With the Steemit, Inc. layoffs happening a few weeks ago, a lot of ideas and questions have come to the forefront about the future of the Steem blockchain.
Despite the seemingly negative announcement made by Steemit, Inc., many apps, communities and individuals have stepped up in big ways to help move the blockchain forward.
My hope is that we see Steemit focus on blockchain development, cost reduction, MIRA, etc. and they let Steemit.com either go to the wayside or open-source the blogging apps’ development and allow the community to decide how we move forward with the Steemit.com app itself.
If it were up to me, I would want to implement an ad layer to the Steemit.com app.
Many others have also voiced their opinions with regards to Steemit.com and the issue of driving revenue into the Steem ecosystem on the whole.
It’s always good to brainstorm a wide array of potential options for apps to generate a revenue stream. I’ll explore some of the ideas I’ve had about a few Steem apps in this post.
A Few Apps and Ideas for Revenue:
Actifit:
This is 1 way for Actifit to generate revenue and it is certainly an option that many other apps should consider as well.
An app such as Actifit could also consider ads as a form of revenue stream.
Many people are concerned about the viability of displaying ads. We are, after all, trying to build something that is far better than the centralized media systems already in place.
I believe that there is a right way to do ads and a wrong way. The right way can come in many shapes and sizes. Some form of giving back to the community who engages with the ads would be the way of the future, in my opinion.
I believe that ads can actually be valuable to the average user. If you imagine a world where open and easy distribution of small amounts of currency (a.k.a. STEEM) can be distributed via some sort of shared “pool” (a.k.a. Rewards Pool or a similar iteration), then you can see the potential value of showing ads and creating a new type of ad rewards pool which can be distributed to the users who make the community and platform strong and healthy.
Ads aren’t the only idea for generating revenue. There is a whole sea of options. Many of which have yet to be dreamt of.
I can imagine a world where Actifit gets into products and services and earns an even greater stream of revenue. The platform could add some sort of coaching service that matches qualified health coaches with app users who are willing to pay for online coaching (which is already a huge industry) and Actifit could rightly take a cut of each purchase of this service.
A similar model can be used for just about anything related to fitness and health — wearable products, supplements, etc. etc.
Steem Monsters:
Similar to Actifit, I believe Steem Monsters should implement some sort of on boarding reward perk system.
I can already imagine Steem Monsters onboarding new users with a similar perk system in the form of:
- Unique cards
- Unique tournaments
- Badges/Achievements of some kind
- Time-weighted rating boosts (i.e. 110% rating boost for 72 hours after signing up)
- etc etc.
Onboarding users is also just 1 part of the equation. Imagine that SM could also start selling a wide variety of other products/services to existing SM players — albeit, in a tasteful and non-game-breaking way.
Many games sell time-weighted rating boosts and similar perks individually. The most popular video game out there right now is Fortnite and they’re making BILLIONS by selling aesthetic items… Why can’t SM sell some aesthetic perks as well?
Steem Monsters is one of the few apps that already has revenue coming in although I still see a lot of room for them to expand their “product lineup”.
Partiko:
Again, I believe that on boarding outside users is going to be a very important factor in this whole ecosystem. That’s why I believe apps should focus on some sort of revenue stream that simultaneously builds their user base.
Partiko has a lot of room to pivot. They’ve already proven their ability to spot market opportunities - such can be seen with their recent activity of backing up censored Tumblr blogs.
Some sort of perk system that onboards new users and allows them to earn more for their interactions with the Steem blockchain and what-not is a great way to get people hooked on Steem and hooked on the 
Ads are another form of revenue stream that they could explore. I would think that native feed ads are probably the way to go in this case. Ads on individual posts would be cool too. Imagine that they could implement a system where bloggers pick which ads they wish to display to their audience in their blog posts and these bloggers would get to share in the revenue with Partiko and the buyers of ads would get a dedicated audience = win-win-win.
Similar to Steem Monsters, Partiko could sell some form of boosts/individual perks to their existing user base. With some improvements, the Partiko points system is already very addicting and could get even more addicting with added benefits/boosts/use cases, etc. Imagine spending $1 worth of STEEM to get a 100% Partiko points boost for 12 hours or some similar form of perk.
To make any economy work, we must have a healthy stream of outside revenue flowing in. Steem lacks in this way, but I believe that it’s a relatively “easy” fix when all the individual apps jump in and look for ways to both boost their active users as well as generate some income to fund their project and move forward.
Onboarding users with perks is a genius move by