The rise of social media has given “fame” to influencers across the globe. From YouTube celebrities, to Instagram stars, savvy social media influencers are able to earn thousands of dollars per post, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per campaign with companies.
YouTube, for instance, reigns supreme in terms of revenue. The most followed YouTubers - with 7 million subscribers or more - are able to earn about $300,00 for a video partnership. However, this isn’t the case for all video content creators; even some major YouTube influencers are still unable to successfully monetize their content.
In 2015, online video star, Hank Green, published a blog post on Medium explaining how YouTube isn’t designed for content creators to make money, but for advertisers. He mentioned that he made around $2 million of advertising revenue from the billions of views his videos generated over the last eight years. However, he spent more than $4 million making these videos.
Gaby Dunn is another YouTube star that has over 750,000 subscribers on her channel. She’s mentioned that her and her partner, Allison, are lucky they are not just focused on YouTube for generating income, as it’s challenging to have a sustainable business based solely on this platform.
Eliminating The Middlemen
While content creators can earn revenue from ads, individual views don’t account for much until they have reached the hundreds of thousands. Yet even creators who’ve amassed millions of viewers find it almost impossible to adequately monetize their channels.
Fact of the matter is that content creators are unable to generate income from YouTube, Periscope and other video platforms without going through a number of “middlemen”, such as advertisers and platforms that lock artists in. For example, advertisers are known for taking a huge cut (about 30-60 percent) of content creators’ income, diminishing their ability to build brand autonomy and make a fair and substantial living from their work. Also, major platforms, such as YouTube, often lock content creators in, making it hard for them to distribute content across other platforms.
Ben Yu, a Thiel Fellowship recipient, recognized this problem and turned toward blockchain technology for a solution. Ben co-founded Stream, a new decentralized blockchain-based token that launched September 6, 2017. Ben, along with CMO and COO Chris Barrett and CTO Greg Kufera, created Stream to offer a unique solution to the obstacles preventing content creators from building successful careers.
Stream incentivizes new and existing video creators to make great content by automatically distributing newly minted tokens (directly exchangeable for any global currency) to creators based on their contributions to the ecosystem. This creates a system where, for the first time ever, video content creators are able to get paid directly for their work, without cost to viewers and without the need to rely on brand endorsements – eliminating middlemen entirely. Stream also allows livestreamers to easily and anonymously accept payments from their global audience members with extremely low transaction fees and no platform lock-in.
“Stream is the answer to the economic problem content creators have long faced: the inability to earn a fair living from their work. For the first time ever, Stream allows video content creators to earn money directly from the success of their content, without a direct cost to viewers, and without the need to ‘sell out’ and succumb to advertising, corporate sponsorships, or affiliate deals. This is made possible by the creation of an Ethereum token that directly rewards content creators with new tokens in proportion to the popularity of the content they create,” said Ben, CEO and Founder of Stream.
These innovations enable a fully decentralized system where content creators earn more, viewers pay less, and the industry is no longer dependent on advertising and big brand partnerships to survive. In this system, viewers and creators will be able to connect directly within an ecosystem that isn’t controlled and exploited by centralized corporations, so that new and existing creators will be empowered to build lucrative careers by publishing quality content.
Revolutionizing Streaming Video Content
Not only is Stream providing video creators with a solution to earn money for their work, the platform also offers a number of other benefits. For instance, Stream allows viewers to watch videos free of cost, while ensuring that creators are still being paid. Stream does this by using a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), a fast and efficient consensus model.
DPOS leverages the power of stakeholder approval voting to resolve consensus issues in a fair and democratic way. This model has been popularized and proven secure and robust in the digital ecosystem by projects such as Steem (the most popular blockchain application with over 100,000 daily active users) and BitShares. The DPOS model allows the distribution of new tokens directly to content creators in proportion to the success of their content.
Stream is also creating the world’s first fully anonymous micropayments system by utilizing multiple leading blockchain technologies. For example, Stream’s system will run on Ethereum, the second most popular blockchain after Bitcoin. Stream will also implement ZCash, the most secure anonymous blockchain (through the ZCash on Ethereum (ZoE) partnership). The platform also uses the integrating payment channel protocol Bolt, to ensure that transactions are 100 percent end-to-end anonymous.
No More Starving Artists
“At the heart of Stream, we want to make content creation profitable for content creators. Ultimately, we want to take away the idea of the starving artist,” Ben explained. “Content creation is valuable and there is massive money in this space. Unfortunately, the money is not going to the creators. Our whole thesis behind Stream is that we can have a platform that distributes all the value content generates, directly to the content creators through blockchain technology.”
And, considering the benefits that blockchain technology can bring to content creators, Stream could change the game for artists in multiple spaces. Stream demonstrates how a decentralized platform can help creators earn money for their work, which can be applied to written content, as well as with visual content, along with a number of other areas.
“I think the most exciting thing about Steam is that we are using blockchain technology to eliminate middlemen, within this industry and in other industries. This will revolutionize any area where middlemen are involved,” said Ben.
To learn more about how Stream is revolutionizing content creation, you can read their project overview here and sign up for Stream’s Slack group.