Are NFTs the next Stories?
Are NFTs the next Stories?
If there are new ways to monetize creative output there will be more creative output. Most people around the world do not have the privilege to “create”. They just work. They have to put food on the table for their family. They need to survive.
My dada (paternal grandfather) definitely did not create. He was born in Lahore in present-day Pakistan. He lived through the 1947 partition and saw hundreds of people die around him. He lost his parents at a young age. He had to provide for his wife and his four kids. My grandpa did not “create” because he was focused on surviving.
My dad did not create. He went became a captain in the Indian Army. He met my mom and immigrated to a new country. He worked as a cab driver to pay the bills and provide for his son and daughter. My father did not have the ability to create because he was focused on making enough money for his family.
Then there is me. I am pretty lucky. I was born in the US and grew up in Canada. I’m a dual citizen and was able to pay my way through a top Canadian university. I worked hard, had a bit of luck, and got a great job. I don’t yet have a family to provide for and I have no debt. At the age of 27, I have saved more money than both of my parents. I now have a podcast and a blog. I do this on top of my full-time job. I create because I have free time. I create because I am not only focused on making enough money to survive.
Time & creative endeavors
I have more time today than those in previous generations. I can choose to do multiple things with that time. I can spend more time on social media. I can exercise. I can hang with my friends. I can travel. I can create content.
Okay, now we have more time to create. There are also more tools to create. This reduces the barrier (i.e. saves time) for more output.
Podcasting pains
I tried to start a podcast in college. My friend Will and I had the energy to do so. We realized the only way to build the podcast was to work with our local college radio. They had the equipment and could teach us how to set up everything. After a few days of training, we recorded our first episode. We were proud of it, but could not find a simple to use tool to edit the podcasts. It was taking too long, and we gave up. That was in 2015.
In the summer of 2020, when my friend Angie and I started Across the Lines, all we needed was a podcast mic from Amazon, Zoom, and Decrypt an editing software. Instead of having to go through a school radio station, we could upload it through Anchor directly on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
The process changed a lot in just five years. We tend to think new technology will take a while and suddenly it’s here and ubiquitous. The rise of creators has made small and big companies pay attention. There clearly is an opportunity to support a growing and underserved market.
Social incumbents and creators
Every social platform has a “creator strategy”. Why? They are the ones that are providing content liquidity to their platform. Without content, many platforms will be useless. They would not attract users and advertisers would not want to spend money. Think Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Each relies on creators to create content for their platform to be successful.
When these product teams go and speak to creators to ask them “hey you are important to us, what are your biggest problems and what can we build for you?”, there are a few common answers:
Help me create
Help me build my audience
Help me make money
Help me manage and grow my business
Points 3 and 4 have something to do with money. Points 1 and 2 help creators to be in a better position to monetize their audience. All of these platforms are incentivized to help their creators make money. If they do not, creators may leave to platforms that are more aligned with their goals. Today there are many methods to do this.
Creator monetization landscape
Here are examples of platforms that have built different monetization tools:
You hear stories of YouTube creators being able to supplement their income through their videos. Substack writers leave large news publications so they can get paid to write directly to their audience. I have a friend who has +10k subscribers to his newsletter, +20k followers on LinkedIn and is able to make decent money through a private job board he shares with his audience.
Another friend has raised a small fund from her audience and is using it to invest in start-ups; she will then get a percentage carry of the investments. The number of ways to make money online for creators is increasing.
However, these stories are unique. It is more common for a creator's journey to be a struggle that does not provide nearly enough money to live comfortably. These headlines are more common:
97.5% of YouTubers Don't Make Enough to Reach the U.S. Poverty Line
The top 2% of creators generate +95% of earnings
Ad Revenue for Creators has Declined by 33% During COVID
There are still many opportunities to help creators make money.
NFTs
NFTs can be one more lever for creator monetization. For all of their grifts and scams, NFTs generated $3.9B for creators in 2021. For comparison, creators were paid $7B on Spotify and $15B on YouTube last year. There is still a ton of experimentation happening in this space.
If there are new ways to monetize creative output there will be more creative output. I am feeling this myself. I am getting closer to monetizing my content even through simple experiments with NFTs. I have made $700 myself through a couple of Mirror articles and tipping on social media-focused blockchain ecosystems like DeSo. That is more money than any other social platform I have created content for in the past decade.
Are NFTs the next Stories?
Snapchat launched Stories in 2013. Users could share a narrative of snaps within a 24-hour time span. The feature did well amongst their young user base. Over time brands used the medium to share content with their followers.
Stories was a success. You can tell because many started to copy it. In 2016 Instagram launched its own version. Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and others have followed. Many failed, others have succeeded.
I think NFTs may follow a similar trajectory. In the next 3-5 years, you may be able to buy NFTs on most platforms. Some may work, others may not. I think most will experiment. Why? Creators will be requesting it. Platforms know the more tools they can provide to make money, the more sticky their product will be.
These platforms also will be able to generate an alternative source of revenue if they embed these products. For example, I imagine a world where there is a transaction fee for the following use cases:
When a creator embeds some NFT feature
When a buyer buys the NFT
At the scale of large web2 platforms today, the revenue potential is large. Especially if they are building this as another tool alongside their other suite of products.
Instagram has been testing the waters. Today they are allowing a small percentage of creators to display their NFTs directly on Instagram. Facebook is also releasing the ability for users to make their posts into NFTs. It’s uncertain where this goes but these platforms are experiments. Reddit announced yesterday it will allow users to buy NFTS (but they’re not calling it that).
What other platforms will test NFTs? I imagine any platform that cares about its creators has at least been having this conversation. Think Tik Tok, Substack, Twitter, Medium, and others.
Like stories before it, many will try, some will succeed, and others will fail. Many are pointing to these web2 platforms being too late to launch NFT functionality. The hype that existed over the past year has dissipated and creators no longer want these tools. They may have never wanted them in the first place. I go back and forth on this perspective. I do think if done in a user-friendly way, NFTs as a creator monetization tool will be widespread. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit are a few of the platforms that are experimenting. Let’s see what the users themselves will say over the coming quarters.
So what?
If you are reading this you are most likely living a life of abundance; you just may not know it. We can buy what we want. We can travel where we want. We can work where we want. For those people, they are trapped in the constraint of time that is being sucked away by consuming content (i.e. me spending 2 hours a day on Insta).
Over time I imagine more opportunities to present themselves to creators. Big platforms are incentivized to support us. They will continue to build tools to help us a.) build our audience and b.) monetize that audience. Crypto will be one of those tools. At the start, it will be a tiny percentage. Over time it may grow. Or the ideas that exist in the space will sprinkle their way into so many PMs roadmaps that even if it is “isn’t built on-chain” (blah), the narrative and ethos of the space persist.
I think that would still be a win?
P.S. There’s someone in my network looking to hire PMs for his team at Ticketmaster to help build out their NFT strategy. It’s pretty sweet. If you are interested, here is the job posting. Hmu if you are curious and I can send over an intro.