New Hope for The Creator Economy

There’s an entirely new digital economy that has emerged over the years with the advancements in social media and the ability for individuals to become influencers and content creators. With the barrier of entry going way down along with the ability to shoot video on mobile devices and post online, the creator economy was born and has skyrocketed in popularity.

The Creator Economy is made up of over 200 million independent content creators, including social media influencers, bloggers, experts, and community builders of all kinds that are monetizing their audiences through online platforms.

While it’s amazing to see the incredible opportunities available for individuals to connect with their fanbase and showcase their talents online, these opportunities don’t come without challenges.

Challenges for Creators

Podia led a 900+ creator survey and found that creators’ biggest challenge is growing their audience (32.9%). Growing an audience was followed by the challenge of finding enough time for everything, from creating content to editing and posting, and further fan engagement (21.6%). The third largest challenge was creators knowing how to monetize (14.4%). Ultimately, nearly one-third of creators struggle to find and connect with their target audience.

Another challenge Podia references is that, “Creators are at the mercy of social media platform algorithms… the algorithms can change without warning, and social media companies are far from transparent about how they work… updates to the Facebook algorithm over the past few years have led to a decrease in organic reach, meaning fewer followers see creators’ social posts in their news feeds.”

Changing algorithms is becoming an increasingly greater challenge as more social media platforms adopt this approach, de-platform accounts with little to no warning, and demonetize accounts, changing the rules midstream.

New Challenges Bring an Opportunity for New Solutions

All of these challenges have left a gap in the industry. In order to continue doing what they love, creators must connect, grow, and monetize their audience or else it’s back to getting a regular job and putting their passion on the back shelf. This highlights the importance of creators being able to develop a genuine connection with their audience and grow that connection over time, instilling loyalty and incentivizing their audience to stay with them.

“When you connect with your audience on a personal level, they are more likely to trust you and your brand. This trust leads to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, more revenue for your business.” — Pat Flynn, entrepreneur, podcaster, and author of the book SuperFans.

When fans feel connected to a creator, they are more likely to share your content with their own networks, buy your merchandise and attend your events, however there’s not much in it for the fan outside of the intrinsic satisfaction following a genuine desire to share something cool or of value. Also, there isn’t really a way for the creator to know which fans have been the most engaged. The goal shouldn’t even be to just create a few fans or gain some new followers; the goal should be to create raving fans for life.

StarStake to the Rescue

Web3 platform StarStake creates an opportunity for creators to connect with their audience in several ways. As a creator, you can connect directly with your fans, see who your top fans are, add promotions and share rewards with them.

Imagine launching your own line of utility-driven Web3 items that can grant exclusive access and distribute rewards at scale, automatically. Now this isn’t going to be as complex as you might be thinking. You see, StarStake has built a codeless platform that allows you to create all manner of Web3 items loaded with utility, in minutes. You can simply upload images, add text, select from some dropdown menus and adjust some sliders to determine what you want to share with your audience. It’s NFT (non-fungible token) technology taken to their next evolution.

StarStake makes it easy for you to identify what to share with your fans. Once you launch your own sNFT Brand Club (think members club with perks and privileges), you can quickly and easily create a promotion at any time for the holders of your sNFTs. NFTs also function as digital certificates or proof of ownership that allows fans to receive rewards by taking part in promotions and sharing, referring and collecting the creator’s content. This system can help creators by increasing their revenue and reach, but it also benefits the fans who feel a sense of belonging and community within the creator’s fanbase while going one step further and rewarding them for their loyalty with the things they care about.

So far the world has only glimpsed the true potential of NFT technology as little more than glorified pieces of digital art, however NFTs just so happen to be the perfect technology infrastructure that allows the capability of assigning a digital certificate to show proof of ownership, serving as an access pass for exclusive content and containing smart contracts for distribution of rewards to eligible holders. This unlocks many exciting capabilities for creators to engage their communities. Creators are able to directly connect with their fans and see who their top fans are through a variety of metrics. StarStake has developed a powerful FanEngineTM to help creators be able to tell who their biggest fans are and distribute rewards according to their FanScore.

The FanScore is calculated by integrating several factors to determine rewards. The customer score tracks how much money fans have spent, the ownership score tracks what different items fans buy, and the service score tracks how much fans contribute to the overall brand by sharing and referring. The loyalty score is then made up of a combination of the above scores and all these feed into the FanScore.

Creators can then deliver promotions and share rewards with qualifying fans at different levels, thus inviting more fans to move up the fan ladder in order to be part of the next promotions.

Rewards Breakdown

As a creator, you can decide whether you want to offer sponsored rewards, access rewards, or shared rewards on the StarStake platform. Sponsored rewards could be sponsored by you or another brand or company. When you engage an outside sponsor, this creates three distinctive wins — a win for the sponsor to get exposure and access to your audience, it provides value by increasing the financial rewards available to your fans, and it enhances your brand value as the giver of those rewards. All this culminates in enhanced loyalty.

With shared rewards, you can share a percentage of sales with your fans. Say you want to give 25% of merchandise sales for this quarter paid out weekly to all winners in a promotion within your sNFT Brand Club — you can now do that. Imagine how much this could incentivize your fans to share your content and promotional links with their network! As you win, they win.

Providing Exclusive Access

You could also provide Access NFTs as rewards that grant access to a physical or digital product, service, or even additional content. StarStake benefits both the creators and the fans. Traditionally fans have been asked to follow, like, buy, subscribe, share, comment, even ring a bell. Now they are rewarded for their fan behavior.

Fans can even purchase items from the creator from other websites, and they can enter a redemption code to get an AccessNFT as a verifiable certificate that they are the owner of the item they purchased which also factors in these purchases from other sites into their FanScore. This could also apply to digital products such as online courses. You could create an AccessNFT for a certificate that users get at the end of the course with a code they enter to claim their certificate and also claim a reward.

When it comes to rescuing the creator economy, you might be thinking… “StarStake really has thought of everything at this point, haven’t they?” and you might be right… You see, StarStake is developed by creators themselves — dreamers, innovators, a team made up of motivated individuals who want to be free as creators and to empower other creators around the world to be able to live their passion, and empower fans for all their support and effort. It’s time for the creator’s dream to live on. There’s a new wave of hope now with a solid platform to lead the charge, putting power back into the hands of the creator and their legions of fans.