As the internet continues to empower individuals to make a living as creators, I'm left to wonder how we can make the creator economy more participatory:
- How can fans share in the success of the creators they love?
- How can creators engage fans outside of further access to the creator and their content?
- How can creators' success be more aligned with community growth?
Here's an answer I've been exploring:
Commoning the content, profiting off of second-order creation.
Consider an indie writer. Making a living as a writer is... difficult. The consistency required to put out content on a regular basis is a huge undertaking.
What if creators could make a living off of what people build on top of their content?
If I write a post and publish it for free, I'm ensuring that I maximize reach... eyeballs are on the content. I don't need to charge for it. The goal is to get eyeballs.
Then, what if I got paid for someone using my content: either as inspiration for a project, quoting it in another post, etc.?
This is similar to how music works: musicians make relatively little off of selling records, but much more on what is built around the music.
What other ways are there to implement this model?