User-generated content (UGC) campaigns are frequently discussed in marketing circles online. These initiatives encourage brands to have users create memes and content featuring their brand for sharing across social networks. While the idea of leveraging online communities for brand promotion is appealing, the reality of internet culture is that it’s often not a lucrative space, especially when relying on unpaid user contributions. In fact, the pervasive sentiment online is that there’s “no money in internet culture,” a concept that has almost become a meme itself.
Countless articles highlight the struggles of platforms like Soundcloud, Tumblr, and even Reddit to achieve sustainable monetization. These platforms, deeply embedded in internet culture, have faced challenges in converting user engagement into revenue. This isn’t necessarily due to mismanagement, but perhaps it’s an inherent characteristic of internet culture itself. Unlike a blog, where content ownership and monetization strategies are more direct, internet culture often operates in a realm of free content and fleeting trends. Consider Vine, a platform that thrived on short-form video memes. Despite its massive audience, Twitter’s attempt to monetize Vine failed, leading to its shutdown. The issue wasn’t a lack of viewers, but a lack of a paying audience. This narrative of platforms struggling to profit from internet culture reinforces the “No Money Meme” – the idea that online virality and cultural relevance don’t automatically translate to financial success.
Image alt text: Leeroy Jenkins meme, a World of Warcraft character charging into battle, symbolizing viral internet moments that are difficult to monetize.
The story of Ben Schulz, the person behind the Leeroy Jenkins meme, perfectly illustrates this point. He inadvertently created an enduring icon for Blizzard, transcending the boundaries of World of Warcraft. Despite the meme’s widespread recognition and cultural impact, Schulz was unable to directly profit from the internet culture phenomenon he sparked. Leeroy Jenkins became a meme sensation, demonstrating the power of internet culture to create viral moments, but it also underscores the “no money meme” reality for creators who don’t own and control the means of monetization.
This is the core challenge for those trying to capitalize on internet culture: generating content that resonates online is one thing, but turning that into a revenue stream is another. Without a tangible product or service that people are willing to pay for, deriving income from freely accessible content is incredibly difficult. Reddit, for example, attracts billions of monthly page views, yet even with experienced advertising executives at the helm, profitable monetization remains elusive. The platform’s vast user base and cultural influence haven’t automatically unlocked a reliable revenue model, further fueling the “no money meme” narrative.
While authenticity is valued by consumers when it comes to brands, simply relying on user-generated content as a business model is unsustainable. Even Facebook, a master of leveraging user content, understands this dynamic. Facebook encourages personal updates not because there’s direct profit in those updates themselves, but because they provide valuable data for targeted advertising. Facebook uses user-generated content to sell user data to advertisers, customizing ad experiences. Their foray into charging for publisher content is another attempt to find revenue streams beyond pure UGC, acknowledging the limitations of the “no money meme” in a direct content monetization context.
Legacy publishing brands are also facing the disruption of user-generated content. The ease of creating blogs and alternative news sources means audiences are less reliant on traditional media outlets. Now that information is readily available from diverse sources, brand recognition alone doesn’t guarantee trust or revenue. Younger demographics are increasingly turning to alternative news sources, highlighting a shift away from traditional, potentially monetized, media consumption toward a more decentralized, often free, internet culture landscape.
Image alt text: Collage of logos from various alternative news websites, representing the shift towards decentralized information sources in internet culture.
The rise of these alternative news sources reflects a broader trend towards blog-style content and independent creators. While some site owners successfully repackage and monetize news, the internet culture ecosystem as a whole is still far from consistently profitable. Expecting to build a business solely on content created by others is rarely a viable strategy, a lesson learned by media giants like Conde Nast, owner of Reddit.
Ultimately, profiting from derivative content or relying solely on platforms that aggregate user content is a challenging business model, except perhaps in e-commerce where UGC can directly drive sales. The real opportunity for modern content creators lies in creative entrepreneurship, which extends beyond simply making memes. True success and sustainable income come from owning your ideas and creations, and developing strategies to directly capitalize on them, rather than expecting to profit solely from the often-unpredictable and freely shared realm of internet culture and its “no money meme” realities.
This article is adapted from a post originally published on http://www.horowitzwrites.com/no-money-in-internet-culture/.
