Narrative is Changing How You Get Paid for Your Content
When the blogging craze hit back in 2005, I was ready to embrace it. The plan was simple: First, I’d start a blog, build a big readership, and eventually write a book or two that publishers would be excited to get on board with because of my social sway. 13 years later, that plan hasn’t exactly happened — my blog readers became my Facebook friends, and then actual friends. I hired a cool woman to work on marketing for me, and then ended up marrying her. Not exactly a sustainable marketing plan!
Though I’ve never really given up the dream of blogging for a living, I moved on to become a graphic designer, then a web designer, and finally the owner of two international design firms. My focus hasn’t exactly been on building my readership and platform, mainly because the process to make money from a blog isn’t that easy. But here’s the sad thing, while I could have been building my platform, I was investing in a platform that wasn’t rewarding me at all — Faceboook.
Since 2009, I’ve posted 3279 statuses with 18,000 likes, 400 shares and 15,000 comments. For all of this effort, the platform has generated zero dollars in return for my content.
I’ve always wanted to move platforms with my more valuable writing content, but I’ve never had found a platform that really fit the bill. In fact, I created a criteria for what I was actually looking for in a new platform:
- Does the platform have practical application and tools for my creativity?
- Does the platform have value, worth and a real marketable product?
- Does the platform have a growing audience of creators and consumers?
These rules attracted me to Narrative, as well as the amazing design and user experience, but what kept me interested in the project and investing in it long-term, was the concept — the concept is brilliant.
Narrative is the first content network that gives members autonomy and rewards them for their content.
It Started on the Internet
In the mid-90s, Ted O’Neill knew that something crazy was happening with the internet. Somewhere between the aggravating sound of dial-up technology and over-enthusiastic cries of the dot-com geeks, signs were pointing to unprecedented growth in the technology industry. So Ted started his own message board software that rapidly gained popularity and became a major telecom company in 1998.
“Honestly, before that I started Social Strata, I was doing financial services, But when I was a kid, computers weren’t really even a thing. I mean the internet just got going really wild in the mid-90s. So for me, it was kind of like I never really saw the potential, until the internet really started taking off.” O’Neill reminisced.
“It really wasn’t until the advent of the internet that the light bulb went off in my head and I said, ‘wow this is really amazing you can really see how people can be connected with this technology…’ and that’s how it went from there.”
After the success of Ted’s company, Social Strata, Ted started to envision a place where users would be free to create content and reap the rewards, but the technology just hadn’t caught up yet. How could he compete with the social media giants who ruled the industry? It wasn’t until years later when crypto happened, that Ted saw a way to move forward.
“When I really really started looking a lot more closely at crypto, I’d had this idea of what narrative could be for quite a long time in terms of the model. It always seemed like kind of a fantasy to me in terms of how do you give people the power of the community and how do you actually give them the revenue? We didn’t have any revenue. We had that chicken and egg problem.”
“To me, it was always kind of like this cool idea, but honestly it’s probably never gonna happen. So once crypto started taking off, and you started seeing all the blockchain projects, that’s when the light bulb went off again. It’s been like wow, we take this idea, this autonomous community and marry it with blockchain and crypto. This would actually work and this model can actually become a real thing.”
With all the buzz and hype of crypto, all of the investment possibilities and news about coins mooning and people suddenly buying Lamborghinis, Ted was onto something that was entirely different- an idea that if executed correctly could change the content landscape.
“Crypto was really the only way Narrative could work, to be honest with you. Because you can’t compete with a Facebook or any existing social network that already has the advertising revenue and the infrastructure in place in the early days. With crypto, you can sort of seed revenue in the community, until it can sort of sustain itself.”
A Content Utopia is Born
In October 2017, Ted and his team released the first inklings of Narrative, a short synopsis of what Narrative would be and how it would change the content economy- the small Medium article gained a little traction, but early on, Narrative experienced some hiccups.
First, Narrative made a huge switch from the Etherium network to the NEO network and started to require KYCs for those showing interest in grabbing tokens during ICO phase. However, due to a human error, KYCs were not collected for a full day and a statement had to be released that some KYCs would need to be recollected.
Regardless, Narrative passed a rigorous token sale security audit by Red4Sec, and the ICO went on to raise over 5.7 million in pre-sales alone.
By the time the public sale was over, 31 million out of 50 million coins were sold, and Narrative was successfully funded.
Ted’s simple explanations and excellent investment into a solid brand were exponentially helpful in driving the project forward.
“At its simplest, Narrative is an autonomous content network — autonomous for the users, that is. So we’re trying to make sure that we have a network where the users are fully governing the system, there is no middleman, the users make all the rules and ultimately, since they’re the ones creating the content and contributing — making all the value in the system; they’re the ones who should be recognizing all the revenue in the system as well.”
Ted corrected himself, “I guess technically we’re sort of a middleman because we’re creating the software, but we’re trying to get out of the way as much as possible. We don’t want to set the rules, we want people to elect their own leaders, and adjust the rules of the road as we go along too. We’re going to create the Constitution and the initial Terms of Service, but ultimately, none of us really know where this is gonna go and we would love to sort of see over the next few years what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense.”
Being ruled by end users is revolutionary on content platforms — It’s a risk because you never know exactly where the platform is going to be taken by users, but it’s a risk that successful companies like Reddit partially adhere to.
“Having the users in charge is cool, but it’s also scary sometimes too… no one’s really ever done this before, you know, really putting the people completely in charge. I think we all have hopeful expectations, but we’re rolling a dice a little bit too and we’re hoping for the best.”
As Narrative pushed through the ICO and into their roadmap, it became increasingly clear to me that the team was serious, dedicated, and being driven by great leadership to create a functioning platform that would change things. The product quickly found a market and started to build a community with people who were ready for a solution.
How Does it Really Work Though?
As a writer, I tend to over-embellish things, and that’s why I didn’t just post this article as an interview- I really wanted to dive into the story behind Narrative. Painters don’t just apply one brushstroke — that would be boring. Instead, multiple brush strokes make up this entire picture of the people, the project and now the inner workings, or the process. I digress, it’s really more simple.
Content creators gain 60% revenue, while Narrative, the organization makes 15%, and niche owners: 10%.
If you’re a content creator, then you can publish your content to any number of niches and get paid for it. If you’re interested in growing a community of people and profiting from their content, you can buy a niche— for example I own the Crossfit niche and anyone posting articles fitness in that category, will get rewarded, as well generate rewards for me in the form of a nice monthly payment.
These payments are determined by Narrative calculating all content that had activity in the month, with activity being defined as comments and up or down votes. User reputation impacts each assessed activity. Each content item is given a score for the month based on the activity in that month and once all eligible content has been scored for the month, the content is ranked and paid out.
What’s awesome about this structure, is that it isn’t exclusively a crypto currency platform. You don’t need to know anything about crypto to get involved — You can get paid directly in cash or in crypto currency!
Enough already, how do I get involved?
Narrative is currently working on their beta release, but their alpha version is live and you can currently purchase niches! Check out their site below and sign up for their waiting list to get access to niches as well as the forums and interactive community!
