Surely I am not the only one impatient to see the full potential of blockchain technology as it comes to getting rewarded for creating online content like blogs, photography, movies, music and other forms of art like I make. Ever since I understood that blockchain could make it possible for me to directly get funds from people using my content, without having to conform to the algorithms forced upon us by gigantic middlemen like Google, Youtube, Facebook and many others first, I have been thrilled and started growing great expectations.

But after the big Bitcoin Bubble burst mid 2018 I found it harder to share my enthusiasm as loads of people had lost money speculating on this 'holy new technology we call Blockchain' and frankly where getting a bit sick of me spreading my gospel. I couldn't really blame them, so I decided to shut up but I kept believing in the tremendous powers of Blockchain and the wonderful future that lies ahead of us, the content creators.

I started digging into ways of finding hands-on possibilities to prepare for the future. A future in which revenues of the online content I create will flow directly back to me, the creator. A future dominated by fair distribution and rewarding of our own intellectual property.

I started this blog on the Blockchain using the blockchain powered platform Steemit. documenting the road I took to realizing my dream of being able to publish and sell my content directly to the people that like and benefit from it, no matter where they are on earth or what they Googled for.

STEP 1:

Browse on the Blockchain I won't lie, using my referral link to install BRAVE would make me a very happy man. This a very fundamental part of what the new internet will be like. We share and grant each other favors instead of giving our content and our money away for free to the middlemen.
According to the New York times we each spend some 23 dollars every months to provide bandwidth for advertisement companies to overcrowd our screens with adds and slowing down browser performance. BRAVE stops this and gives you the possibility to pay a monthly fee that will be shared equally over the websites you visit and even an option to tip creators directly if you want. A much fairer alternative to the way we do it now, but also an alternative that demands a change of mindset.

For now, we are the product. The way we browse determines which information we get to see and which adds pop-up on our screens. This seems to be free of charge, but the price we pay is actually very high and much too elaborate to talk about in this post, so I will save it for another time.

LETS TALK ABOUT BRAVE

Created by no other than Brendan Eich the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla Firefox this webbrowser keeps out the current ways the internet makes money of you browsing the internet by blocking it's adds and trackers and adds to that a neat new future: The possibility to web-monetize your content using his Basic Attention Token This is the revolutionary part. By integrating code in your Youtube Channel or your personal website or weblog users using BRAVE browser wil get you paid every time they visit your website.

Another system providing the same possibilities is COIL allowing you to get paid for people visiting your Youtube Channel and allowing you to tip creators for their content.

STEP 2

Be Eco-Friendly As Blockchain based search engines like Nebulas are still in the making and we are trying to create a better world after all we can start by using Ecosia as our preferred search engine. Profit made by the Ecosia search engine is used to plant trees where they are needed the most.

STEP 3:

Ditch Facebook and get Steemit
No, I would not really recommend this yet. Although I really love Steemit it is a far cry from being perfect and still very much in it's infancy, but the potentials are extraordinary. Imagine you would get paid for every like you got on your Facebook account. Well Steemit does just that using Steem coins. Every time someone upvotes your post you get paid in Steem. You can use this Steem to upvote other content or cash out in BTC and then any FIAT currency you like. The idea is that eventually advertisers will pay you every time one of their adds appears next to your content which is completely different from how it works now where the middlemen like i.e. Youtube are paid by advertisers to place an add next to content they choose and take a part of the revenue from, leaving the content-makers with no control what so ever.

STEP 4

D-Tube also runs on the Steemit blockchain and is the Blockchain equivalent to Youtube allowing the same features as Steemit blog you can upvote video's and by doing so directly pay the creator for his or her work using the cryptocurrency called Steem. I agree if you would say that D-Tube still has a long way to go in development, but the fundamentals are definitely here just waiting to be put to use.

STEP 5

Protect your image rightsAlthough the practical uses of the Kodak Coin are not yet operational the basic idea is quite exciting: Implementing Blockchain metadata into your photographs so that if an enduser publishes it anywhere on the internet, you get direct rewards as the embedded blockchain and the smart-contracts register the publication and pay you for it automatically. Leading to the end of copyright infringement and a fairer compensation for the person making the picture.

CONCLUSION:

The future of web-monetization looks really bright. Blockchain will enable content creators to benefit more from their hard labor as they do now because of a fairer, more transparent and direct transfer of funds between the end-user and the creator. This new way of using the internet needs a mind shift though. As it is now the internet works because we all use it in approximately the same way, this is what should happen to the new internet as well! So install BRAVE, get blogging on STEEMIT, upload your video's on D-TUBE and Protect your image rights with KODAK ONE from now on so we can start to make the change.

That's it. You're blockchain-compatible, eco-friendly web monetized platform is all set, the only thing left to do is create good content and let it grow together with your revenues. Good luck! Cheers!

Alexander Koning - Dutch Filmmaker and Visual Artist exploring ways to implement blockchain into his art practice.