Could Steemit Supplant Patreon?
It's been about 2 years since I started to hear Patreon's name pop up. I started hearing podcast users and independent journalists mention supporting their work through the site.
Patreon is a site that allows creatives/creators to craft their own subscription content service. It allows creators to bypass the ever more concentrated media outlets and corporations, to get their work out to their fans directly. It's a great way for artists and other creative people to free themselves from the constraints of editorial boards, advertisers, and censors.
It is a great idea, and I'm a huge fan of Patreon as a democratizing influence on our media landscape. I like it for a lot of the same reasons I love Steemit! But before I get into that... here's a snippet of ( Patreon's Wikipedia page):
Patreon was founded in May 2013 by artist Jack Conte, who was looking for a way to make a living from his popular YouTube videos. Together with Sam Yam he developed a platform that allows patrons to pay a set amount of money every time an artist creates a work of art. [...]
The company signed up more than 125,000 "patrons" in its first 18 months. In late 2014, the website announced that patrons were sending over $1,000,000 per month to the site's content creators.
Over $1,000,000 a month to content creators after only 18 months!!
Now that I have your attention
The underlying premise for Patreon isn't that different from Steemit.
And a look at some of their high earners can give us a glimpse of our potential future:
How Steemit Can Win
Steemit already has a very robust mechanism for paying creators for their work. And best of all, those of us who enjoy consuming content can do so at no cost to ourselves. Actually, we benefit from curation rewards ourselves! A subscription model would be trivial to implement if fans wanted to pay their favorite creators above and beyond what they would receive through post rewards.
There are so many other advantages to Steem, that once a critical mass of users is reached... I really think it will take a life of its own, and help usher in a new way of thinking of digital economies. We already know all the arguments for Steem, and the revolutionary potential of the blockchain. I won't rehash them here.
But in order to get to that point, we will have to change the way we present ourselves to potential new users...
This isn't just about marketing... Although it definitely is about marketing. And not just the lack of marketing, either. The way we market ourselves is important. Marketing efforts need to be simplified and targeted. A lot of companies have great success by doing one thing, and doing it really well. Steem does a lot of things really well, but we don't communicate that fact effectively.
Likewise, the user experience and interface needs to meet people on their level and guide them. People need to be shown how to use the site for their particular purposes. The current interface is not compelling and downright confusing/intimidating to outsiders. If somebody happens to stumble onto the website, the site doesn't tell them why they're here... or show them how to use the site. Too much of the burden is on users to climb a steep and daunting learning curve.
The hard part is done.
The hardest part of building a web site is building out the underlying infrastructure that enables the site to do stuff. We already have that, and more. We have payments/transactions, publishing, voting, commenting... and best of all, we have some major successes to point to. We already have examples of people making small fortunes off of their work, be it development/programming, marketing efforts, writing, charity work, creating videos, and more.
It WORKS
The saying goes... Build it, and they will come. Maybe we should amend that...
Build it, cater to specific audiences, and market it well, THEN they will come.
I'm sure of it.
Patreon takes a huge chunk of money out of what is paid. Partially it goes to PayPal, credit card fees etc. but it's still a very large amount, generally around 10%. Paying 10% tax ahead of your regular tax sucks. Steem could do the same thing for free.
I've been considering Patreon as a platform for my music for several months now. However, my friend and contemporary, @jessamynorchard, convinced me, with much fervor, that Steemit is something that I should check out. I'm doing that now. I believe testimony speaks for itself about the potential for creators.
That said, @bacchist , I find your assessment to be correct as well - the site seems foreboding, almost uninviting to the average user. Luckily I hearken back from the days when 28k modems were "high speed" and AOL reigned supreme, so it's not so scary to me. I would dare say there is benefit, though, in that foreboding.
Boo me all you want, but when Facebook was new and mostly unavailable, it was a bit of Ivy League non-sense to most. I lived in Boston and worked in Cambridge from 2003 to 2007, and I had a number of Harvard students as friends. Facebook was all the rage, but completely limited to their community. It wasn't until 2007, 2008 that it became available to the greater populace, at which point it was already a well oiled machine with unlimited potential for growth.
As I peruse Steem, I see Facebook, but without the lies and the greed. I see Reddit done right. I see Xanga (yea, again, I predate the web) with financial incentive.
For me, as a creator, this is another experiment in furthering my art, my audience, and my independence from the standard income structure requiring me to have an unrelated day job - expending energy which could be spent creating. I'm curious as to where the journey will take me. It should at least prove to be a fun adventure with many lessons and new friends. That is always worth my time and effort.
I think it's super important that those of us who have been around since the early days of AOL and have been through the entire AOL to epinions to Xanga/LiveJournal/Diary-X to MySpace to Facebook and beyond are part of the ongoing input and development of the Steemit platform... don't know about you, but I've seen dozens of "great ideas" die in the gutter because the same (avoidable) mistakes were made that caused the previous failure.
I also see Steemit's potential to take some older models and "do them right." This is social blogging/social content... Steem is Xanga "e-props," except with real world value. We have the peer-curation process that drove the good parts of epinions. And Themestream. Facebook was actually pretty cool, once upon a time. We have "Reddit done right." We also have the potential for a "version" of the different curation platforms, when they bring in "Communities." We can add our own versions of "the best of" YouTube, Crowd funding, streaming radio, an eBay-like marketplace and more.
If we can keep the decentralized idea without ending up at "fragmentation" (so many independent apps it becomes a giant mess) Steemit has the potential to become a whole new type of web ecosystem... not only contributor built and driven, but also (potentially) capable of taking a step in the direction of offering a source of (very) basic income to many people.
I think steemit has all to be the best place for contents' creators. I'm involved only since 3 hours but I'm already addicted
Patreon is DUMB!
And I'm all for Anti-DUMB ideas. Steem is far better.
As an artist who has tried Patreon, I have had much better success here on steemit than Patreon. Patreon is great, but it's to break in there as well. Steemit has been relatively more successful for me personally.
That’s great to hear! I’m looking forward to being here.
Excellent post!
Steemit has a huge potential to fill many "gaps" in the creative equation, if the community executes things right. Whereas I really like the underlying Patreon idea, I find it harder to use and make functional. It's great for those who create in a fashion that allows them to break their work into "snippets" as rewards for their patrons... but not all creativity is snippet-able. Steemit also has the upper hand because creativity is rewarded as part of the curation process... there's still marketing of "Brand You" involved, but you don't have to talk anyone out of their lunch money.
This is a good idea. Steemit could also potentially take on the role of some crowd sourcing platforms.
Thanks for the info @bacchist, I'll have to check Patreon out. I was unaware of it and looks like it may be another good platform for people to get out their own content.
I personally think that Patreon is great for content creators. It allows anyone to donate whatever amount of money they are comfortable with. The great thing about Steem is that it allows people that aren't able to donate to support their favorite creators at no cost! However, I believe there will always be some people who will want to give more, so I won't be surprised if Patreon continues to exist alongside Steemit for a while.
You can always give more on steemit as well! And a subscription model wouldnt be hard to create.
Good point! It will probably be all lot simpler that way, although I think Steemit would have to become very popular before services like Patreon dissappear.
Steemit will supplant all payment systems.
@shayne