A comment on my previous post "SteemIT Beta and Beyond - Kick Starting Profitability" from @samupaha caught my attention.
I'm not sure if Steem would benefit from ads. Because there are so much ads everywhere else, it would make sense to differentiate and offer totally ad-free platform.
If Steem (the blockchain) becomes successful, Steemit (the company that has developed Steem) doesn't need any revenue from ads because it will make huge profits from selling steem (the currency that they hold a lot) to other users.
It's huge win for everybody if we can build the community completely without ads.
Ads - Ruining the Internet Daily
Samupaha is right in my opinion. Everyone hates ads , expanding autoplay videos and any new methods advertising companies seem to be brainstorming nowadays. They are forcing us to consume ads or sponsored posts about their products and after a while it gets frustrating to say the least.
As a former publisher I realise that there are costs involved, but what if you can make revenue without interrupting the user experience? How though ?
Learning From Pinterest
Most of you have probably heard or used Pinterest, for those who haven't :
"Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that operates a photo sharing website.Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pinboards" - Wikipedia.
It launched in closed-beta back in 2010 and grew expotentially. In January 2012, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique users, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark.
Users and analysts speculated on what their business model would be based on, as they weren't using an advertising network like Google Adsense or native advertising.
Pinterest though was already monetizing their content without ruining the user experience through Skimlinks. They have moved on to other revenue models , but let's stick to this one for now.
Skimlinks or Similar Monetisation Platforms
Skimlinks has partnerships with 20,000+ Affiliate Networks like Amazon, Ebay etc. Instead of needing to sign up to each one individually and then adding affiliate links to get revenue, Skimlinks automates the process with just a few lines of code and one universal log-in to your Skimlinks dashboard for reports.
How Skimlinks Works
Viglinks - A Similar Platform With Google Backing
Killing Two Birds with One Stone
You've probably encountered affiliate link spam on your favorite websites. Some bad actors actually provide valuable information but sneak in a link or two to profit off less tech savvy individuals while depriving the publisher or community administrator from extra revenue. Skimlinks solves that without needing to baby sit new links.
What do you think about using automated affiliate links and splitting the revenue rewards to curators and post authors ?