The Creator Economy 4.0
Creators and fans have never been so close.
From the age of television to the rise of social media, the way creators monetise has been becoming more decentralized. The distance between creators and fans are greatly reduced, giving more control and earnings to the creators.
What is the creator economy?
According to Li Jin, co-founder at Variant Fund, the creator economy is a subsegment of the passion economy where people build their own brands to establish a fanbase, and then generate income from that fanbase.
20 years ago, artists made a living from millions of fans on TV through working with their producers. 10 years ago, creators made a living from hundreds of thousands of fans on distribution platforms such as YouTube through ad revenue. Today, creators make a living from thousands of fans by selling merchandise and subscriptions on platforms such as Patreon.
There is a trend here.
The role of platforms and intermediaries are diminishing, and the role of creators are increasing. Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired Magazine, wrote in 2008 that creators only need 1000 loyal fans to make a living (see article). But the creators must have a direct relationship with their fans, that is, they must pay the creator directly and the creator gets to keep all their support, unlike the small percentage of fees creators might get from a music label, platform ad revenue, or a publisher.
Thanks to blockchain technology, Kevin’s vision is now possible. Creators can keep 99% of the payment from fans, payments go instantly from fans to creators, and fans share the financial upside of the creator and platform.
Li Jin calls this the ‘Ownership Economy’.
The Problems of Creator Economy 3.0 (Now)
1. Payment Failures
Recently on 3rd August 2023, Patreon had a major payment failure leading to many patrons stopping their subscription and creators not receiving their payouts. There are over 200,000 creators on the site depending on their patrons as source of livelihood. Because of this catastrophic payment failure, these creators were left in shambles trying to find new sources of income.
During August 2021, OnlyFans announced the banning of explicit content on the site due to payment processors denying that kind of content (See article). This again, left many creators in fear and confusion about their livelihood and the future of their career as a creator.
On Patreon and OnlyFans alone, there are over 2.2 million creators depending on the $15 billion of fans payment per year. And there are many other sites such as Substack, Fansly, and Buy me a Coffee that utilizes the traditional payment infrastructures that exposes creators to the same financial risks.
2. Deplatform Risks
Similar to why OnlyFans banned explicit content, these platforms depends on the payment processors and financiers who has an influence on how they operate the platform. This leads to not just denial of payments, but also banning of certain political narratives.
Carl Benjamin, also known as Sargon of Akkad, an english YouTuber famous for his right-wing political content, was banned because Patreon considered his content hate speech. This led to an uproar from the ring wing community who begun to boycott the platform (See article). Dave Rubin and Dr Jordan B Peterson discusses this incident on a YouTube Video about how Patreon failed to deliver a platform of free speech.
Rise of Creator Economy 4.0: Ownership
Creators are losing their sources of income, or are banned outright due to differences in political view. The root cause is the intermediaries that stand between fans and creators.
The creator economy has been trending towards disintermediation, the logical next step is the total removal of middleman, giving true ownership to the creators and fans.
- What if there is zero chance of creators not getting paid?
- What if creators get to keep nearly all of the fan payments?
- What if the users actually own the upside of the platform instead of just the shareholders?
How it works
It’s a simple idea — creators first.
Only1 is the first membership site for content creators that offer 99% payout with true fan-to-creator payments, while giving users control of the platform.
1. True peer-to-peer (P2P) Payments
Whether its memberships or tips, fans pay directly from their own wallet to the wallet of the creator. The transaction happens on the blockchain, which means the payment will happen instantly without requiring creators to request payout. The funds will never even land on the platform’s bank account. No one can block your livelihood.
2. Community Incentive
Fans and creators are rewarded with LIKE tokens for the value they add to the platform. These tokens can be sold or used to further support creators. The Only1 platform buys back LIKE token using a portion of the platform fee.
Creators can also sell Passes — permenant memberships that grants access to exclusive content. Fans can choose to sell these limited memberships later at a higher price if there is a high demand.
3. Decentralized Moderation
Content moderation is important but it must serve the community well. Similar to how moderators on Reddit govern their own sub-reddits, Only1 offer users with LIKE tokens the power to vote and govern the platform.
What’s next?
Only1 is still an early product, we will continue to work with our creators to build the best feature sets to realise the vision of creator economy 4.0.
We are currently working on many features: Better and faster user interface, credit card payments, light mode, NSFW filter, subscriptions, content discovery, earning analytics etc
Expect some amazing updates in September 2023. 🔥
