The Founder’s Series with Chris Hawk: StarStake’s New Approach to Empower Creators

StarStake Log 5 — Creating Value for Value and Value for Attention

Welcome to the Founder’s series, a backstage all-access look inside the mind and methods of what StarStake is, why StarStake is and how StarStake is poised to revolutionize the creator-fan economy. Each article is from Co-founder and visionary behind the StarStake platform, Chris Hawk, and delves into different aspects of the mission StarStake is here to accomplish.

In this article, Chris Hawk shares an overview of the strategies behind StarStake, a powerful Web3 platform.

Value for a Fee

“Most platforms use a value for a fee model which is traditionally every other solution. Creators and brands are often looking for ways to create new connections. As a creator, you may be wondering, ‘How do I monetize and make more money?’ or ‘How do I free up my time?’

The challenge here is that if you look at membership models, they’re broken. Say you use Patreon where you charge your audience $7 per person per month. With an average of three to four months of retention, your lifetime value for each fan isn’t very much– an average of $25 per person.

You have to create all this value and a membership group, set it up, and constantly deliver value knowing that you’re just getting $7 from someone each month. You’re receiving a fee for that time. Deep down, you know that you’re going to have to work really hard to keep them there.

Remember that with a membership model, you know who your competition is? If you’re in the creation world, your competition is Disney. Yeah, it’s Disney– think about it. Disney plus, let’s say it’s seven bucks a month and you get access to all the Star Wars libraries.

Your audience gets access to all the Disney material and IP for just that and you’re trying to charge $7– the same if not more– for your content and they have to choose between Disney or you. Who do you think they’re going to drop $7 for especially if they have kids? So this can be a very hard thing.

The membership for a fee or value for a fee isn’t a very difficult model but that’s typically the way it goes now. When NFTs entered the scene, you could build all these NFTs and build collectors out of your fans though fans aren’t necessarily collectors– unless the product is Nike Jordan shoes or something. You’re trying to make a huge shift out of a community that’s really not built that way.

Value for Value

Value for a fee is one way. StarStake is positioned in a new way.

We haven’t had an opportunity to do this before because the technology didn’t exist. StarStake provides a way for creators to provide value for value. What I mean by that is– now as a creator or brand, you can create value. You can create connections. You can create things of meaning not just videos, not just content. You can create things that are useful to your fans. You can create products that they want. You can create compensation through financial means to your fans. You can create recognition for your fans. You can create incentives and status for your fans– all the things that fans, communities or audiences care about.

Instead of saying, ‘I’m gonna give you this amazing access to me personally backstage at a venue or something and it cost this much.’ That’s typically how it would work. With StarStake, it’s different. Now you can set the value that you know they care about so dearly and you can give them the option to deliver value back to you. That can be in the form of sales as being a good customer– and spending lots of money with you– you value that of course you do.

It’s no different than having a fee, but this way, they’re not paying you a fee that they have to decide between you and Disney. They’re buying something that you created– your products. You know if they’re a collector of your products or shoes or whatever it is those are things that they’re getting. They’re not having to decide between something else. So sales, maybe loyalty, how long you’ve been together as a fan and as a creator, how much they’re helping you grow. Are they sharing your stuff? Are they sharing things and are you getting value from that share? Yes, okay, great. You’re gonna give them value– now they’ve earned it.

Value for Attention

Or maybe they’re giving you their attention. They’re always on your page. They’re always listening, watching, looking, talking, commenting. There’s value. They are giving you value by doing that. You can give them value by giving them some products because that’s valuable to them. Maybe their interest, their participation, their engagement, whatever it is– even just them owning a collector’s set of something, there’s a value for that, right? They’re a super loyal customer because they own everything– of all the products you have or whatever the case may be. Now you can weigh that value and give them something really valuable that they care about.

Do you see what we’re doing here? We’re getting what we would call a growth vector. This can be so dynamic in ways that benefit you as a brand and creator in so many ways. It allows the fans to just do what they normally do, but now they’re getting rewarded. And you’re recognizing that you see that. And whatever piece that you need more of– maybe you need more growth and more sales whatever– you can weigh that and using our fan engine and all the cool technology we have at StarStake, you can track all that automatically. You can create a reward system that gives your fans that and you don’t have to track it manually.

You can tell your fans, ‘Go to my website, buy this, collect this, share this’– whatever attracts them with the fan engine. It scores them and it says, ‘Oh this person is really valuable to you this month’ or ‘They just bought this product.’ Boom! Give them that reward! You can set up these rewards and these are what we call sponsorship rewards. We have sponsorship rewards, we have access rewards, and we have shared sales. You may want to share some sales with your fans because they’re going to help bring in new sales anyway.

You can do that for a month or two months, six months, however long you want. Access can be in the form of any kind of product. So you can say, “Hey, I’m gonna give T-shirts to my top 20 fans this month with the highest loyalty score.’ So you just put that into the world. You could offer a limited edition series of T-shirts for your top fans that they all want so bad. That exclusivity means so much to them and they’ll do what they have to do to get it and in turn that gives you that growth factor that gives you that interest and that gives you the relationship the ability to recognize those people that do achieve these things and that do show that interest and engagement and participation.

These promotions serve as something really unique because you can customize them. People always ask, ‘What do I give them?’ Well, ask them. What do your fans want? If you built a community that has say 50,000 people on Instagram, I’m pretty sure they know what they want. They followed you for a reason. Give them what they want. Ask them, ‘What do you want from me?’ Is it products? Is it time? Is it service? Is it event tickets? Whatever niche you’re in, you’ll know it pretty easily. And then just give it to them and you can see your top five fans, your top one fan, your super fans, your active fans.

You can set so many parameters to reward the people that are really active in your business and maybe you don’t know right away but you will because it will tell you through the fan engine. That’s the cool thing. You’ll build a deeper connection with your audience.

So you can solidify that connection officially meaning they are your official fans. You can see it on the blockchain. They can see it on the blockchain. There is no dispute about it. They may have been your fan since day one and you’ll be able to see that 20 years from now. As you solidify that connection, make it official. This allows you to now take ownership of your community.”

Written by a human, for humans