Monday, July 20th, 2020
As of today, we are now 11,000 users strong, but that's still less than 1% the size of Steem (another crypto-based blogging platform), and let's not even try to compare the size of read.cash to that of Reddit or Twitter.
Of course that doesn't mean we can't one day compete with those communities, but in order to even have a chance to grow to those levels, we need to stop thinking small and start thinking big.
If you are on this site squabbling about your daily points and a few cents worth of BCH, you're thinking way too small. Stop focusing on your daily fund payout and start focusing on building your brand and building this platform all at the same time.
Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine a day in the hopefully not too distant future where read.cash has as many users as Reddit. According to emarketer.com, Reddit is projected to earn over $250 million in net ad revenues in the year 2021. That's net of money spent on traffic acquisition costs. But you also have to take into account that Reddit has nearly 500 million monthly active users, and 11 million daily active users, though I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of those people are simply going to the site to consume content and not to create it.
I don't know about you, but I've never earned a dime from Reddit. And if I was given a choice between using a version of Reddit that doesn't pay me and one that does, even if it's a small amount, I'd definitely choose the latter. Now what if you happen to be a popular content creator? Let's say $100M of that $250M gets put into a fund that is paid out to users based on their participation on the site much like the read.cash fund. Some quick back of the napkin math tells me it could be very possible that some of the more popular users could easily make tens of thousands of dollars a year, if not more, just for writing short articles like this. And I'm not even taking into account the fact that read.cash makes it easy for you to get direct sponsors on the site where you take in 90% and read.cash gets 10%.
You could even have specific community funds. Imagine if the read.cash TV & Film community became a hot place to go for film lovers to see what everyone's watching. Why wouldn't movie studios pay to place ads on the articles posted to that community, a significant portion of which can be paid back to the members.
Sure there are people today who successfully monetize their Instagram and YouTube accounts. But those people are few and far between, and I'm guessing that 99.999% of users don't earn a dime. Most of the profits earned by those sites go to pay their employees, their overhead, their shareholders. But because read.cash is built on Bitcoin Cash, it allows for a new business model where every user can be a profit participant on the platform. Because we're not just users, we're members.
And this is just the beginning. Because the site is built on Bitcoin Cash, I predict the cheap, fast, and reliable transactions made possible with BCH will allow for new features we haven't even considered yet.
But first we need to grow this community. I believe we have a huge opportunity here to do something that's never been done, but in order to reach such heights we need to start by making the read.cash experience a unique value proposition.
We do this by first creating and curating good content. Stop wasting your time trying to earn a few pennies by spamming articles or writing useless comments. Stop trying to game the system with upvoting rings and getting your account flagged. And if you do see someone that appears to be abusing the system, flag them or use the downvote button because those aren't the kind of people we want dominating the read.cash culture.
I'm sure this article is going to rub some people the wrong way, but in my eyes if you're not adding value, you're taking it away, and if those people outnumber the ones that are contributing by writing thoughtful articles, or reading articles and helping to curate good content, we're never going to reach millions of users.
Speaking of thoughtful articles, the other day I came across this article by @Myt.24 and he said something that I thought perfectly encapsulated what I've been thinking. He wrote:
"So, let's learn the basic way of socializing. 'Coz that's how this platform works."
I think he hit the nail on the head. Who wants to go to a party where everyone is trying to talk just to get their literal 2 cents in? Who wants to attend a party where the only reason people are there is because they hope to make a few pennies for stopping by?
Let's make read.cash a place that people come to because you can find others who share your interests, where people engage with one another like real human beings, where you can get constructive feedback, or encouragement, or make new discoveries, all while making a profit at the same time. But also don't be afraid to spread some of that profit around. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I would love to see people tipping one another left and right for articles they enjoyed, even if it's just a few cents, because it would spread that enthusiasm and excitement of what it's like to earn your first BCH.
Like Myt.24 said, let's learn the basic way of socializing, cuz that's how this platform works. Even though our real world seems to be falling apart all around us, that doesn't mean we can't build a better, global, digital community right here on read.cash. One that is more giving, more thoughtful, and more rewarding.
Thanks for reading.
Nice one