What if instead of paid advertisements on social/digital media websites, the authors and artists curated lists of the products they actually like/brought them inspiration/joy; which were affiliate links?
And what if instead of 90% of the revenue generated by the links going to the advertising exchanges; it went back to the artists and creatives?
Like, I don't want to "monetize mah internet presence" but I do want have some mechanism for ensuring the admins/mods/maintainers/contributors can make a safe living.
Which means we gotta figure out a revenue model that doesn't depend on surveillance of media consumers.
@zee reminds me of artists that sign a contract with an instrument manufacturer that they'll play a specific brand of electric guitar and get paid each month for it
@Food Yea! That makes a lot of sense for the "established artist" use-case.
I'm curious what you think about the use case of "Zee likes reading books, so he writes small book reviews. The book reviews have an affiliate link for purchase through a vendor, and the revenues go into the pockets of the Worker/Resident Owned Social Media Service Provider he's made his home."
For this case, the goal isn't so much for the person posting to make a living; and more to help mods/admins/devs get paid.
My gut says there'd be a significantly lower cost-of-acquisition for producers using a "curated affiliate" marketing channel, and I expect it would be harder for cognitive vulnerabilities to be exploited by advertisers?
Could maybe start with small paid-media producers (like folks with paid Itch, SoundCloud, SubStack, Gumroad or Patreon content) as the initial set of affiliates.