It's been about 2 years since I started to hear Patreon's name pop up. I started hearing podcast users and independent journalists mention supporting their work through the site.
Patreon is a site that allows creatives/creators to craft their own subscription content service. It allows creators to bypass the ever more concentrated media outlets and corporations, to get their work out to their fans directly. It's a great way for artists and other creative people to free themselves from the constraints of editorial boards, advertisers, and censors.
It is a great idea, and I'm a huge fan of Patreon as a democratizing influence on our media landscape. I like it for a lot of the same reasons I love Steemit! But before I get into that... here's a snippet of ( Patreon's Wikipedia page):
Patreon was founded in May 2013 by artist Jack Conte, who was looking for a way to make a living from his popular YouTube videos. Together with Sam Yam he developed a platform that allows patrons to pay a set amount of money every time an artist creates a work of art. [...]
The company signed up more than 125,000 "patrons" in its first 18 months. In late 2014, the website announced that patrons were sending over $1,000,000 per month to the site's content creators.
Over $1,000,000 a month to content creators after only 18 months!!
Now that I have your attention
The underlying premise for Patreon isn't that different from Steemit.
And a look at some of their high earners can give us a glimpse of our potential future:
How Steemit Can Win
Steemit already has a very robust mechanism for paying creators for their work. And best of all, those of us who enjoy consuming content can do so at no cost to ourselves. Actually, we benefit from curation rewards ourselves! A subscription model would be trivial to implement if fans wanted to pay their favorite creators above and beyond what they would receive through post rewards.
There are so many other advantages to Steem, that once a critical mass of users is reached... I really think it will take a life of its own, and help usher in a new way of thinking of digital economies. We already know all the arguments for Steem, and the revolutionary potential of the blockchain. I won't rehash them here.
But in order to get to that point, we will have to change the way we present ourselves to potential new users...
This isn't just about marketing... Although it definitely is about marketing. And not just the lack of marketing, either. The way we market ourselves is important. Marketing efforts need to be simplified and targeted. A lot of companies have great success by doing one thing, and doing it really well. Steem does a lot of things really well, but we don't communicate that fact effectively.
Likewise, the user experience and interface needs to meet people on their level and guide them. People need to be shown how to use the site for their particular purposes. The current interface is not compelling and downright confusing/intimidating to outsiders. If somebody happens to stumble onto the website, the site doesn't tell them why they're here... or show them how to use the site. Too much of the burden is on users to climb a steep and daunting learning curve.
The hard part is done.
The hardest part of building a web site is building out the underlying infrastructure that enables the site to do stuff. We already have that, and more. We have payments/transactions, publishing, voting, commenting... and best of all, we have some major successes to point to. We already have examples of people making small fortunes off of their work, be it development/programming, marketing efforts, writing, charity work, creating videos, and more.
It WORKS
The saying goes... Build it, and they will come. Maybe we should amend that...
Build it, cater to specific audiences, and market it well, THEN they will come.
I'm sure of it.