Campground: A New Vision For Decentralised Creator Economy
Campground is a blockchain platform and marketplace that allows creators to build, share and sell image-based, audio and video content in the form of NFTs that can then be traded via its peer-to-peer marketplace. With the addition of web sites and documents as new content categories rolling out in the coming months, Campground is aiming to make it possible for creators to publish and sell content ranging from single images or music tracks to complete membership sites or multi-module e-courses.
Campground’s promise: creators keep 95 percent of the revenue earned from the sale of their content and the right to royalties from secondary marketplace sales. Compare that to the norms currently at play in the creator economy, where you’re lucky to receive 50 percent of ad revenues generated from your content on TikTok and about $18 for every thousand views on YouTube.
A recipient of a grant from the NEAR Foundation, Campground conducted a beta test this spring with over 300 creators building out “Trails,” the platform’s catchall word for the variety of multimedia content it allows users to produce. Following Campground’s official beta launch, NEARWEEK decided to catch up with Campground’s Co-Founder and CEO Kody Amburgey to learn more about the startup’s plans to fundamentally change the way creators produce and monetize content.
The existing creator economy and the need for change
While taking time off after building his first venture-backed startup, Amburgey was ready to begin exploring ideas for his next company. A crypto enthusiast since 2016, he knew wanted his next project to be in the Web3 blockchain space. At the same time, he was intrigued by the creator economy. When he started looking more deeply into the current state of the landscape, he quickly saw glaring problems — and a massive opportunity for disruption:
“During the first year of the pandemic, you saw total hours watched on YouTube go up 96 percent, and at the same time, creator ad revenue fell 33 percent. You have content demand double, while the creators of that content actually earned a third less. There’s something dramatically flawed here, and in Web3 blockchain technology can help solve it”-Amburgey
Being appalled by the current state of affairs of the creator economy, Amburguey was inspired to find a solution through the implementation of blockchain technology. According to him, Web3 allows to create fairer monetization structures that put creators and their content on the first place.
For YouTube creators generating 1 million views per month, average monthly revenue can range from hundreds of dollars on the low end on up to $7,000, according to this analysis from Vlogger. While earning four figures a month from producing videos is certainly nothing to scoff at and might provide a nice supplemental revenue stream, even average revenues on the high end are not reliably robust enough to adequately cover a creator’s time, production, marketing and team costs, let alone leave enough profit for living expenses.
Amburgey puts it like this: “You could have content that’s getting a million views per month and you’re making beneath the poverty line in terms of your wage.”
But what if a small portion of those one million viewers, followers or subscribers was willing to pay even a minimal amount, kind of like a tip, to support the creator’s content? Ambrugey believes they’ll be more than willing — and for good reason: it’s a premise already proven out by membership platform Patreon, where creators sell subscriptions to fans in exchange for exclusive content and special perks. Along similar lines, Meta is currently testing various mechanisms that allow creators to monetize their content through badges, subscriptions and paid events.
At a time when Web2 platforms are increasingly experimenting with new methods of monetization for creators, Web3 enthusiasts like Amburgey say they aren’t going far enough.
Campground’s vision for the future of the creator economy
By leveraging blockchain technology, Amburgey and his team are working to extend and decentralize the fan-supported content model popularized by Patreon, add true content ownership into the mix, and enable new ways to generate revenue from content.
“To put it in perspective, think about that 1 million monthly video views on YouTube paying out $2,000 to $3,000 in ad revenue. If just 5 percent of a million followers go ahead and purchase your $10 Trail access and unlock your exclusive content, you just made $500K, right? So the earnings potential is dramatically enhanced just by selling premium content in a peer-to-peer setting on the blockchain to your most loyal fans.”-Amburgey
The benefits do not stop there. Leveraging blockchain technology not only allows for the scenario laid out above, but also creates new opportunities for revenue generation:
“This is a technological shift that physically changes the way in which humans can behave, and I think the collectability aspect is really important.” -Amburgey
While the explosion in popularity of NFTs over the last two years has shown just how eager consumers are to engage in the creation, buying and trading of blockchain-based collectibles, Campground is out to prove that this human instinct to collect and trade non-fungible tokens signals massive opportunity for the creator economy. As Amburgey explains:
“A Patreon subscription, for example, is not liquid. It’s not collectible. You’re basically lighting that capital on fire, right? You’re paying like $10 a month, and then it’s gone. But if I’m purchasing an NFT that allows me to unlock and access something, I’m actually getting a physical, probably scarce asset that can have real secondary market value.”
For anyone who’s ever created and sold or purchased a high-ticket online course or program, the concept is nigh on revolutionary. Imagine being able to resell a course on the secondary market after completion and regain some of your invested capital. From a creator’s standpoint, imagine continuing to receive royalties on the sale of a course you created years ago as it changes hands and becomes the property of a new user.
Thus far, Campground’s approach has been intriguing enough to creators to attract top talent, including Marc E. Bassy, double-platinum recording artist with over 4.1 million monthly Spotify listeners. Bassy is launching exclusive Trails content allowing fan-owners to have a first-person perspective into his music writing process, release parties, audio meetups and what it’s like to play a sold-out festival.
Another early adopter is Gentleman’s Creative, a digital fashion collective led by men’s fashion influencers Adam Gonon and Hunter Vought. For fans, they created an exclusive lookbook on Campground featuring everything you need to look stylish and stay comfortable on hot summer days in the city, at the beach and around your hometown.
Also using the platform is Carlos Roberto, a men’s lifestyle creator and founder of men’s grooming brand Chaptr. Coming soon to Campground is Roberto’s exclusive Trail, the Modern Man Quintessential Hair Guide.
As content backed by NFTs, each Trail will be available for purchase by the creators’ fans, who can hold them or resell them in the future via Campground’s marketplace or another market, including Mintbase or Paras.
Amburgey and his team were excited to build on NEAR, thanks not only to grant funding, but also the protocol’s commitment to mass adoption, reflected in its relatively easy onboarding thanks to email compatible wallet creation with human readable names. NEAR’s Nightshade sharding technology was also a draw for the Campground team.
“I think it’s best in class, in theory, they’re an infinitely scalable stake chain, really one of only a handful of people in the world who are actually executing on sharding technology as opposed to creating these parachains.”
The Campground value proposition and core details
Fiat capability
In order to more seamlessly onboard users, the Campground team has integrated fiat payment features into its platform. Initially, creators join by connecting a NEAR wallet, but they can subsequently transact and receive payment in fiat currency using patent-pending technology that sits in between the peer-to-peer off-chain transaction and the on-chain smart contract.
Creator-powered pricing
Creators determine the pricing in NEAR or U.S. dollars and set the available quantities for their content. This allows for flexibility and customization around the release and sale of their content based on their unique needs.
YouTube integration
Creators who have already published videos on YouTube can seamlessly embed them on Campground, making it easy to experiment with pre-existing content on the platform.
Audio spaces
Campground’s audio spaces make it possible for communities to grow around a creators’ content. Think of it like receiving access to an exclusive Twitter Spaces-style audio hangout session once you’ve purchased a favorite creator’s NFT-backed content.
Coming soon
To further expand options for its creators, Campground is working to add publishing capabilities for long-form content, PDFs and web sites soon.
To connect with Campground and stay up on their latest news and developments, you can follow Campground on Twitter, join the Campground Discord, follow Campground on Instagram
About NEAR Protocol
NEAR is a sharded, proof-of-stake, layer one blockchain that is built for usability and scalability. NEAR combines the power of both PoS and sharding in a technology called Nightshade, making the chain infinitely scalable without compromising security and decentralization.
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Written by Lorraine Sanders
