A few days ago, I received an email from Narrative. I opened it and found this:
My heart jumped. Then I started calculating what that 44,000 NRVE+ might be in USD. When I tried to access the site and look at my wallet, the site was down for maintenance. It wasn't down for long. Within the hour, the site was live again and I was able to see what Narrative had done. I am SUPER-PLEASED.
My Personal Rewards
It's important to note that the first payout represents two months of Narrative activity. The platform went live on April 2, 2019, and the first payout goes through May 31, 2019. Narrative so far has paid out 57,183 in total rewards points and 2,508,982 total NRVE for that last pay period.
From the Narrative reporting page.
My own rewards represent 1.79% of what was paid out, a total of 45,210.5912421 NRVE. The estimated USD equivalent as of this writing is $513.28, up from $377.18 two days ago.
While I hoped the first Narrative payout would be encouraging, I did not expect it to be that encouraging. This represents a $256.64 average monthly income from these two months of activity. In contrast, my Steemit account, after 15 months of regular and prodigious activity, has an estimated account value of $418.85.
I have not powered down one time since joining the Steem blockchain. My Steem Power now sits at 849.371 with 65.745 delegated out. I have 7.809 liquid STEEM and $63.976 liquid SBD. So when you figure that with the $300-$400 investment I've made in Steem Monsters cards, I've earned almost 1,500 STEEM in 15 months. Considering today's STEEM price, according to CoinMarketCap, that means I've earned about $611.202 from my countless hours of activity on Steemit. Even when you factor in the devaluation of STEEM that has taken place since March 2018 when I made my first post, hour for hour, I've done much better on Narrative. Much, much better.
On April 28, 2018, less than a month after my first post, STEEM was at $4.43 USD. Perhaps if STEEM was still trading at that price, I'd be happy with 3.762 and some change in Steem Power. But, of course, if wishes were horses ....
Needless to say, my nervousness over Narrative's early performance has turned into a posture of gratitude. I'm stoked.
NRVE's current price is roughly $0.012090. Tomorrow, it could be down below a penny again. But I'll still be satisfied by this early out-of-the-gate sprint.
From CoinMarketCap.
The lion's share of my Narrative rewards came from content creation. While I like seeing the breakdown of rewards by niche ownership, content creation, etc., I'd also like to see a little more granularity in the content creation category. How much of that is due to personal journal posts versus comments? That would make a great addition to the breakdown, in my opinion. Another great addition would be some breakdown on my rewards per niche post to, with information on the niches I post most often to. I'd also like to know if I made the leader board for any of those niches. Here's a current picture of my wallet:
As you can see, my niche ownership rewards for the first two months were about $29.985 per month. That puts me on a good pace to actually profit from owning the niche within the first year, unheard of in business ownership. While owning a Narrative niche isn't exactly like owning a business, it is close enough to owning equity in a franchise that I'm well pleased at the earnings pace so far. The chatter on Narrative is that I'm one of the most favored niche owners because I am active on the platform and a supporter of the content within my own niche (I read every post, upvote the good ones, and comment when I can).
I can't help but wonder how others who own multiple niches (some Narrators have maxed out their niche ownership at 10) have fared. My niche, the Speculative Fiction niche, is a top 10 niche, so this makes me wonder what other top 10 niches (say those at the top of the list, like Independent Music (holds the No. 1 slot) did for their owners.
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Clicking on the Transactions tab gives a full run down of all my Narrative activity. While this is useful data, I'd like to see it broken down by posts and comments, etc. I'd also like to see highest earning post and other details on specific posts, maybe top 10 highest-earning posts for the month and for all time. But with the information that I have, I can see that a poem I posted early on in April garnered a measly 7+ NRVE, so not much of a payout there, while my highest earning post, posted on May 6, earned me over $36 USD. That's not too shabby. It could go on to do a lot more.
I'm anxious to redeem my rewards, an action that won't be available until July, so I can invest in more niches.
Niche Owner Rewards
I'm also pleased with how the niche owner rewards are reported. Particularly enlightening is the small print line that tells me only 151 posts qualify for rewards, because low quality posts are excluded. Out of 189 total posts in the niche, that means 79.89% of the posts in my niche are high quality enough to earn their authors, and me, rewards. That's pretty significant. And what it tells me is that downvoting low quality posts is not only important, it's intrinsically valuable to rewarding authors of high quality posts.
If you're interested in moderating the Speculative Fiction niche, you should pay close attention to the moderator rewards.
I intend to have only two moderators to start, until the niche grows to such a size that more are required. This is a conscious decision because I want to maximize the rewards for each moderator. I believe that one isn't enough, but I don't want more because I want moderators to be motivated to moderate the niche well. And so far, moderating this niche has been fairly easy. I suspect it will become more challenging as Narrative grows.
Two more parts of the niche ownership rewards panel that make me sing are the "Top Earning Posts" and "Top Earning Creators" reports. Both of these are invaluable to niche owners, and already, I'm thinking up ways to reward those contributors to my niche who add more value to it with their content. Coming soon: Contests and other rewards-inducing activities.
Congratulations to Andrew Reising, aka @wildspeculation, for being the top earning creator in the Speculative Fiction niche for the April/May 2019 time period. He certainly deserves it. His reviews of spec-fic books and movies are awesome.
Congratulations are in order, as well, to @t2tang for the top-earning post in the niche from the past two months. 
At the top of the niche owner rewards panel is a link to the Leadership board. On that board will be the all-time top earning posts and top-earning creators lists. As Narrative grows, I'm looking forward to seeing how these two lists change over time.
Narrative Site-wide Rewards
Finally, in the reporting section of the platform's HQ area, you'll find site-wide statistics on rewards payouts. Total rewards payouts for the first payout period were $21,050.47 USD, or 2,508,982 NRVE. That's pretty substantial. As small as Narrative is--and we can hope it's the smallest it will ever be--for it to have paid out more than $10,000 in rewards for the first month of public beta is an outstanding achievement. Less than $2,000 of that went to Narrative Company, and only $3,157.57 went to Narrative Company for the entire payout period. The rest went to Narrators--creators, owners, and moderators. This could be why you see so many of Narrative staff posting to the platform themselves. It means they're eating their own dog food, and there's a lot to be said for that.
As much as Narrative staff has been beat up these past couple of months, for one mishap or another (and I've done my fair share of beating), I'd say they hit a big success on the rewards payout. I'm pumped. I'm ready for the next round. I'm anxious to get moving toward moderator and Tribunal elections, and beyond. I'm ready to promote my niche. And I'm ready for more content creation. That's not to say there couldn't be improvements to what we've seen so far, but I give Narrative staff a big thumbs up on this one.
Final Word and a Suggestion for Improvement
I am not a developer. I can't imagine the challenges that come with developing a platform like Narrative. It can't be easy. So I do appreciate that Narrative staff can take the criticisms that have been hurled at them (and many of them are valid) and keep punching away at producing what they've promised. There have been some missteps along the way, but I hope that they will be seen as minor in a year, two years, or five years from now, should Narrative survive that long, when some of us can boast of making a full-time living from our Narrative efforts (I can dream, can't I?).
That's said, like any new social platform, there will be those who show up to try to game the system and test it against itself. They spam the platform with low-quality posts, steal other people's content, and troll users who make it difficult for them to play their games. Narrative is no exception.
Because the entire ecosystem of Narrative rewards is dependent on a high degree of individual integrity across the platform, it behooves each Narrator involved to remain on guard against low quality, intellectual property theft, and other unethical behavior. So far, I don't see Narrative staff taking these issues as seriously as they took a trolling issue in beta's first week. They acted on that quickly, but I see plagiarism and content theft as a much bigger issue. Not only is it unethical, but those who get away with it stand to profit from their lack of integrity. This is something that should not be acceptable. If Narrative is to grow and offer real rewards to high-quality content creators, moderators, and niche owners, then the company has to find a way to discourage content theft in all its forms. That includes removing rewards from those who are caught.
Therefore, I hope the next improvement to the rewards payout system is some reporting on how AUP and TOS violations, especially content theft and other unethical behavior, impact rewards payouts. I don't know how that will look, specifically, but I think it should be included.
With that, I want to encourage all my Steemit friends who tried Narrative but didn't stick around to give it another go. The user interface of Narrative is world's above that of Steemit. So far, the rewards have been better for new users. On Steemit, you have to churn away for hours and days and weeks to get a few pennies. That doesn't seem to be the case on Narrative where 85 percent of the rewards go to content creators, niche owners, moderators, and others who are not a part of company staff. Since this is the beginning of the future, anyone who stakes an early claim will have the best seat in the theater. And it's still early enough in the production that good box seats are going at a very low price. Join us.
Allen Taylor is a freelance writer, editor, and authority content producer at Taylored Content.