How does LBRY benefit content creators? Can I earn money using LBRY?
In our AMA title, we pitched LBRY as a "community-driven" YouTube alternative that could "save the internet." That's a lot of big talk, but what does it mean for the people who care most about the changes happening on YouTube – the content creators?
If you are earning money from your videos on YouTube right now, you are likely familiar with the recent controversies over videos being "de-monetized" for containing content unfriendly to advertisers. It's no surprise that YouTube caters to advertisers because ultimately, that's their main revenue stream.
LBRY is not an ad-driven media service. In fact, it's not even a traditional media service at all. LBRY is an open protocol that allows you to publish your content to the network at no cost to you and allows you to set a price per stream or download if you wish. Because LBRY is a protocol and not a corporate store, there is no approval process for content to be listed and no authority that can "de-monetize" your videos. That's between you and your audience.
With LBRY, pricing is completely at the discretion of the creator, and 100% of that price goes to the creator. Compare this to iTunes' fixed pricing tiers and 30% commission of every sale.
Because LBRY uses digital currency (a la Bitcoin), creators can accept micropayments for every view without worrying about credit card processing fees. Or a studio could use LBRY to distribute a theatrical release to independent theaters and charge thousands of dollars per download. The only constraint on pricing is what your viewers are willing to pay.
With YouTube monetization, creators earn a variable amount based on viewers' engagement with ads. There is no set formula, but we've found a reasonable guesstimate of around $2 per thousand views. This works out to a penny per 5 views. So on LBRY, if you charge just one penny per view (a price any viewer would pay without a second thought), you may get 5X the per-view earnings you'd get from YouTube instantly!
Furthermore, you can share content of any type – video, music, ebooks, images, podcasts – all on the same platform.
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