Mick’s Letter — How to monetize on COS.TV?
Creating a diversity of monetization methodologies for our creative community has always been a core focus of COS.TV and Contentos.
Dear COSers,
“Making every act of creating meaningful” is at the heart of COS.TV’s product design thinking. Since the launch of current COS.TV minimum viable product (MVP), the number of organic users has reached 250,000 daily active users, and the Android App has been installed more than 240,000 times. These results show that COS.TV has a strong creative community and that there is a true market demand for our services.
In today’s content industry, these are three main monetization strategies:
- Platform advertising revenue distribution.
An example of this would be YouTube’s Partnership Program. As long as creators meet YouTube’s requirements, AdSense can be turned on and revenue sharing can be done through YouTube’s built-in video ads. The advantage of this is that creators only need to concentrate on creating high-quality content to attract viewers, and they can make revenue. However, the disadvantage of this is that the platform controls the distribution of income, restricts the content of the channel that does not meet the platform’s needs, and the long-term efforts of the creators can disappear overnight. The recent blocking of blockchain content channels on YouTube is the best example to highlight this issue. Furthermore, income withdrawal thresholds are very high, and the total income of a creator must reach at least 100 US dollars to apply for the withdrawal, and it takes 21 working days to receive. YouTube is sitting on a lot of Creators’ earnings.
2. Fan donations and sponsorship.
Services such as gifting on live broadcast platforms and fan subscription (e.g. Patreon), request users to contribute to creators through the platform, and the platform charges a percentage as middlemen operating fees.
Advantages — fans who contributed provided much stronger support for creators than non-paying ordinary viewers, accounting for why YouTube is also attempting a similar paying subscription model in providing a membership program. However, different subscription systems in the market also mean a variety of different confusing T&Cs, resulting in a higher barrier of entry for common fans (e.g. differing operating fee charges, withdrawal conditions, payment only by credit card).
3. Business placement promotions.
Influencers with a strong following can seek advertising endorsements, either on their own or through MCN service providers, and run the promotions in their content. Coordinating this by influencers themselves assures that bulk of the revenue goes directly to them, but at the cost of laborious direct communication between advertisers and themselves. On the other hand, working with MCN service providers will simplify these communications, but at potential risk of disputes (e.g. uneven income distribution, unclear rights, and interests).
Over the past seven months, COS.TV has provided a “Creator Financial Service Model” that is optimized by using blockchain technology to assist content creators and their communities from all over the world to earn revenue.
- Mainnet content ecosystem rewards.
Within the first seven days of their newly uploaded videos, content creators will receive VEST as an incentive when they receive “Likes” from their viewers. Viewers who comment below each video will also receive VEST from the “Likes” they generated.
Holding VEST has many benefits. The more VEST one holds, the more power one has in supporting quality content creators. VEST holders can also participate in voting for Block Producers to earn returns. This system allows every participant in the COS.TV ecosystem to continuously benefit.
2. Gifting Vote.
Since its launch in December 2019, more than 100,000 gift tickets have been purchased by the community using COS every week and gifted to support creators as donations.
We understand that each viewer can be interested in multiple contents and are willing to support them, however, with users over-subscribing to too many channels will eventually lead to misleading data. Hence, on COS.TV, Gifting Vote was introduced to filter out the higher quality content. On top of the returns that Content Creators receive from Gifting Vote, these videos are tagged as “Effective Quality Content” and traffic will be directed to them, aiding Content Creators to grow their followers and increase their content views.
Recently in April, COS.TV launched its long-awaited advertising system. This system differs from that of other platforms, allowing high-quality videos to get higher traffic through the support of users, and gives 60% of the revenue from Pre-Roll Advertisements directly to the creators. The design of this split system embodies our focus of giving priority to “community value”.
We communicate with the global creative community on a weekly basis to understand the market’s diverse needs. Based on these conversations, we have come up with these follow-up plans:
- Token repurchase plan. 60% of the advertising revenue will go directly to creators. The remaining 40% will be utilized in part of a carefully planned COS token repurchase plan based on the market environment and Contentos development, and will be used to increase the returns of users holding VEST and COS token value.
- Lower the withdrawal threshold. The withdrawal threshold will be lowered to US $10, and withdrawal times can be shortened by paying with a stable currency.
- This advertising system also welcomes fiat payments.
- VEST loan service. We are developing a VEST lending service to provide greater flexibility for the “autonomous management” of the creative community so that new creators have more opportunities to increase their exposure in the early stages.
- Partnership Program decision-making power. To challenge the existing way of how centralized platforms construct their Partnership Programs, we plan to open the Partnership Program agreement for community voices. The community will have a say as they participate in voting during the development process, so that creators and the community can better understand the process of platform revenue operation. We hope to grow with the COS.TV community and create greater value for them.
COS.TV also understands the importance of creators establishing a “personal brand” and initiatives are in place to assist these content creators in converting their popularity into more influence and potentially, profit.
A new introduction to COS.TV — Creators personalized emoji package. “Voepa”, a popular Brazilian creator on COS.TV, recently launched an exclusive emoji package to better engage with his viewers. Fans can get his exclusive emoji pack by paying COS, and react more enthusiastically on video comments. The design of the emoji pack also helps creators to screen out core fans and optimize their fan operations.
(Please refer to https://COS.TV/videos/play/1588286581734156870)
This is just the beginning. We are working on a lot more interesting models focused on improving interactions between creators and core fans, and we plan to implement them in the near future.
- Limited emoji pack.
The NFT smart contract on the Contentos mainnet can limit the amount of virtual props or gifts, and can also turn them into a “transferable and tradable” asset (like ERC721). In addition to its collectible value, core fans can also use these as a show of loyalty and support.
2. Crowdfunding pre-sale.
With detailed instructions on how to create emoji packages, we encourage creators to further engage with their community, from completing a design to raising funds via presale of their creative emoji designs. This concept will give fans a stronger sense of participation and excitement as they receive their emoji packages. (T&Cs will be in place to ensure supporters interest are protected)
3. Exclusive member.
We will allow supporters to unlock exclusive member benefits based on their holding of specific emoticons or virtual props. Creators can create premium content for fan groups holding these virtual assets, allow more interaction with core fans, and provide the creators with more diverse ways of monetizing, restricted to their innovation.
Last but not least, we are improving the revenue potential of COS.TV by introducing the acceptance of fiat currency.
We are connecting creators, fan communities, and investment communities through blockchain technology, and COS.TV’s rapid and natural global growth at the MVP stage confirms the market’s desire for a newer and more beneficial content ecosystem. In addition to using the global advertising systems AdSense and Facebook Audience Network, the fiat currency revenue models include Gift Vote purchases and creator emojis on the COS.TV platform, which can be purchased via fiat currency.
All these will further improve $COS tokenomics, use cases, and ecosystem, which will ultimately increase the long-term value of the $COS.
Your Sincerely,
Mick, Co-founder of Contentos
2020/5/15
