Content creators have been calling for significant industry changes in recent years, but their calls have long gone unanswered, with various policies going completely against requested, positive changes.
In order to build the best possible live streaming platform for creators and viewers, those at the centre of its operations must understand the industry, creators and the audience. Put simply, a creator live streaming platform must be designed by creators themselves.
Last year saw a lot of industry drama that warrants no further introduction. During this time, we were already some way into the development of Kick as we had predicted such announcements and knew that nothing would change for the better any time soon.
We knew that we had to act to drive positive industry change as requested by more than deserving content creators.
In September, the world’s largest online streaming platform announced plans to ban online casino content viewed by millions and to dramatically reduce creator earnings, directly affecting their livelihoods. I think this perfectly showcases the disconnect between a largely unchallenged monopoly and those responsible for the platform’s success over the past decade.
There is a fine line between excessive and necessary moderation, and it is something that we might not get right immediately but will endeavour to refine as time goes on. That being said, I must reiterate that we have our own moderation measures at Kick and prohibit any illegal content.
Further information is available here in our community guidelines section of the site, but it is something we constantly monitor and develop. For real-time updates on such changes and exciting community updates, do follow the official Kick Twitter and for those on Discord, the official Kick Discord server.
In my last post, I spoke about the importance of putting creators first, and it was great to see the positive reception this received from the community, so I thank you all for your support! In the blog, I highlighted Kick’s 95–5 revenue split model and the fallacy that in order to survive, such platforms must take overly excessive amounts directly from creators.
A recent Kick post illustrated how the 95–5 split translates to real creator earnings, and it was again great to see the positive community response especially from creators themselves responding to both my prior Medium post and Kick’s tweet, so for this let me say that we hear you, we understand you and we thank you.
Talking of the necessity in understanding the needs of these creators, we immediately understood the financial importance and freedom of allowing same-day pay-out options for creators instead of the standard monthly industry cheque which has been the industry norm since its inception.
Some of you may have seen my recent chat with Big E, but for those who haven’t, you can watch clips from the conversation here. It was important to clear up some misconceptions out there and overall fake news, so it was again good to set the record straight on some key things and highlight continued positive changes happening every day over at Kick, all designed to make our product the best in the industry, putting creators first.
When I spoke with Big E, I again addressed the misconception that platforms need to take large percentages of creator money to survive — This simply isn’t true, and we are proving this over at Kick with our unique business model.
We saw profit in Q1 of this year, an incredible feat made possible by the amazing support of our fans and hard work and dedication of our creator family.
58 million people visited our website in March alone, and we expect this number to continue increasing rapidly. As an example, around 30 million people visited the site in February, so we are roughly doubling visitor numbers every month at our current rate!
Strategic partnerships are vital to such success, but the sustainable growth roadmap is a long one. Behind the scenes, the team is always working hard to ensure positive, sustainable growth while maintaining our 95/5 revenue model, meaning that as we grow, so too do the creators responsible for our success.
Exciting new developments are on the way, so stay tuned for updates regarding these including some pretty big new creators joining the platform in the near future…
Catch you all on my next Saturday stream :)
Ed.
