Are Content Creators On Steem Overpaid?
The idea that content creators are overpaid as a group has been circulating again. That's very hard to answer. Probably yes, if we compare the earnings of most content creators to what they could earn on mainstream platforms. But relative to every other group on Steem? No, I don't think so. The valuation of the entire platform is based on expectations of massive future growth and not revenue generated.
Steem is at a stage when stake is supposed to be distributed to a larger group of people. There is no decentralization without a wide distribution. And since the value proposition of Steem is decentralization, the distribution of STEEM has to continue. Without sufficient decentralization, Steem is might as well use a conventional database as its back end and save a ton of money. Steem's Proof-of-Brain distribution ( = author and curation rewards) is a way to add value to the network. Authors add value in multiple ways. Content is obviously necessary if the goal is to attract eyeballs to monetize content. Authors have formed communities of users, which there have to be if Steem is to continue to hang on to its status as the blockchain with the most users. Also, developers will not develop apps for a dead network that has no users. It will take many years before Steem's stake distribution is sufficiently decentralized. There is no reason to dial down the rate at which authors are rewarded.
No, compared to add revenue sharing platform, content providers on STEEM are greatly under paid. The ones that are over paid on STEEM are passive stake holders who delegate their stake to false curation services like bid bots.
One thing very few people in influential positions seem to realize about STEEM is that STEEM as a content platform derives its intrinsic value from the quality and reach of its content, and that it competes with add revenue sharing platforms for top content creators, and guess what? STEEM is losing big time and failing to onboard even a single top content creator.
Instead the EIP is introduced giving less perspective for growth even for talented new content creation accounts.
Seriously, claiming content creators on STEEM are over paid while onboarding content creators is the huge failure it is and passive stake holders are draining inflationary sources with their (often ninja-mined) stake without adding any intrinsic value to the platform is the stupidest notion conceivable.
Basically where content is concerned, you get what you pay for. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Want better content, start bleeding competing with add revenue sharing platforms and pull in top content providers that would currently have to be out of their mind to switch platforms in favour of STEEM.
I believe that if STEEM were to find a way to create a blockchain wide blockchain level add revenue sharing economic foundation that balances well with (and at least partially funds) curation, it might reduce inflation to a small fraction of its current value and as such girder rigidify the coin, as well as grow the platform with top of the line content.
I agree on the necessity of ad revenue generation. That's something Steemit Inc as the owner of Steemit has finally woken up to after Eli Powell took the helm at Steemit Inc. Other front ends should boost their income from ads, too.
There are ways around the seven day payout window. The automatic addition of an active comment every week is an obvious route to take. I think there is a service on Steem for just that.
Voice is an interesting experiment that can teach us a lot about how to move forward. And now that we have Steem-Engine tokens, it's up to each community to release a token of their own.
The economy isn't helped by Steemit Inc making money from advertising. It would be helped by top content providers being able to make money from advertising. It would be helped by an advertising economy that funds part of the reward pool. Maybe something like 60% burn, 30% add revenue sharing (paid out in SP), 10% DApp owner (Steemit, Bussy, etc).
Of course it is! Steemit Inc does not want to sell STEEM at the current bottom price like they were forced to before they introduced ads on Steemit. Less selling pressure translates into a higher price. Elementary.
Such a burn rate would only consolidate the still very concentrated ownership of Steem Power. Steem Power must be distributed more widely for this chain to be secure and truly decentralized.
You are contradicting yourself. Availability of cheap STEEM (Steemit Inc selling) allows more people to buy themselves to Dolphin level or above, thus distributing STEEM power.
An advertising economy that burns STEEM helps to reduce inflation, making STEEM fundamentally more stable and thus reducing the need for passive stake holders to power up and delegate to the bid bots (and other false curation initiatives) that are currently crippling the STEEM content economy.
No economy was ever helped by isolisionism.
I'm not logically contradicting myself because I never said I wanted a high price. I did say Steem must be distributed wider. You said it was bad for the economy (price?) for Steemit Inc to gain advertising revenue. To that, I answered that if a high price is a goal, then Steemit Inc not having to sell so much STEEM is a good thing.
Burning STEEM would reduce inflation if nothing else changed. But I'm not so sure about price stability.
Yes, high inflation causes passive stake holders to need to use whatever means necessary to increase their stake to avoid losses in fiat terms.
What concerns me more than anything is decentralizing the distribution. A content economy could be run using PAL tokens, for example, or any other tokens that can and have been created. The token economy is just getting started and will no doubt explode this year.
I think content creators on Steem are underpaid. That's why even if you're a pro copywriter, you won't really waste time on writing the same quality as when you're being paid hundred of bucks.
Basically I agree with @pibara,
The content we currently have on Steem is not underpaid at least in dollar terms. I mean, come on, if Steem were a subscription based platform, how much would you be willing to pay each day for getting access to my content? A few cents, maybe? I don't think such fees would add up to anything much more than what I'm currently earning.
For real professional content producers to come to Steem, the potential to get paid properly should exist even now. Given that the current total reward fund is about 887,000 STEEM, Steem is dishing out about $370,000 worth of rewards every week. That potential clearly exists. When the price of STEEM and SBD was 10-20 times higher at the peak of the last bull run in January 2018, the high-quality content producers still wouldn't come in droves despite the fact that money was practically being shoveled at content producers left and right. In fact, I tried to get several friends of mine very active on Facebook and other mainstream social media to join Steem, to my utter astonishment, they did not. You'd think that at a time when you can be rewarded with writing ordinary blog posts and comments with several dollars or even tens of dollars worth of crypto per day, people would be clamoring to join especially when they have a friend eager to onboard them and help them at every step of the way. But no! I can only conclude that most people, even smart ones, are actually sheeple hypnotized by powerful centralized entities to act against their best interests. When it comes to acting against their programming, most people's effective IQs are room temperature level. But that can change. I've actually witnessed some shift in attitude in the same people I tried to get to join at the peak of the previous bull run. The social media field is in constant, albeit sometimes seemingly slow shift.
I have several friends who produce Popular content who are making hundreds to a few thousand a month from add revenue sharing. If they were to move to STEEM, they will:
A) Have to start building their audience from scratch.
B) Have to basically hit the lottery by hooking a large number of orcas or a few whales to vote regularly on their posts before even coming close to their current revenues.
The interesting thing is, we have failure at two opposites sides, and noone seems to realize the potential of filling one gap with the other.
On one side we have people pumping money around with bid bots in order to get a tiny bit of exposure for their content. Exposure limited to the STEEM community.
On the other side, we have top content providers who won't join STEEM because they can't afford to lose out on advertising revenues.
Now imagine there would be a way to:
I think there might even be hope for an actually inflation free STEEM economy if the first two get positioned and marketed right. Hope I'm making sense. If not, maybe I should try writing a longer blog post about the idea.
There is a DApp called DClick that allows you to place ad banners in your post. It's not very popular, though.
Steem is fine for posting articles but it's up to every author to do proper search engine optimization.
See: https://www.dclick.io/overview
I believe Steem to be a complete paradise for amateur content creators. I could never in a million years have earned anything even remotely like what I have earned on Steem on a mainstream platform. That's because Steem has a native cryptocurrency whose valuation is driven by cryptocurrency speculation as a whole. I earn about 5-7 STEEM organically every day. Using @ocdb allows me to earn 10-15 STEEM more per day. If the price of STEEM goes back to even $4, my earnings will jump to $60 to $88 per day. Only double that and I could quit my day job and live off my Steem income. That's utterly incredible given the amateurishness of my content.
Those people, including your friends some of whom make what amounts to a living wage by first world standards, are probably creating content that is very polished, professional and has high production value. My photography is at a decent amateur level but I'm betting every single small town in this country has a photography club that has several members whose technical and artistic skills blow mine out of the water. None of those people are on STEEM.
Anyone who is not a full-time professional content producer is, frankly speaking, FUCKING STUPID to not join Steem and start publishing content here provided they are lucky enough to discover it on their own or have someone onboard them especially because nothing prevents anyone from remaining an active YouTuber while making Steem posts with those videos embedded. There is even a Steem DApp called Share2Steem that automatizes the process!
I've told some friends and acquaintances who have blogged and tried to monetize their blogs with ads on Blogger about Steem and recommended it. One of them said he earns a few hundred dollars per year on Blogger. It would have been no trick at all for them to earn STEEM, SBD, and SP worth thousands of dollars per year if they had bothered to move their asses over to Steem. I was fully prepared to invest a large chunk of my voting power and time to onboard and support them. But no. It is utterly stunning how resistant to anything blockchain-related people have been (they seem to be more open to it now). I no longer question the idea that most people, even those who consider themselves to be part of a "cognitive elite" are actually sheeple. The propaganda machine that mainstream media is still seems to have a vice-like death grip on the thought processes of a large majority of the population.
Think @dclick is broken. Just tried to create an ad. Keeps giving an error when I do. Too bad, because it seems like a great concept.
Hmm, two hours later finaly figured out I had to:
Still an interesting DApp, but really no wonder this isn't used more. It still really needs a whole lot of UI work.
Problem with dclick is the low quality of traffic. They have no good system to check for click fraud. Most people just click their own ads. I would say like 70% of all traffic from dclick comes from people clicking the ad on their own posts.
Posted using Partiko Android
Did you use the right ratio? You should rescale it otherwise then it will work. Because i used dclick like a few days ago and it worked fine.
Posted using Partiko Android
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Great photo with solid content! Nice article!
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