RE: Steem related apps with YOUR POSTING KEY, and beneficiary percentages. What you need to know.
I've often thought the beneficiary features were a tricky proposition. I mean, how many people would knowingly be willing to give away up to 15% of their post awards. I had also brought that up a week or two ago in a discussion, and someone mentioned that on chainbb, those fees are slightly mitigated by the fact that for now @jesta upvotes each post made via chainBB.
Currently, every post made via chainBB is getting a 0.05% upvote from my account. While my account isn't as large as many others, this tiny fraction of a vote still awards $0.20 in estimated value, and doesn't drain my voting power quite as harshly as using larger percentages. Over the last 12 hours I've cast votes on roughly 350 posts made via chainBB and my voting power has remained quite steady above 99%.
Link: Running my own curation trail experiment to promote chainBB testing/feedback
Of course, while that may average out nicely to offset payout reductions on some posts, for an extreme example, let's say your post hits $1000. The thought of giving up $150 of that for posting somewhere other than on STEEMIT.com may leave at least a few people with a slightly sour taste in their stomachs.
As a possible solution, in an upcoming hardfork a feature could be added that would enable developers to optionally set a "maximum shared value" per post (ie. 15% up to $1 post payout).
Hey! I didn't know that :) Thanks for that tidbit..
An alternative means of monetisation would be a subscription based model, or an upfront payment. Would large earners be able to pay a monthly subscription or buy a lifetime membership in lieu of sharing post rewards? I don't know if this could be coded in or not. In any case, for the average user (I think I would fall there), I think the beneficiary model is a much preferred way to reward to app producer than an upfront purchase or pesky in-app advertisements.
if it's a "modest" fee (subjective to each person), perhaps. but once again, the problem I see with that approach is that there's no direct correlation between the success of a post and using an alternative platform. If one could be established somehow, that may be a different story.
Otherwise, how would it be any different than charging someone $100 for milk at the grocery store cuz "he's rich", versus everyone else who pays $2.50 or so. At that point, he might as well just buy his own cow!
And that's exactly what could happen here as well, especially since all the projects are generally opensource anyway.
I see where you are coming from (I have a pet hate for percentage-based fees of funds under management for financial advisors that are not tied to performance or value added).
If the platform has added value to the post (I find eSteem to be easier to use to post photos from my phone), I am happy for it to share rewards (which for me are generally minimal). I see it more like "tithing" some of my income back into the system. The bitshares ecosystem (originator of the graphene platform on which the Steem blockchain operates) I believe was built on a social contract of giving back +5% to holders of bitshares in acknowledgement of use of its technology (PeerPlays recently honoured this by sharedropping 5% of its token among bitshares holders, for example).
So, I think it is a bit different to your milk example in that it is not the wealth of the user, but the production of posts using its technology that is taxed/shared. Would a better example be a landowner allowing a farmer to graze his cow on his land in return for 5% of the milk produced?
It is all voluntary, however, as you say, and there is nothing stopping using competing platforms that may be cheaper or free.
but you see, you just negated you own point, why pay the landowner, if you can graze somewhere else for free?
HOWEVER, if the landowners's grass leads to a 10%+ boost in milk yield and more baby cows to boot, well, that's a whole other story entirely! :)