Running a photography business, or any business where you are an independent or solo worker has challenges and has a couple of vital necessities.
One of those I'd argue is recurring revenue.
If you have recurring revenue coming into your business it makes life infinitely easier.
Without it everything hurts.
It becomes difficult to move forward with any consistency and it leaves you vulnerable to the rollercoaster that is life and to late paying clients.
My interest in a platform like Steemit revolves around that question.
"Can Steemit provide recurring revenue for my business?"
Now obviously I'm not talking about becoming an investor and buying/selling crypto currencies for profit.
Rather about being part of the creative class and putting work out there.
There are other platforms that are mining a similar vein.
They too use crypto currencies to pay contributors.
Unsplash are attempting to do something similar and as far as I can tell Kodak appear to be heading down that road with their Kodak One platform.
Maybe Unplash's Simple Token will be worthy in the long run.
The trouble is that you'll have died of starvation before then if this is your only source of income.
The problem with all of these is that you don't control your audience.
Same problem as every other social media platform.
You don't control how they find you and you don't have a real connection with them.
Changes to the algorithm or the site going down would cause you potentially catastrophic problems.
If that was what you based your business on then you'd go down with it.
Gaining traction on a new platform is a lot of work and the opportunities aren't created evenly.
I remember a time early on in the days of Flickr where I conducted an experiment.
I posted the exact same photo as my friend and wanted to see who would get the most attention.
We didn't share many connections and I had more followers by about treble the amount.
So guess who got the most attention?
My friend did.
Why?
Pretty girl on a website predominately used by men.
In a lot of ways I see this Steemit in a similar way to a site like Patreon.
As a place to deliver content but not a place where you keep your audience.
By that I mean you've got an email list and a customer database in the background.
I can't help but think that a lot of time spent building an audience on a site like this would be better spent just building the audience on your own.
Then you could send them here, or to something like Patreon or just sell things to them directly.
Returning to my original question of can Steemit provide a regular income?
I'm unconvinced.
For some the answer is definitely yes.
However even for them I don't think they should rely 100% on that income.
Invest it or find ways of diversifying that income.
For the rest, it's unlikely.
Maybe it's more of a fun place to post uncommercial and quirky personal projects.
I wish it was a place where you could connect with your 1000 true fans.
I view this in the same way as a stock agency. It's one channel with a specific audience and image needs.
I do see this as a platform with value in it and I do see the possibilities of using cryptocurrencies to pay for content but what do you think?
Do you see putting content onto Steemit providing you with a long term income?
It would be great to hear your thoughts.