So as you may know monetization on social media traditionally sucks.

Big web2 companies make literally ALL the Money:

While users make virtually NOTHING for it:

So although we can make this a very complex issue, we can actually make it very simple.

I think there 3 main ways in which a creator can make money on social media:

1. Promote somebody else’s product

2. Sell your own products

3. Finance.

So that’s it. Now let’s dig into each one a little bit.

1. Promote somebody else’s product

So this is what most influencers actually do. They get paid for posting a picture on Instagram with Under Armour underwear or whatever and get paid for it.

On web3 social there are some more interesting aproaches. There are some decentralized advertisement protocols, that pay you to RT or share a post on social media. The first one to do this on all of web3 social is Wav3s, now called Zurf Social.

The way this works is, if you are a brand or a company that wants to promote yourself on social, as you usually would on traditional social media, the marketing budget, instead of going to Twitter (now X) or Instagram, it is distributed between the people that share the post you want to promote.

So for example, if you put US$100 on a post and want it to get shared, you pay 10 people with +1000 followers US$10 each to share your post with their accounts.

You reach a lot of people and the creator gets paid for each promotion 💡 Genius.

2. Sell your own products.

So this is probably the main revenue source for creators currently on Lens. +US$300k in collect revenue has been made.

So what do people sell ?

Well, it could be anything, although art & music seem to be the main ones.

Now for us not artistic out there, I think the collect feature can actually be a lot more.

So this brings us to part 3. There’s always something special about #3. The best always comes at the end (Drum roll)

3. Finance.

What the Heck does “Finance” mean. Or “Social finance”. I’ve seen Social Finance concept be used in all sorts of ways, it almost sounds like something it isn’t.

So hear me out…selling a digital art piece for $1 is cool and all you know, but as a creator you are probably not gonna be able to live off that. You need much moar. You need an actual investment from your community of people in order to not only survive, but thrive and make your best art. Be your best self.

This where financing comes in.

If you have built a community, people not only love your work, but LOVE YOU and believe in you, then my friend, you have some Social Capital laying around.

And now, something that was IMPOSSIBLE on web2, where platforms own all of your content, identity and even your followers, you can tap into this social capital.

You can literally ASK your followers for their financial support. You know, likes and comments are nice, but you know whats nicer ? MONEY.

And why the heck would someone give you $$ just like that ? You may ask.

Well, they are not just “giving you $$ like that” my friend. They want something in return. Of course they do, because we ALL do.

And what do these people want ? They want more $$. As simple as that.

So if THEY SEE, you are a talented creator, building a solid fan base of followers, people that like, that share, that BUY your creations, then they see a winner.

Now they can invest in you and expect a return in the future as your audience grows more and more and you sell more and more.

Now. There’s a couple of ways to do this (probably more ways will emerge in the future):

1. Equity

2. Credit

Basic stuff. Even sounds like a college finance class 1.0

Equity means you sell a fraction of your value to your audience, so they own a little piece of you. This means every time you sell, this goes to a shared treasury and the value of the creator should go up.

There’s nothing new about this folks. Every single company in the S&P 500 works like this. Whats the difference now ? It’s a company of 1, it’s you, the creator. And your fans are also your investors. Got it ?

Ok . Credit means you ask for a loan from your followers. Again, just like a revenue making company would go to a bank and ask for a loan, you can do the same.

But you don’t go to the bank honey. You go to the same people that love you and believe in you.

So you ask for loan, in a post, like this:

I was so excited about this that I really wanted to ensure my people they didn’t think this was a scam, so I posted this image to every single one of my lenders:

So yes, there you have it.

Oh yes, and before this ends. The cool thing about it is that this can be done via a smart contract, in a fully transparent and automated way. So I don’t have to pay each one manually, the $can be seen 247 where it is and there can be some safety measures in case the creator just wants to hit and run with the$ 😂 😂

Anyway hope you found this at least a little bit interesting.

If you would like to support this journey, collect this post.

No sorry, no interest rates on this one !

Also don’t forget to follow me on Lens. My name is @nicocapital.lens.