Virtual Economy - Social Tokens
Part 4 of the series about the Virtual Economy in a super-simple form.
Part 4 of the series about the Virtual Economy in a super-simple form.
Photo by Nick Chong on Unsplash
Social tokens, social money, user-generated capital
There are a couple of ways how to make money as a creator. The journey starts with building a community. The number of people in the community is becoming less and less relevant (thanks to the niche approach). The next step would be using a social media platform to split the money. The creator brings the audience, the platform sells attention and eyeballs, they split the money. The other way is to find a 3rd party that will collect the money from the audience. These would be Patreon, Buy me a coffee, etc.
But all these options have certain flaws. The creator has to plan in long term with that certain social media platform. Creator has to “teach” her or his audience about using the 3rd party apps/brands. It’s not really a direct connection between creators and their audiences.
Social tokens
So, what if a creator has total freedom to move from one platform to another? Or have the same way of making money regardless of the platform. What if creators could have their own “currency”?
ICO but not. The freemium content economy model seems to be here for the foreseeable future. Most of the audience will stay only if they get free content. And some of them would buy the creator’s social tokens. This part of the audience will have certain privileges. “Private” access to content, meetups, video calls, etc. The addition is that if the number of tokens is limited, the price/token would probably increase in the future. You can be not just a super fan but also consider it as an investment.
What’s the future?
Nobody really knows what will creators do with their social tokens. One thing is sure there will be super interesting and also crazy ideas.
Long term contracts of creators with brands could be tokenized and used as collateral. Creator keeps a substantial part of her/his tokens, makes excellent content and sells the tokens at a much higher price. Social token exchange market. Athletes/sports teams using social tokens to create a special experience for their fans.
The premise is quite simple. I am the creator, this is my token. Buy it from me or from somebody else (who bought it from me) and sell it back to me for some kind of experience or product. I will then sell it again to somebody but for a slightly higher price. Unlimited money-making machinery.
Finally a tool for great audience loving creators. A tool for freedom to do their stuff where they want and how they want.
We are building a startup studio focused on niches. We are a collective of (weird) people building and monetising our passions. We are built based on DAO principles. If you have a cool niche idea, send us a message on Twitter, Discord or send an email to voytechp@nicheconomy.com