New means of monetizing content are emerging. Meet creator coins: the simplified blockchain technology revolutionizing how content creators engage with their following and earn a living.

In mid-March, Hugo Gonzalez, Big 4 accountant turned professional Smash Brothers player, launched his own personal cryptocurrency –– $DAD. By purchasing $DAD, his fans can now unlock a world of benefits, including access to exclusive content and opportunities to influence the type of content he creates. 

What’s better? Gonzalez tells Linktree that “the financial benefits of rally rewards dwarf anything [he’s] ever seen on other platforms.” 

Though Gonzalez was an early adopter of Rally coin, he’s hardly the first public figure to enter the creator coin space and reap the benefits. 

From wellness coaches to gamers to travel vloggers, a range of creators are embracing digital currency to offer real-world value to their audiences in the form of unique perks, exclusive experiences, and more. 

Your own virtual economy | What are creator coins? 

Creator coins are a social token that allow creators, influencers, athletes, musicians, and more to launch their own cryptocurrencies to monetize and multiply their audience.

With creator coins, influencers have a new opportunity to monetize content while fans can participate in their economy and benefit from their rise in popularity. 

The dynamic is mutually beneficial: creators profit from fans buying their coins, and fans, like Gonzalez’s, get access to special content and experiences.

How are creator coins or social tokens used? 

Creators can be as imaginative as they want with what they offer in exchange for their social tokens. 

Gonzalez, for example, uses $DAD to allow viewers to drive his content. “I even let them interrupt my stream by making me sing Creed karaoke if that’s what they want to do,” he shares. 

Joe Pulizzi is an authority on marketing. He has 150,000 Twitter followers and a popular newsletter called The Tilt that empowers content creators with strategies to forge a financially successful business. 

He’s also the creator of one of the highest-value creator coins: $TILT. Built on the Rally network, $TILT coin offers rewards and discounts to Tilt community members and is currently valued at $48.081. 

He tells Linktree a little more about how it works over email: 

“If you have at least 5 $TILT, you get an exclusive content drop each month. If you have 20, that’s VIP status, and you get 50% off our online training.” He continues, “as our community grows, we will be using $TILT coin to build our own economy.”

Author Peter Shankman is in the same brand-building and marketing space as Pulizzi, but he uses his crypto, $SHANK coin, a bit differently. He created $SHANK in February 2021 to facilitate personal interactions with his fanbase and now has 662 supporters. 

He says that his audience can use $SHANK to hire him to pick his brain, meet, or even join him for a run. 

To make sharing his coin easier, Shankman uses Linktree so interested fans can purchase coins directly from his speeches and other content forms. The Linktree PRO feature, Priority Links, encourages users to sign-up to his mailing list. 

Assessing the value of creator coins 

Creator coins follow the basic physics of investing: the more fans that buy your creator coins, the higher the value. The fewer, the lesser the value. $DAD coin, for example, is worth $3.164, while $SHANK coin –– with more holders –– is worth $8.744. 

Essentially, creator coins speculate on a person’s reputation. If someone’s reputation goes up, there will be high demand for their creator coins, so the creator coin value increases. And if it goes down, the person’s creator coin falls. Buyers can hold creator coins and profit off of them as the respective creator rises in popularity, increasing the value of their coin.

Who is using creator coins? 

Everyone from Tiger King’s Carole Baskin to American rock band Portugal The Man to Twitch streamer Allie Strasza are using creator coins. 

Shankman is optimistic about the rise of creator coins and all the niches they will benefit and says that “there’s an incredible ecosystem being built within the creator coin community. I have no doubt that we’re going to see an incredible rise in the number of people having their own coins.”

How to create your own crypto creator coin

There are now a few platforms you can trust to generate your creator coin, but two get far more traffic than others: Rally and Bitclout. 

Rally launched in 2018. The platform is free but invite-only. However, anyone can create an account and fill out a form to join Rally. The questionnaire will ask you for your location, main social platform, audience, and the activities, services, and goods you will offer in exchange for your coin. 

BitClout operates more like a social media platform. When you like, comment, post, or retweet, these actions attract creator coins. Anyone can sign up for BitClout and get $3 free upon signing up.

How do you buy and sell creator coins 

Buying and selling creator coins is simple. BitClout and Rally have slightly different rules for signing up and making transactions. But in a nutshell, anyone can buy or sell creator coins so long as they have an account, valid credit or debit card, and an Ethereum or other crypto wallet. 

Are creator coins a good investment?

Angel investor and crypto expert Andrew Medal sees 2021 as a huge positive shift for cryptocurrencies of all types, and creator coins shouldn’t be overlooked. “Early holders [of Rally coins] could reap investment value over time,” he tells Linktree over email. With projections by other experts like WalletInvestor corroborating his prediction and Patreon newly embracing crypto, creator coins are officially entering the mainstream. 

Shankman also sees creator coins, and Rally creator coins specifically, as a great investment: “Because $SHANK runs on Rally, the coin has a ton of uses. From buying other coins to moving it to the mainnet, it’s a very useful coin. I expect it to grow.”

The future of creator coins

A new type of commerce for content-driven brands has arrived, and it’s a trend worth tracking. Over 40,000 individuals joined the initial token sale of RLY, proving the public’s enthusiasm to engage with creators by buying into their digital brand.

Creators are also eager to find new ways to engage with their audiences. A survey Pulizzi conducted back in April found that 4% of content creators were already working toward a token model, and another 26% were considering it. He says that a community token business model is “rewarding the community for the value they’re helping create in the business.” 

With 1.52 billion Rally coins already in circulation, all signs point to a proliferation of the passion economy and forging new ways for creatives to share their work and profit.