Clubhouse, the audio-only social app, is looking at ways to monetize the platform for its creators, CEO Paul Davison told CNBC on Monday.
After its debut last year, Clubhouse is worth around $ 1 billion and hosts over 2 million users. The basics of the app are relatively simple, with no video, photo, or text-based chat rooms. Users log into the app and are greeted with a few live, virtual rooms, where they can see a list of participants. If they click on the room, the audio will move and they will hear the conversation. Think of Clubhouse as an app for live, unaltered podcasts.
Clubhouse’s revenue plan is similar to Patreon’s crowdfunding model, which allows independent creators to earn money directly from their audience. Patreon takes a small fee from these deals, however, and it’s not clear to what extent or whether Clubhouse would give a percentage of the memberships.
It also plays into a topic that social networking users have complained about. If a creator can’t make money on a particular platform, they are likely to move to another one when it gets pulled. Clubhouse is making a bet early in its life that it can attract more users by offering them a way to make money.
“There are so many amazing people who are smart, funny, who have land knowledge, who are really just good at bringing people together,” Davison said in a Squawk Box interview on Monday. we want to allow them to make a living directly on the Clubhouse through things like memberships and ticketed events and get suggestions from audiences who are happy to pay them directly for the the experiences they create for them. “
Currently, there is no way for users to pay for content directly through the app. The platform itself is free, and there are no ads or master plan for users. Davison said Monday that Clubhouse plans to introduce a model of some sort “sooner rather than later.”
Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube