribute content to an audience.
But what do NFTs and blockchain add to the situation?
I am in a rare, perhaps unique, position to ask this question, as not only a veteran professional writer and seriously involved in crypto, but as well the longtime host of the oldest digital writers discussion on the planet, the Writers Conference on The Well, in continuous discussion since 1985. The members of our group have been continually talking about and engaging in all of the new methods of distribution and "monetization" that have arisen during those decades. Musicians, poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, comic writers, game creators, they have used everything from the big platforms you mentioned to things like Patreon, SquareSpace, Zoom, and Facebook Live events. They have used all these platforms to generate reputation, organize events, directly make money, sell products, and connect with fans. They already generate digital and physical assets their fans can own (books, CDs), that the creators still own rights to, as well as multiple revenue streams based on content they give away for free.
Because of my involvement in crypto, I have been eager to explain to this small but intense group of serious professional writers how NFTs can add to their tool chests for bringing their content to the public, creating a fan base, and making money from that. I have not done that, because I so far have not figured out what NFTs add, what they either make easier, more possible, or more remunerative than the methods we already have.
But what do NFTs and blockchain add to the situation?
I am in a rare, perhaps unique, position to ask this question, as not only a veteran professional writer and seriously involved in crypto, but as well the longtime host of the oldest digital writers discussion on the planet, the Writers Conference on The Well, in continuous discussion since 1985. The members of our group have been continually talking about and engaging in all of the new methods of distribution and "monetization" that have arisen during those decades. Musicians, poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, comic writers, game creators, they have used everything from the big platforms you mentioned to things like Patreon, SquareSpace, Zoom, and Facebook Live events. They have used all these platforms to generate reputation, organize events, directly make money, sell products, and connect with fans. They already generate digital and physical assets their fans can own (books, CDs), that the creators still own rights to, as well as multiple revenue streams based on content they give away for free.
Because of my involvement in crypto, I have been eager to explain to this small but intense group of serious professional writers how NFTs can add to their tool chests for bringing their content to the public, creating a fan base, and making money from that. I have not done that, because I so far have not figured out what NFTs add, what they either make easier, more possible, or more remunerative than the methods we already have.