Content is the essence of the Internet and is presented in the different forms that the current iteration of the Internet Web2 supports: text, audio, video, or a mixture of all three. However, the content is hardly a free resource. Content creators are becoming thought leaders, influencers, and a cornerstone of many of the critical services businesses depend on, such as advertising, marketing, and PR management.
The need for content and its fight for independence – embodied by thousands of independent bloggers and artists – has given rise to a huge online economy that trades in talent, often generating sales volumes that many A-list artists would salivate over. to earn. This economy has been dubbed the creator economy: a financial framework that allows independent individuals to earn from their self-expression by feeding the public the kind of content they are willing to pay to consume.
A rising force
The creator economy is a tremendous force: a unique phenomenon, online, that crossed the threshold of the size of the market of 104,000 million dollars at the end of 2021. Given the increasing demand for new content on popular platforms, such as TikTok, which empower independent artists and performers, experts are hesitant to forecast the potential market size of the creator economy in the near future.
The reason for the lack of tangible predictions is that the creator economy is an extremely young phenomenon that began with the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdowns evoked a surge of talent among those confined indoors, leading to a release of creativity that others sharing the lockdown were eager to consume as much-needed entertainment.
Taking into account that micro-business creators are closely related to influencer marketing, whose market is around 13.8 billion dollars, it is possible to understand the prospects that a further expansion of the phenomenon can offer. More importantly, experts believe that the transition to a new technological medium will allow content creators to overwhelm markets and industries with new opportunities to promote products and services.
decentralize talent
More than 50 million creators are fueling their own talent economy, attracting more than $800 million in venture capital. These figures are but a shadow of what they may become later, as new avenues are rapidly opening up.
The development of blockchain technologies has sparked a wide-ranging revolution in financial markets, empowering individuals rather than institutions and channeling ownership of data and funds to their holders. The qualities of the blockchain – immutability, full transparency, and the untrustworthy nature of operations – have permeated many industries, shifting the balance of business orientation from centralized corporate dependency to decentralization. This shift in the basics that govern relationships between transaction participants, facilitated by smart contracts, has not gone unnoticed in the maker economy.
With the decentralized finance and GameFi sectors making their way into their respective industries and turning scores of users away from conventional banking and gaming approaches, it was only a matter of time before influencers and content creators decided to change the paradigm in their operating environments. The content creation model has been forever altered with the addition of blockchain technologies that allow users to incentivize content creators, while creators can actually monetize their talent without having to share profits with centralized hosting platforms. and often unfair.
the metaverse
The development of metaverses – all-digital environments powered by Web3 blockchain and virtual reality – will herald a new era in content creation. Never before has talent had access to such an advanced set of tools to embellish even the bravest ideas at the threshold of the real and digital worlds.
Metaverses allow creators to visualize anything from an opera concert in the void of space against a backdrop of nebulae to the flow of a blog on a desert island in stunning graphic detail. Anything that creativity can imagine can be implemented in the metaverse for the benefit of all parties involved. By relying on the limitless opportunities of the metaverse in its incorporation of virtual reality, content creators will be able to unleash their creativity and let it fly. Such promises of unseen content quality can only be described as honeysuckle to an eager audience of viewers who crave more variety in the types of content consumed and, more importantly, new experiences.
The blockchain foundation of the metaverse offers even more advantages to content creators by allowing them to employ various mechanisms to monetize their content thanks to the versatile nature of internal cryptocurrencies. Users can stake their digital assets on specific creators, encouraging them to post more content of a certain type. Others may pay to access special content, while others may simply reward their favorite creators with donations. The avenues of monetization are numerous, and content creators can always be sure that their talent will be paid and no hosting platform will be able to rob them of their earnings.
Even more lucrative are the prospects for companies in permeating the economy of content creators in the metaverse. Marketing, advertising, and general promotion get a new lease of life with content that can be adapted in endless ways and seamlessly integrated into the channels of select creators. The metaverse offers businesses a whole new frontier for audience outreach and deployment, and creators are the launch pads that can get products and services in front of their followers, for a price.
In digital hindsight
The metaverse is the next iteration of the Internet we know today: a fully user-centric environment that elevates creativity to a new level. However, audiences will not be the only sources of revenue for content creators, as companies are eager to tap into this lucrative niche and the possibilities offered by highly versatile, organic, native ad integrations in VR content.
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The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
