【Web3 Study Notes】#3 Creator Economy

I especially want to write about this topic because, as a person who likes to write small stories, draw small paintings, and hum some small songs since I was a child, I have spent most of my life thinking about how to do what I like and how to support myself. I've been torn between creation and employment. Web3 probably isn't the answer, but it's worth looking into.

The essence of creation

Compared with other practitioners of the same era, it is difficult for creative people to make money in any era and under any economic situation - because words, music, and art are probably the most useless (and most priceless) However, in today’s era and today’s economic form, creators do have more living space.

One of the sharers of Matters Lab's AMA last week, author and digital producer He Manzhuang, said this when he introduced whether his novel was made into a movie or made into an NFT:

The biggest challenge in creating has never been the medium. The biggest challenge of creation is always creation itself.

I take it for granted. What I understand by this means that a work can always find a suitable distribution and profit model; it is useless to think about how to make money before the work is completed.

Creating this thing requires interest and diligence. But creative output is hardly directly linked to hard work. If you clean other people's rooms, then as long as you are diligent, work 5 days a week, and clean two units a day, then you will earn 10 units a week; and your cleaning quality, as long as you have proper rest time, will not have too much big difference.

Although writing or painting also requires diligence, and insisting on daily practice will definitely benefit your long-term creative quality, but you cannot guarantee that you can write the same quality of text every day. And creator energy is not measured in hours or weeks. For example, if you have been working non-stop for several months to write a book, it is definitely impossible to wake up and start writing the next book immediately. Your thoughts and emotions may still need to be restored and adjusted, and it may take several months or even longer to withdraw in the middle; and it will take time to conceive the next book.

Although there are more and more people who regard creation as a profession, such as posting public accounts every day, socializing production of film and television scripts, etc., the quality and quantity are not directly proportional.

The activity of creation itself is so difficult to quantify that it is difficult to incorporate it into economic production. In primitive society, creation is the pleasure of labor and leisure; in feudal society, creation is the privilege of nobles who do not have to work to make money, or is a labor add-on attached to craftsmen; only after the advent of the capitalist era did creation gradually find it. direction of commercialization.

Creator's commodity economy

The commercialization of creation introduces a paradox: the quality of goods needs to be controllable, and to use art as an application to add value to goods requires standardization; however , the value of artistic creation lies in uniqueness, and works without uniqueness will only be reduced to Made for craftsmen.

The advent of the digital age has introduced another paradox of creative works: the digitization of works and the popularization of the Internet make works easier to disseminate and can be seen by more people; however, the lower the cost of dissemination, the lower the reward that can be returned to the author. Just as with the popularity of streaming, more and more musicians can be heard, but we may never have the kind of superstars of the record era. The value of art lies in scarcity, and the low-hanging fruit becomes cheap. Of course maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, I think it is a better era to allow more creators to have a decent income than to do everything in the nation to win a few superstars. We as appreciators also have more choices.

Therefore, the realization of creation is always self-contradictory. With the development of society, we can see the following forms of creative realization:

Creator 1.0: Commissions, People, Royalty

You paint portraits and they pay you. You write for the magazine, and the magazine pays you for it. You create illustrations, videos, and advertising agencies buy your creations. You put the painting in the gallery, sell it to the gallery and give you a share.

As long as you have good cooperation and trust with your clients, they will continue to pay for your work. But on the other hand, your creations must be "useful" - the portraits are beautiful enough, the writing is in line with the tone of the magazine, the video creativity can spread the advertisements, the paintings can be seen by the curators... and so on. The stuff you create freely can't sell for money if it's not picked up by editors, art directors, gallery managers.

If you don’t want to become a tool for your customers, you can market a character that is unruly, upright, unspeakable... Wait, make yourself an idol, as long as all your behaviors can conform to this With the logical framework set by the person, the quality of your work does not have to be too stable, and customers who like you can tolerate you. Of course, your personality cannot deviate too much from yourself, otherwise we have seen too many cases of collapse of the personality in recent years.

The great writer Neil Gaiman once said that as a writer, you should submit manuscripts on time , have a good personality , and have high-quality works . You must account for at least two of these three , so that the editor will be willing to cooperate with you, and you will be able to write as a career. This adage probably applies to all creative fields.

A more advanced form of income is royalties. If you've written a bestseller that's been reprinted, or you've created a classic cartoon character, you can earn a steady stream of royalties from that one work. Of course, the creation of works of this level is something that can't be met, so most creators still have to work hard and reap the rewards.

On the other hand, the restriction of royalties also contradicts the dissemination of knowledge. Many countries have legislation, so many years after the author's death, their works are listed in the public domain and can be reprinted and cited free of charge. More authors give up their profits automatically and publish their works for free.

Creator 2.0: Self-Publishing, Crowdfunding, Rewarding, Advertising

Now that the tools for publishing and distribution are becoming more and more popular, more and more people bypass intermediaries such as publishers, galleries, TV stations, etc. to produce, distribute and disseminate their own works. It's easy to print 100 small books, or throw your work into the Kindle store, but finding people willing to buy it is a big problem. Hence the influencer economy. Creators who want to stand on their own feet must build their own fan base. With a fan base, crowdfunding and distribution can ensure that you will not lose money.

Being an opinion leader can be very beneficial, and you can stop creating only commercially "useful" work. You can show your semi-finished products, failed works, and creative process as "works". This process also involves how you market your persona. The point is to get your fans to like you.

After you have a fan base, in addition to publishing and selling your works, you can also receive advertisements and ask fans to give rewards. The benefits of these are self-evident: you have a great deal of creative freedom. But on the contrary, you have to be able to "scream". You usually not only need to create good content, but you also need to be good at attracting fans, have affinity, and also need some business acumen, know how to talk about advertising business, and be able to ask fans for rewards. This is difficult for some introverted creators to do.

I think Neil Gaiman's advice is still right: on time , good personality , high quality work , at least two of these three. To be truly independent of brokerage companies, publishing editors, etc., you also have to know how to do business.

Creator 2.5: NFT Royalties + Fan Coins + Earn Fame

I didn't write 3.0 because I don't think the form of creator revenue we're seeing today is fundamentally different from the rules of the game established in the Web2 era (and before). The only technological change is in the way royalties are calculated: since all transactions on the blockchain can be recorded, the dissemination of digital works has the potential to give authors ongoing royalties. If your work is resold many times, you get a commission on each resale, just as if you wrote a bestseller and reprinted it every year, you would always receive royalties. The way NFTs generate revenue is a bit like applying the book royalty model to digital artwork. Before the advent of NFTs, digital artworks were difficult to price because they could be easily copied, and there was no difference between a copy and an "original". NFT is to allow the author to define an "original work", which can be resold, hyped and appreciated; although other copies can also be spread and appreciated on the Internet, the copies have no collection value. But I think such so-called limited edition digital works is a joke in itself. I will give an example later.

In addition to making the work into NFT and selling the work itself, there is also a mode of forming a fan group by yourself, applying some DAO practices, such as issuing fan coins, allowing fans to vote, giving fans preferential benefits, and allowing fans to participate in the creation process... …Wait, get everyone who likes your work to get involved in this little economy of yours. This Rally website ( https://rally.io ) is to provide creators with a corresponding technical platform to help you make your own tokens. Your NFT works can be purchased by your fans with your exclusive tokens. Your own exclusive token also has a corresponding dollar value, which can be exchanged with other creator tokens on the Rally platform, and can also be hyped.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH (DYOR) is the most important code of conduct in this brave new world! I have seen a lot of emerging models in this wave of Web3 craze, and the websites are all well done, but if I dig deeper, they are full of pits. Whether NFTs or tokens, they are still an extension of the influencer economy. First of all, you still have to be a "charismatic" creator, able to form a fan base, so that people will pay for the various things you publish.

Since not everyone has the strength and luck to be an influencer, there is another model for the majority of professional creative workers . For example, you can write some advertising songs, draw some comics, do some graphic design, and write copywriting for corporate publicity... You can join some creative DAO organizations, similar to the SeeDAO that you shared in the past two weeks, you can join them Teams, take some creative tasks to do in their community proposals, kind of like doing freelances. There seems to be no cash income at the moment, and your reward is something like a badge of honor in this DAO. Why would you do something like this with no income? Their theory is that if you participate in these early projects, you will have a record of your work and your medal of honor on the chain, and you can even get the white list of this DAO; if the project is successfully released and has capital income, the DAO token Appreciate, you earn. I feel like this is a bit like joining an early-stage startup company for nothing and taking stock options. Although it does not rule out that you have hit a good project and become a thing, but in most cases there is no guarantee of this kind of work, you must be mentally prepared to do it for nothing.

This goes back to the paradox of creation mentioned at the beginning of this article—creative activities are not result-oriented in nature. I participated in the Elysium System (a game DAO) science fiction writing competition and wrote " The Legend of Hua Jingling ", and I got their white list. This result doesn't really mean anything to me. Not to mention whether the game can successfully issue tokens with legal currency value in the future, even if there is, its value is probably not enough for me to buy a cup of coffee. But the reason I participated was purely for fun. I got what I wanted in the process of writing this little story.

To sum up, although social change and technological progress have brought new profit models for creators, the ultimate question for a creator to answer is always creation itself. Let's listen to the analysis of the venture capital industry.

What the venture capitalists say

This Tannhauser2049 seems to be a person in the venture capital industry who focuses on Web3 in China. Last month, he wrote a 100,000-word masterpiece and posted it on mirror.xyz. ta devoted a whole chapter to talking about art trading and investment (see Chapter 7 - NFT, Emotional Prosperity and Rational Nirvana ; by the way, the reading experience of NFT is really not comparable to that of e-books or even ordinary HTML articles. For example, I can't link to specific chapters, please roll your mouse patiently.) There are many cases of NFT and peripheral technology products. I know everything, and I recommend everyone to study it by yourself. I have great admiration for this author. Although ta is an investor, he does not blindly advocate and incite, but repeatedly warns everyone not to be a leek and see the potholes clearly.

He said that he had considered publishing a book through traditional publishing procedures, but since he is writing Web3, he might as well combine knowledge and action, and simply publish the book in the form of NFT and make a limited collection of several price ladders:

There are 5 Legendary Editions, priced at 1ETH. There are 50 Rare Editions available for 0.1 ETH. Common Edition is 0.01 ETH, which is about $35 in USD. If this NFT is all sold out, the author can get 0.01*500+0.1*50+1*5 = 15 ETH, which is about more than 50,000 US dollars at today's exchange rate.

Compared with e-books on Kindle, the biggest difference between NFT books is that you can read them without paying money! Compared with the electronic version of similar books, I think the price of $35 is expensive in the American book market, but I am willing to buy a copy to express my appreciation. It's a bit like I've finished reading a book in a bookstore and want to support the author, and the price is affordable, I just pay for it.

When I paid, I saw that Ethereum’s damn gas fee was between $10 and $15, which means that it would be close to $50 in the end. I hesitated and didn’t shoot. I know the gas fee has its purpose, and I usually don't care about it; unfortunately, I paid 0.018 ETH just two days ago for an 18-month subscription to Time Magazine - this is purely my own stupidity , "Time Magazine" said that you can subscribe with US dollars or ETH. There are also very high discounts in US dollars. I felt an inexplicable sense of loss when the account had been transferred - I bought a loneliness! Because this ETH paid to "Time Magazine" makes me brooding, so when I can support pure NFT authors, I don't want to brush ETH casually. Human mental activity is so irrational! !

I don't feel much guilt for not giving this author real money credits. Now that ta has listed various reasons for us not to blindly invest in NFT, we naturally know that making this 100,000-word masterpiece into NFT is also an experiment. It's just a gimmick to make a limited edition or something, just play it, it's like setting an individual upper limit and a total upper limit for the reward, but isn't it basically a reward?

Of course, friends who own these limited-edition NFTs may say, I can also resell this NFT in the second-hand market!

Not impossible.

Let's review Tannhauser2049's admonition first:

What kind of NFTs might have long-term investment value?
** Historical storytelling, rich era background, suitable for word of mouth
** Scarce or unique and valuable meaning
** Hype value, viral spread incentive mechanism
** Whether the creator itself is a well-known artist
** At least four of these five are bullish in the corresponding real asset market.

Which of the above conditions does this NFT article meet?

An e-book of this size will probably sell for $6~$10 on a Kindle, and there is no second-hand market for books that are too time-sensitive, because new ideas and new works will appear soon. So if I pay for this NFT, it may only be because I respect the author's passion and dedication, and I am willing to give a reward at a price I can afford. This cannot be considered an investment.

But I'm also curious, if Mr. Jin Yong released the limited 500 copies of the NFT of "Eternal Dragon Slayer" in this form in the early years, pay attention, you can read his book completely even if you don't pay, then if the primary market sells If they are sold out, will there be more fans who will continue to repurchase in the second-hand and third-hand markets? Would you go to the second-hand market to chase and buy again? If there is an investor who wants to make a film and television, how does the copyright count?

If it is according to the logic of the traditional publishing industry, if the first edition sells so well, then it will be reprinted, and the reprint will be printed several times as many times as the print volume. Mr. Jin Yong will also make some revisions during the reprint. The 2002 edition of "Eternal Heaven and Dragon Slayer" I read was different from the original 1961 edition. Mr. Jin himself said that in the past 40 years, he naturally has many different perceptions about life, so he wants to explain the characters in the story differently. The first edition of 1961 may be of great value in the eyes of die-hard Jin Yong fans, who were found in the old paper pile and bought with a will to bid for collection. But for a general reader like me, reading the latest version of the e-book on the Kindle thinks it's enough.

So if it is the NFT version of "Eternal Dragon Slayer", will it be republished according to the same logic?

Think about the news investigative reports that have been updated and reversed all the time. For example, the news of the iron chain girl in Fengxian County this time, the first version of the investigative report was released as NFT, which is regarded as raising funds for further investigation. Fever, can reporters raise funds to conduct further investigations to reveal new developments? But China's journalism has been suffocated, and neither money nor technology can save it. Let's all wait for the official announcement.

Epilogue

Writing here, I want to say something that may be unpopular: creators really can't create for the sake of making money. If you are still worrying about rent and food, don't be fooled by the hashtags #Web3 #CreatorEconomy, go get a job.

My idol Elizabeth Gilbert said in the book Big Magic in 2015 (the author's humble translation):

These days everyone is talking about how the internet and digital technology will change the creative world. Everyone is worried about whether the artist will still be able to make a living if things go on like this. But let me point out: even before the Internet and the information age, life was never easy for artists. When I was young no one ever said to me, "Hey kid, do you know what makes the most money? Writing!" No one would say that in 1989, not in 1889, not in 1789, I bet it's 2089 Still no one would say that. But people still paint, plasticine, compose music, act, write poetry, make movies, weave fabrics, blow glass, cast gold, paint manicures, dance, play the flute... No matter how much you persuade, people will still stubbornly persist. To create things that make you happy, there is no reason, as always.

It is the best state of mind to be able to come to Tannhauser2049: this is the crystallization of my enthusiasm and wisdom, if you are happy, I will accept 0.01ETH or 1ETH; if you don't have it in your pocket, I will give it to you for free. Happy (because I'm not short of money).

For creators, "I'm not short of money" is the most creative state. Therefore, among the advocates of Universal Basic Income, the voice of the creator is very high. Universal Basic Income is implemented on the basis that with the production efficiency of our contemporary industry and agriculture, the whole society can invest very little human and material resources to feed the existing population. So our society doesn't need everyone to be engaged in activities that generate direct economic benefits - at least not everyone needs to be 40 hours a week. At the same time, the entire community is willing to use the surplus material to support everyone, rather than let the surplus value be concentrated in the hands of a few chaebols.

Is it too utopian? There is still a dream, what if...

Web 3 related technologies may be able to provide technical support for Universal Basic Income. @Michael and the puppy ThankYouintroduced the application of Universal Basic Income's mode on Steam . These attempts are still in the experimental stage and will not be expanded here. This long post, thank you for being here.

The road ahead is long, let's go and see.