How content creators could get paid for their work.

In a perfect world without inefficiencies, a content creator should get paid for their work directly from the person consuming:

• You watch my video –> You pay me a fraction of a cent.
• You read my article –> You pay me a fraction of a cent.

Pretty simple!

However there’s many limitations to this:

Our payment systems can’t do fractions-of-a-cent transactions efficiently. Sending $0.01 would cost you at least $0.30.  That’s 30X the cost of the transaction itself!

People also don’t wanna click “pay” for every vid/article consumed.

Basically the answer I can see is crypto.

With BTC you can send one-hundred-millionth of a BitCoin (0.00000001 BTC).

The transaction fees will eventually be so small they’ll essentially be “free.”

I sent a test BitCoin Cash transaction and the fee was 0.000019 BCH, or $0.0043.

That means I can send someone 1 Cent USD and the transaction fee wouldn’t even dent the transaction.

Presumably as all these networks become better, faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous, we’ll be able to see systems where creators get directly paid for their content.

I envision a browser setting that allows you to “Tip The Internet $5 Every Month.”

…it would tally up the content you liked then distribute that $5 to creators:

• $0.03 to Neville
• $0.45 to Mr. Breast
• $0.12 to Green Day
• $0.04 to The New York Times
• $0.32 to The Joe Rogan Podcast

You could directly support your fav content and barely break a sweat on your budget!

You would be sending maybe fractions of a cent to some creators, but if they make millions of views it could really add up.

I don’t think this is the end-all answer, but it’ll be a new revenue stream for creators in the coming years!

End rant 🙂