SparkDAO Trend Research | Web 3.0 Tools: The best way for creators to monetize their content

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The Web 2.0 monetization model

The creator economy stems from a paradigm shift in the way people understand work, income, and content.It has become more and more common for a new generation of young people to post online, share photos, join forums, plan events and reap profits from them.The Internet provides a level playing field, where anyone can use their own strengths and characteristics to attract the attention of fans and profit from this traffic.

However, Web 2.0 creators have been facing two key issues: ownership and monetization.Web 2.0 social platforms is an advertising-driven business model with no ownership by creators. In Web 2.0, the monetization process of the platform is like this: companies launch apps to attract as many users as possible to monetize their user groups.

This business model keeps the content of social networks closed, because opening its data means killing the platform itself.The main way the Web 2.0 platform profits is to sell data from specific audiences to for-profit companies, and creators have no choice but to continue to use these apps, as their fans are on these platforms.This business model leads to creators who actually make content being underpaid, seriously undermonetized, and failing to fully capture the value they create, and can only rent fan traffic restricted by the platform to brands that are willing to spend money.Now, Web 3.0 offers creators a way to regain ownership of the content and monetize it more effectively.

The Web 3.0 monetization era

Kevin Kelly once wrote an article titled "1,000 Real Fans", believes that the Internet will make more people make a living, creators do not need to pursue fans numbers, but only need to attract a small number of "real fans" because they are willing to pay for anything the creators make.For $100 per fan, creators can earn $100,000 a year.Today, new encryption enables creators to profit on their content more effectively. In recent months, as creators have become more aware of Web 3.0 features, more creators have tried to profit with new monetization models.

Creators can use encryption in a variety of ways, and effectively profit from content in two main ways:

Create a token with access to premium content.Fans can buy tokens and get early access to the content, with access to content controlled by the tokens, similar to private channels in Discord or "close friends" on Instagram.Tokens allow creators to set access on a large scale to give exclusive status and rights to fans in the community.
Let the fans invest in the creators through the token.As creators become more famous and more people want to buy tokens for exclusive content, the value of tokens increases.Fans can see tokens as investments, while creators can use liquidity to generate gains and create better content. In this case, the token can serve as a way for creators to achieve crowdfunding.

At this stage, mainstream creators mostly use NFT to monetize their content, because NFT has the status, scarcity, and belonging within the community.These NFT bring the concept of ownership to fans and creators that users can derive most of their value from their collective contribution, rather than the core monopolistic value in the circle of platform founders and investors.This allows the creators to profit through the content, while engaging the community and adjusting the incentives.Fans can buy tokens, allowing creators to become less dependent on revenue from Web 2.0, while creators share their content with fans through tokens and grant ownership to fans.When the creator gives the real ownership to the community, community members cherish the content more and get involved.

By creating tokens and leveraging the Web 3.0 tool, creators can more easily develop sustainable communities, ensure that members have a sense of participation rather than passive reviewers, and motivate community members to make the entire community more attractive.In the long term, the more popular the community is, the more value tokens capture.Putting these new technologies into creators is a big step in ownership evolution.In Web 2.0, creators need to participate to attract advertising revenue, while in Web 3.0, monetization and engagement occur simultaneously.For example, users use their own money to participate in Web 3.0 by buying an NFT. From the start, it allowed creators to earn revenue, even without large fans, to more easily profit through content and bring its fans out of the Web 2.0 platform.

By purchasing the creators' tokens, fans further support the creators they like, and build a positive feedback loop that develops a healthy fan community built around common interests.Ultimately, tokens provide a way for loyal fans to express loyalty and provide liquidity for creators.While mainstream creators casting NFT for the community is a big step forward, creators can also completely reinvent their perception of monetization.Creators can try a brand new 3.0-driven W e b monetization model by utilizing alternative tokens (social tokens or community tokens) and redefining the meaning of being a creator.

So far, the term "creator" has mainly referred to online content creation, but Web 3.0 allows for a whole new category of creators.Such creators share their vision through online content rather than creating content as the ultimate goal.Web 3.0 Creators actually refers to anyone who drives ideas and vision through Internet content and utilizes the new Web 3.0 tools.

Fans and communities

In the traditional model, building a startup costs money to hire people and support itself.The capital is usually raised from venture capital companies and shares a share of the company.The incentives for this investment are misplaced, and even if the company succeed, it takes a long cycle for anyone involved to achieve a real return on investment.

Currently, instead of benefiting from Web 2.0 fans, some Web 2.0 creators are building tokens communities to create projects that bring real value and then monetize them.To this end, they are using Web 3.0 tools like Coinvise to create and manage tokens by providing features such as airdrops, tasks, or schedules.With social tokens, these creators can build reliable projects and motivate their fans to participate from the start, to avoid raising money from VCs. Social tokens can be used as stocks, where fans will participate and receive token rewards that can cash out after the project is successful.

Even if the project needs to raise a certain amount of money, it can be done through the community.Stakeholders can use tokens to vote on future strategic decisions to help people who build the project to sell some of their assets after the token issue.Since all activity is happening on the chain, token buyers have a complete understanding of what is going on.Those who recognize the prospects of the project can buy and hold ownership, and those who think the project is in the wrong direction can go by selling their tokens.

In Web 3.0, community members can have parts of the creator's content and share creator success through tokens.Community members benefit directly from the growth of the creators, and are adequately motivated and willing to help the creators.Social tokens can coordinate interests, build a workforce system, promote collaboration with community members, and profit more effectively.

Problem to be solved

There is still much to improve about improving Web 3.0 monetization through tokens.First, when profitable through tokens, creators have to attract fans with content, not brands, and they have to produce higher-quality content to please fans, because fans are on the spending side.Web 2.0 creators are benefiting from attention, which means making large amounts of low quality content and the frequency of content is usually more important than quality because more content means more advertising revenue.On the other hand, the threshold is higher to profit on loyal fans, because creators have to innovate and create higher quality content.Marketing for money rather than attention completely changes the way creators make content.

The second problem is the discoverability dilemma.Do creators want to be found by more viewers and see their content for free, or do they prefer to set tokens thresholds on content to increase revenue but sacrifice visibility?With its large user base and discoverability, the Web 2.0 platform will always be the base for temporary creators looking to profit from the attention generated.For tokens to be a long-term viable way to monetize content to introduce a new way to attract the attention of creators without relying on a centralized platform.Building decentralized social networks may be a solution worth exploring.Encouraging them to share content by rewarding their most loyal fans with tokens may be another way to solve the discoverability dilemma.

Finally, how does the creator get liquidity from their tokens?At the moment, there is nowhere to support not selling tokens while getting paid, which doesn't seem in the long-term interests of the community.Similarly, from a contributor perspective, they have to sell tokens to get their salary when contributing to the community, and have lost their voting rights in the process.To better monetization through tokens, new tools or mechanisms are needed to help creators and community members get paid without selling tokens.One potential solution could be to create two tokens, one to pay wages and reward community members, and the other for governance and benefits within the community.

Taken up, Web 3.0 can help creators leverage content more effectively.While there is no perfect solution yet, more and more creators are exploiting encryption and building thriving communities.In order for a new generation of creators to get more freedom, effective monetization models must be created, and the Web 3.0 tool will be the best way.

*The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of SparkDAO. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.