After publishing my Free + Valuable essay, I received a few inquiries (including an onchain comment) asking if I teach. I considered it, but decided against it.
Bottom line: I’m a long-form writer at heart. My top priority is time for deep-dive writing and editing.
I’d like to just study things that excite me (e.g., Zora Protocol Rewards + Paragraph + the Farcaster scenius), write about those things out of intrinsic motivation as much as possible, and allow that process to lead where it will.
For now, I’d prefer to monetize my creative work (and minimize potential conflicts of interest) by
using revenues from paid copy editing + editorial consulting work to subsidize my writing time, and
minting my finished writings + earning ETH through Protocol Rewards when people collect.
If it turns out the work I publish is educational, great. But it’ll be a happy byproduct of open-sourcing my creative process rather than an explicit goal or targeted outcome.
Two ways to help fund my open-source process-writing-as-livelihood:
mint my Free + Valuable essay on Zora (+ future essays when they’re released) and/or
Paragraph has a new referral rewards program in the pipeline, and it's modeled on Zora Protocol Rewards. Zora also made a major announcement this week: creators can now mint their work without paying gas fees. I'm working on deep dives on these exciting developments.
Looking forward to expanded monetization options that don't require putting my work behind paywalls. I'd love to see a web3 version of non quid pro quo patronage, for example.
(Side note: that last link is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in Patreon's business model. It's a fantastically in-depth explication of some of the lesser-known attractions and frustrations of Patreon).
In any case, thank you for the kind words about the Free + Valuable essay, and for the encouragement to teach. I very much appreciate the warm response and the vote of confidence.
Excited to get back to work on the next essay!
Image by Alexas_Fotos via Pixabay.
Danica Swanson
Over 300 subscribers
True to form, even the "quick update" I meant to send this morning turned into a 350-word mini-essay. TL; DR: - No plans to teach (but thanks for asking!) - For now, I'll monetize through client work + Protocol Rewards. https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/update-on-teaching-monetization-queries
@cameron - Here's another "creator monetization" anecdote that may interest you. Thanks for the discussion on this a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks for sharing! 🫡
And thanks for teaching me what 🫡 means in your lexicon. 💜
Note to self: Re-reading this mini-essay. Kind of wish I'd turned it into an even longer essay about some of the challenges of monetizing deep-dive work, and under-reported problems with the available options. Adding it to the list...
That would be a great part 2! (Or 3 really). Love that you’re diving into this. Really helpful for newbies!
Thanks for the encouragement! Started a draft; here's a taste. Unimportant for deep-dive work: - pageviews, follower counts, growing an audience, etc. - going viral - “fan engagement” (which is not the same as reciprocity) We’ll see what happens when I get to the editing stages. :)