SteemIT Monetisation Without Ads - Learning From Pinterest
A comment on my previous post "SteemIT Beta and Beyond - Kick Starting Profitability" from @samupaha caught my attention.
I'm not sure if Steem would benefit from ads. Because there are so much ads everywhere else, it would make sense to differentiate and offer totally ad-free platform.
If Steem (the blockchain) becomes successful, Steemit (the company that has developed Steem) doesn't need any revenue from ads because it will make huge profits from selling steem (the currency that they hold a lot) to other users.
It's huge win for everybody if we can build the community completely without ads.
Ads - Ruining the Internet Daily
Samupaha is right in my opinion. Everyone hates ads , expanding autoplay videos and any new methods advertising companies seem to be brainstorming nowadays. They are forcing us to consume ads or sponsored posts about their products and after a while it gets frustrating to say the least.
As a former publisher I realise that there are costs involved, but what if you can make revenue without interrupting the user experience? How though ?
Learning From Pinterest
Most of you have probably heard or used Pinterest, for those who haven't :
"Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that operates a photo sharing website.Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pinboards" - Wikipedia.
It launched in closed-beta back in 2010 and grew expotentially. In January 2012, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique users, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark.
Users and analysts speculated on what their business model would be based on, as they weren't using an advertising network like Google Adsense or native advertising.
Pinterest though was already monetizing their content without ruining the user experience through Skimlinks. They have moved on to other revenue models , but let's stick to this one for now.
Skimlinks or Similar Monetisation Platforms
Skimlinks has partnerships with 20,000+ Affiliate Networks like Amazon, Ebay etc. Instead of needing to sign up to each one individually and then adding affiliate links to get revenue, Skimlinks automates the process with just a few lines of code and one universal log-in to your Skimlinks dashboard for reports.
How Skimlinks Works
Viglinks - A Similar Platform With Google Backing
Killing Two Birds with One Stone
You've probably encountered affiliate link spam on your favorite websites. Some bad actors actually provide valuable information but sneak in a link or two to profit off less tech savvy individuals while depriving the publisher or community administrator from extra revenue. Skimlinks solves that without needing to baby sit new links.
What do you think about using automated affiliate links and splitting the revenue rewards to curators and post authors ?
I, for one, am strongly against affiliate links. It will make it seem fishy for one, as you said. And a social network needs none of that. You are already encouraged by free money, what more do you want?
I think there's a lot to discuss this, but affiliate links seems an outdated model that just isn't a good fit for a futuristic thing like steemit.
People link to products already (from reviews), their own authored books on amazon etc. Why not get revenue in the process from it?
Skimlinks automatically converts a normal link to an affiliate one, we don't have to manually do anything.
There is no such thing as free money though. At Imo, steemit should find a way to allow content creators to allow ads, the profit from them would be then split using the algorithm in place for voting. This way steem is backed up by more than just new people buying into steem.
This is a very good post, I'm going to watch the Skimlinks video now; I hadn't even thought about how Pintrest monetise...
CG
Nice post. Taking a step back in time...remember when search engines were defaced with ads among other things? Then what happened? Yes, Google. Keep it clean.
We may add advertisement service similar to Skimlinks to steemit and toknized it than even trade it in internal market.
good
I think it would be entirely appropriate to accept advertising from businesses who are willing to accept SBD as payment for goods and services. Beyond that, we're an open community, and any business can have a representative start an account and begin engaging with our users. If they want their content to become prominent, they can either make it clever or power up.
Even reddit started doing this exact thing which you have suggested, https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4mv578/affiliate_links_on_reddit/
The only problem with this is that it can cause centralisation if not done right.
But yes, I think that its a very good idea, the earnings could be send to the steemit pool which can fund development and pay content creators even more money for their worthy content.
OP, you should inform the devs about this idea.
All in all, this would make the system much more sustainable in the long run.
Very interesting! I like it! Good Luck To You!
I agree ads are bad. But this skimlinks thing is arguably worse, monitizing and tracking and distorting incentives and "skimming" away value non-transparently and deceptively. If steem/steemit doesn't have a plan to survive without this, it might as well give up, because that isn't what they promised. People want something different and better than the surveillance/advertising status-quo.
Great post. I was wondering how the steemit platform would be monitized as well... especially since the users own the shares (or so I understand) so equity might not be available to get venture capital from.
To be honest, I actually don't mind how they monitize it as long as it survives. Affiliate links are good because they are less invasive to the site experience, ads are not great but I can handle them.
Are there other alternatives?