Publish0x: Earn for Reading (+ Writing)

28/11/2019 · by Ade mc · in Crypto for Creatives, Crypto Posts, Using Crypto. ·

Engagement is a magic word when it comes to websites achieving growth and use.

Crypto is encouraging engagement, learning, discussion and content creation – if it’s implemented in such a way that encourages these aspects correctly and/or fosters a community.

(Steemit was an early bird on the scene, but it’s had to adjust itself significantly to retain or achieve that growth and it terms of how it shares its reward pool. Better, more manual curation of content looks to be returning to it slowly. It’s large community has enabled growth into other dapps and projects.)

And so now we see many sites attempting to implement crypto. I try to cover some of these mostly under Crypto for Creatives or Using Crypto [check out last post on ByWire, where you can also earn for reading articles.]

This post is to help me keep track of Publish0x, (no connection to 0x Protocol or District0x).

What is it?

It’s a platform for learning about crypto where articles can be tipped by anyone. They say they’re not aiming to be a social network, but a content network like Medium. (But Medium doesn’t reward you for reading their articles, and there are paywalls and monthly subscription fees.)

They’re also aiming to be ‘crypto-agnostic’ so that users can receive rewards in a variety of cryptocurrencies. They don’t have their own coin.

The design is clear and simple.

What’s interesting is the slider bar underneath each post. Here you can choose to reward yourself for reading an article, or the writer for writing it. This should encourage engagement and curation at the same time.

To withdraw rewards, you’ll need to add a proper Ethereum wallet address.

To be a writer, you need to apply after standard registration, using a quick and easy form, where previous or ongoing writing experience is of interest, and you must pledge a few essential things, to do with the nature of your submissions.

There’s also an Ambassador program, with affiliate rewards, for spreading the message of the site. At time of writing this gives you the following:

Earn 5% of every tip generated by your referrals using the tipper at the bottom of each article. This includes both the tip to the author and the amount claimed by your referral.
Access to paid/bountied articles first.
Free featured article placements.

Summary

It’s early days, and Publish0x looks to be concentrating on seeing if it’s implementation of crypto will achieve and encourage decent content, engagement and growth.

Rewarding readers seems to be a good idea, but it also seems quite narrow in its focus. Not being a proper blockchain-based project, there are disadvantages. But sometimes simplicity works best.

Going for a whole ‘content ecosystem’ (like ByWire) might be a greater, more exciting (and riskier) undertaking, where Publish0x might prove to be just as long-term, but time will tell.