How can we help writers earn meaningful, reliable income?

Open edition NFTs haven’t quite gotten us there, so we have to find a better solution.

We wrote a couple posts on why we think coins may be a better model (part 1 below) — we'd love to hear what you think.

https://paragraph.com/@reidtandy/rethinking-how-writers-get-paid

I've been thinking about this stubborn how-to-get-writers-sustainably-funded problem for a long time, since it pre-dates crypto. It's actually become one of my main intellectual interests over the years.

Without getting too far into the weeds, here are a few thoughts:

What if Paragraph were to zoom out and focus more on the social layer from a systems perspective -- i.e., think of context, curation, and conversation as the primary paths to value creation, rather than individual writers? 

Could Paragraph help writers collectively build thriving creative scenes with network effects accruing to the contributors -- writers, editors, curators, preservers, and readers?

One of the things that drew me to Paragraph in the first place was the quote-highlight feature, for example. Could Paragraph give contributors places to preserve quotes and respond to them in ways that might help draw others into an ongoing conversation around the work? Maybe in a mini-app?

For reference, I wrote about what I mean by "from a systems perspective" in this piece. 

(Look at that beautiful preview pane! Great design work, @paragraph!)

Where writers share, grow, and get paid — one post at a time.

Writer, senior editor, music nerd, GenX eldergoth, monastery-bootstrapper. https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson https://tinyurl.com/Black-Stone-Wordsmith

For reference, I wrote about what I mean by "from a systems perspective" in this piece. 

(Look at that beautiful preview pane! Great design work, @paragraph!)

https://paragraph.com/@danicaswanson/quality-writing-is-systemic

Warpcast

I also think, however, that charging for reading is a tough sell. I think it's likely to push ppl to be very picky about what they read. Could reduce reach.

Monetizing writing in other ways seems like a more inclusive path, but it puts a lot of extra burden on writers.

Been talking with more ppl about "club goods" for writers. Building up networks that have resources available to help fund writers. This opens the door to more philanthropic support without the direct weight of charging per reader.

Imagine if @paragraph had a fund that ppl could donate to that paid out rewards to writers, much like Warpcast rewards is working? 

And there could be different funds if ppl wanted to donate to writers in a specific category. Then it would serve as a signal for where the greatest demand is for writers!

helping build farcaster | surfing @ venice, ca | eating @ gjusta / gjelina | “lucky me, lucky mud”

Yes! Many thoughts. Also will tag @danicaswanson and @trigs 

But in general, we need a better way to accrue value to high intensity work. Eg, a newsletter might take me 20 hours to research and 10-20 hours to write. 

Having a collect button for a few cents, only to have the post lost in the chaos steam, is not the way. 

We also need a way for referential rewards. Eg, someone quotes someone else, value should flow back to the original creator. 

I’ve also heard people suggest pay as you read. Eg maybe it costs $5 to read the whole article, but the payments happen in micro, paragraph by paragraph, automatically. 

Lots of options, but the key is to compensate the deep thinkers, who currently have to rely on subscription models (which are difficult to manage and time consuming)

I also want to highlight this concept of "club goods" from @trigs, and a comment in the same thread by @wanderloots.eth that brings to mind the possibilities for the quote-highlight feature: 

"We also need a way for referential rewards. Eg, someone quotes someone else, value should flow back to the original creator."

/cal 

Photographer, Artist, Web3 Educator, IP Lawyer, Patent Agent, Explorer 📸⛰️✨ 

 Building /flowcast with /mindfulness 🌊

https://wanderloots.com/links

I also want to highlight this concept of "club goods" from @trigs, and a comment in the same thread by @wanderloots.eth that brings to mind the possibilities for the quote-highlight feature: 

"We also need a way for referential rewards. Eg, someone quotes someone else, value should flow back to the original creator."

https://warpcast.com/trigs/0xb79f4393
https://warpcast.com/wanderloots.eth/0xb83d8f34

A magazine filled with (onchain) poetry. A fund to support poets.

A teller / of stories, that is me. / Curious to learn new ways to see. / Proud dad of two. Now, what / about you? | Builds https://paragraph.xyz/@trpplffct

I keep returning to the club goods idea too. Kudos to you for being "in the arena, trying things" in earnest, and for approaching the grant funding thoughtfully.

Sounds like you've taken on a fair bit of coordination work. Too often it falls to already-overextended writers to take on additional labor on top of their creative work: crowdfunding campaigns, design, marketing, audience-building, coordination for grants, etc. 

I suspect most individual writers will not find that to be sustainable long-term. Collectives can share workloads, but of course they require significant coordination efforts too. 

I also wonder about the long-term sustainability of degen.

Great point about the limits inherent in the way artists tend to use their earnings to support arts communities. Gift economics can work well in circles with built-in reciprocity. But as long as our default systems continue to extract the lion's share of value and return very little back to the value-creators themselves, it will be an uphill battle.

That was indeed an interesting conversation, and I like the club goods idea. This is more or less why I have started my @trpplffct poetry grant fund. It's still a bit low profile, and I am exploring ways to make it work, but the idea is that funds are raised through (Degen) tips and donations, and distributed through small grants and onchain collecting. It is small, but it works. I have raised enough to run it for a bit over a year now, doing a one-poet grant and a collection budget per month. 
Now it's a one-person project, but if something like that can be done by a collective...
What I have been trying to solve for, is the challenge I found in 'crypto art' circles that artists are very supportive of eachother, and often pump back their earnings back into the community, but mostly these earnings come from other artists doing the same. It's a limited amount of value that is pumped around, in stead of a steady stream that comes from outside to fund writing.