RE: Before You Can Spread The Gospel You Must Create The Word: Steem Marketing and Branding Thoughts
I think there was one Steem front end that made this possible. DClick I think. The big problem with content monetization on Steem is that content on Steem can only be evergreen for front ends and different front ends have vastly differing domain authorities on Google. Steemit.com has the highest domain authority of all the Steem front ends, which tends to send all the traffic based on Google searches to steemit.com. The front ends can sell ad space for fiat. Content creators get STEEM. Who buys STEEM thus giving it value? Speculators including the content creators themselves.
This is why Steem does not have a particularly good chance of attracting any heavy hitters from mainstream platforms unless a mechanism is created by which ad space can be sold . For small-time content creators who do not have large audiences, earning STEEM is a better proposition than posting on traditional platforms. For example, if someone has less than 1000 subscribers on YouTube, their channel cannot be monetized at all. On Steem, all it takes is to have at least one supporter with a large stake.
I'm beginning to feel that unless an ad revenue sharing model is implemented, blogging will always remain a niche. 3speak with its hybrid centralized delivery/decentralized storage approach, on the other hand, has a somewhat better chance of becoming an attractive niche for various contrarians demonetized on or booted from mainstream platforms.
I imagine you'll see this a lot more post SMT's. Like this is already happening on the Steem Engine tribe sites. They have the option to add ads and the ad revenue is then used to burn tokens.
When you have Communities that have their own SMT's, they'll be able to create their own frontends and economies around their own token, similar to tribes. Then these frontends will be able to add ads, or a multitude of other monetization options and use the revenue to buy back the tokens.
In the future, I see Steem as being your first step, where you can grow and nurture your community for free, then once it gets big enough, you can branch off and create your own token and frontend and start to monetize.