Private communities or “why should I pay for the right to publish content”?
Two weeks ago we introduced private boards. While some users are trying out this new tool, others are wondering why they should pay for the right to publish content.
First, let's understand the terms. Private boards in the current implementation do not involve any payment. To publish posts in them, you only need to have a certain amount of board coins in your wallet. At the same time, these coins belong to you, you can sell them at any time and even make money on it if their price rises. In fact, you only pay a commission for buying coins.
Secondly, no social networks are free. The development and moderation of social networks is a job that takes time and resources. Usually, users either pay for content themselves (onlyfans, patreon) or for communication in communities (locals), or are forced to watch ads (Instagram, Twitter) or buy a paid subscription in order not to see it (Youtube).
MAIN board moderators at the moment are more like volunteers who develop communities of interest to them simply because they like to do it (well, in order to monetize their efforts in the future too). However, as the number of users and posts grows, moderation takes more and more time. Moderators have to regularly remove irrelevant posts and onboard new members to keep their communities interesting and in demand. This is a big job.
Making the board private can greatly offload the board moderators and serve as a good filter for new members.
Thus, buying private board coins is not like paying for the ability to post, but rather like paying for the fact that only those members who really appreciate this board can post there.
What value can private communities give to their members?
Buying board coins requires some user effort. First, he must have enough tokens to buy. Secondly, he needs to perform additional actions - connect a wallet, conduct a transaction on the blockchain, etc.
Thus, the value of joining the community must far outweigh the costs for the user to make that extra effort. And this is a key issue that private communities have to solve.
So what can private communities offer to their members? We see three main areas:
1. Access to the audience of the board. If a community regularly publishes interesting content and it is gaining a large audience, then in order to provide authors with access to this audience, it can impose a limit on the ownership of coins for posting. This can work well for meme and other creative boards (with a limited number of regular contributors who need audience recognition).
2. Ability to communicate with a certain circle of people. Such boards are like private clubs, where the main thing is not what to discuss, but with whom to discuss. The ability to speak out “among your own” and get feedback from people whose opinion you are interested in is a key value here. This may suit topical boards or boards run by opinion leaders/experts.
3. Direct benefit from posting on the board. This may be suitable for message boards, communities that involve self-presentation or allow sharing of referral links. Here, the authors buy the attention of the audience, which can quickly pay off if their offer is interesting.
The key feature of such board development strategies is that over time, their value will only grow, involving more and more new members in the community who will buy more and more coins.
Perhaps users will find other ways to create value within private communities. If you already have such ideas, then write them in the comments, and we will be happy to discuss them.
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