Beyond the Blogs: Steemit Provides a Huge Opportunity to Publish Original Content

For content creators, Steemit already provides a profitable platform. Journalists, Videographers, Photographers, Tweeters, Studio Artists, even Moviemakers and Recording Artists can build a solid primary or side income by publishing first on Steemit.

THE DEAL WITH BLOGS

Blogs are awesome, and they are the foundation of Steemit. Blogs serve at least three main functions:

1. Finding and promoting primary sources from elsewhere, helping the original content publishers find a wider audience (often in niches they don’t otherwise reach), and
2. Curating content for the consumer, who lacks the time or energy to read/view and sort through all the content on the web, and
3. Providing original reporting and useful commentary that’s unique.

ORIGINAL CONTENT

Where does the content come from? In #3 above, the blogger is creating original content, posting something new and unique. In #1 and #2, the blogger essentially becomes a secondary source, re-posting and re-working content that someone else has created and published. There is nothing wrong with this, as discovering/curating/summarizing/re-posting/analyzing/promoting serves a valuable role, but I want to focus here on that original content.

A primary source that creates original content can be a website, article, video, social media posting, book, or other source (even a blog).

Cut to the chase: Anyone creating any one of these sources can publish it DIRECTLY on Steemit.

USING STEEMIT TO MONETIZE CONTENT

Let’s say you are a blogger with a website or Wordpress page that focuses on food. You recently discovered a new restaurant in your area that you feel is a hidden gem. You visit it a couple of times with friends and then post a professional-quality restaurant review on your site. Or maybe you have a political blog and you recently attended the rally of a political candidate, forming some important impressions based upon your experience. Perhaps you record your impressions by writing a blog post, recording a video clip, or by texting or tweeting everyone you know.

You are reporting on your FIRSTHAND observations. You are creating ORIGINAL content that is unique; it does not exist any place else. But unlike a magazine writer, newspaper food critic, or moviemaker, you are not being paid for your work. Perhaps there are a few exceptions: your site runs some Google adds and gets a few page views. Maybe you are hawking your e-books or bumper-stickers also. Or the restaurant gives you a free meal because you tell them you have a blog. But by and large, unless you are one of the few, you don’t have a steady source of income from the work to match your passion for it.

Enter Steemit. From early experiments on this emerging site, high-quality original content appears to be quite popular among users. And those users’ upvotes, as well as the conversations generated, represent (future) money in the bank. As the quantity of users and posts grow, this opportunity for original work will only increase.
The Reddit site currently has 8.7 million users. Every SECOND of the day and night, they generate 2 new posts and 220 votes on that site. (My source there is the Steemit Whitepaper). And Reddit does not pay users for content curation; Steemit does. Can you even imagine the potential growth here, when both writers and voters are being PAID for their work?

Steemit could be huge, and time will tell how it catches on, but even at its current size, it’s already profitable for content creators.

Get started early with publishing content. Develop trust, develop a following, and publish content on Steemit RIGHT NOW that can return you an income. Keep working it and that side income could very quickly turn into a much larger stream of money.

There is no a false dilemma between Steemit or your blog site or posting your videos on YouTube, etc. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can continue using other sites if you wish. In fact, you can use Steemit to re-post or promote your external website or blog page. But you may find quickly that Steemit voters are more rewarding of original content that helps build Steemit than they are of you promoting your outside site. Try both and see what becomes most profitable for you.

OFFER FREE SAMPLES OF LONGER WORKS AND MAKE MONEY FROM THEM!

As a writer myself, I have created original content in other formats. I have written two books through print publishers as well as magazine articles. In recent years, my small stable of self-published e-books has continued to yield me a side income of $3,000-$4,000 per month. If you are into creating longer works, then you could serialize books on Steemit (see the writing topic, where someone is doing that successfully already). You could do the same with videos (parts of a longer movie?) or songs (parts of a longer album)?

The most powerful concept in the history of sales (“free sample: try it, you’ll like it”) is given a new meaning here, because you face much less risk of failure. Your content needs to be high quality and I cannot really help you if yours isn’t, but assuming that it is popular, then you’ll be making money from upvotes even for offering a sampler chapter or song for free!

And if it isn’t popular, what a great test market to ask readers/viewers what you need to do to tweak it so people will buy the longer product. You can make money by creating conversations with your future audience! This is almost too good to be true, but it’s true. This may be the first time in your life that you are given an opportunity that doesn’t involve a greedy corporation hiding on the other side of the desk. Steemit doesn’t have to rob workers to pay its shareholders; the workers (creators and users) have become the beneficiaries in this model, and that includes you.

THE MOST OVERLOOKED OPPORTUNITY ON STEEMIT

But the most overlooked opportunity so far on Steemit is to produce original content in article length format. I’m talking about 500-1500 words, say 1-3 traditional pages, shorter than a typical TLDR book for sure but also longer than the 3-5 paragraphs or so that we normally see when bloggers regurgitate content from elsewhere.
The video parallel would probably be a video of the typical length that one sees on YouTube. Currently, most users are re-posting these things from elsewhere on Steemit, which is great (again, this serves an important role and I’m not knocking it). But what a profitable platform this can be for anyone who wants to write or create their own short work and publish it first on Steemit.

I have written articles for two national magazines and their web editions. The most I have ever been paid for an article was a cover story and I think I got $2,000 for that. Most magazines don’t pay as much for feature stories or covers; $500-$1000 is more typical. The least I’ve been paid (other than writing for free, which I’ve done also!) was probably $100 for a short Q&A-type piece on a website.

For a typical length print or online article, the writer is probably looking at $100-$500, and that’s from a profitable, widely-distributed magazine or highly visible website.

Writing is a tough business, unless your name is James Patterson or Oprah Winfrey. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had a nice day job and never had to make a living writing, so I’ve been able to take more risks with the content and succeed with less.

I have known people who went into film careers and they don’t have it much easier, except for the handful who really break through to the big time. The majority of independent videographers who post their stuff on YouTube aren’t getting any sort of return for it other than promotion.

Let’s take the midpoint of the $100-$500 above (that’s $300), understanding also that plenty of content creators have never even made that much from what they have written before. It’s the early days and the economics of Steemit are still a work in progress. But I can tell you that I’ve earned more than $300 apiece for a number of the postings I have made on Steemit. Some other posters have made thousands from a single posting.

And I fully expect those types of rewards will continue to be possible for popular content, based on everything I’ve read of the Steemit founders’ plans for its ongoing development.

What if you could promote your work AND get paid for it? Welcome to Steemit. If you create good quality content RIGHT NOW and it is popular with the upvoters, you can earn money. The whole thing is a grand experiment, and these conclusions are preliminary based on my short experience with it so far. But so far, my overwhelming suggestion is that more people should PUBLISH IT HERE FIRST.