Rethink Making Money on Social Media
Most of us who have spent much time on social media have an idea as to how money is made on social media, and who makes that money. Obviously, the greatest share goes to the companies that run the platforms. Next in the hierarchy are the power users, those that have built a large following and leverage that popularity into advertising deals. And then most of us are way down at the bottom; happy to use social media without making a dime off.
Should we want more from our experience? Social media can be enjoyed if managed in moderation, but is our potential enjoyment a just reward given the work that we do in building out platforms?
Social media is built on what we contribute to it, but none of those contributions are rewarded. We’ve conditioned ourselves to think of what we post as what is required of us to maintain social engagement online, but those posts are so much more than that. They’re snapshots of our lives and snippets of our creativity, and they’re the work that we do in the name of being connected to others.
Being rewarded for the work we do isn’t a foreign concept to any of us past a certain age; as much as we might like our jobs, none of us turn up to work if we’re not getting paid for our efforts. And yet that is exactly what we do in our lives on social media, even if we’re not considering our efforts as work.
Social media users need to start thinking of themselves as the content creators that they are, and reconsider their relationship with social media. Rather than seeing social media and the content we post there as disposable, we should recognize that it is a collection of content from people around the globe. More than that, advertisers are willing to pay to be a part of this same collection, to get themselves in front of the same eyeballs that you help to draw, only you don’t get any of that money.
Creators should seize the chance to control their own work and earn compensation for what they create. Social media should be about empowering creators and giving individuals a platform to share their work with the world, and that’s hard to do if there’s no incentive to create or share their work. Rewarding creators is about more than creating a fair marketplace; it’s about encouraging the best and brightest to continue asking the content that audiences want to see.
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