The Environment

Every popular, monetised (and sometimes un-monestised, now that the bar is so much higher!) YouTube channel has a standard quip at the end **"support us on Patreon"**. This enables content producers to establish an additional revenue stream beyond YouTube advertising, which as we know, is limited to a select few (based on subscription numbers, hours watched, and YouTube's algorithms) - in addition to google taking the Lion's Share of the profits. Patreon enables content producers to get some sort of reliable, monthly income from their endeavours. Meanwhile, as a Patron, you pay in order to get some extra, behind the scenes footage or swag. That's it.

The Simulation

Let's run a simulation: Pay 5x Content Creators $5 a month This is $25 Over the course of a year, that's $300 Currently, $300 gets you about 1100 HIVE. If you power up that HIVE, for a full strength vote of about a cent, it would take you 30,000 votes, or eight years to break even. You get about half back in curation rewards. There's also a whole bunch of unknowns - you could buy $300 of HIVE, enjoy 30,000 pieces of content (likely more!) and in eight years time hive could be worth nothing. Or it might be worth something. Was engaging with creators deeply instead of being a para-social creature worth it? But do you wanna hang around for EIGHT entire years? I've been here almost nine (if you count previous incarnations) and there are several things I've noticed... There's waves of inspiration and joy on the chain, and times of faithlessness, and times of transformation. But there's one thing that has always been a true observation, that I dare anyone to contest me on. **Creators will create, whether there is an incentive to do so or not.** The incentive is the output of creation itself, finding oneself in a flow state, and generating some sort of artefact that helps one cope with the world.

So Gather Your Forces

It's a mixture of bio-chemistry, altruism, and being a genuinely good person. It is about community building. It is about consistently encouraging someone to continue doing what they love doing, and so that they can shove sustenance in their word-holes, to continue churning out content that you enjoy. Is there altruism on the HIVE blockchain? Sure, if you look at the efforts of those who curate manually, contribute economically through supporting proposals or developing features that they may not even receive payment for. If you dig deeply enough, you'll find it. I think Altruism is a good thing, but, hey, you know what a good thing needs? Even more of it. So, why not Gather your intellectual pals, your friends who are wordsmiths, your photography aficionados, that person you knew back in high school who fancied themselves a film-maker. Get them on the HIVE block chain. Not only can I support content that I wouldn't ordinarily consume; but I engage with some profound, interesting human beings, which is what this whole place is about. ![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/holoz0r/EqBe5yiwyuM2WRxHUbTEYtiBNBJMWQeB9nFu8kMm92BRvMWxuk15URedeyYA1UXuJRs.png) @holoz0r, @mattclarke, @jagged (L-R) (An example of community)

I wrote the majority a version of this post seven years ago. I'm rewritten it today, because not a lot has changed. There's a few modifications made to my original post, however. For those interested in the source material, and haven't made modifications to their browser's hosts file, or done some wizardry with their router's DNS look up... go look at the [canonical](https://steemit.com/nobidbot/@holoz0r/stop-wasting-your-money-on-patreon-get-your-favourite-content-creators-on-steem-be-a-human-being-and-connect-with-wonderful) source

Edits: Grammer, Spelling, and some clarity.