Creator trading fees vs one-time sales ! Is passive fee income the more sustainable model for creator tokens?

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Been watching an indie musician who launched a token recently, and something about the numbers got me thinking. Two days in, his trading fee earnings already outpaced his direct content sales. Not big numbers ~$10 but the shape of it is what’s interesting. One-time sales (paid unlocks, NFT drops, merch) are a treadmill: every dollar requires a new piece of content and a new buyer. Trading fees are different the creator earns a cut of every buy AND sell on his token. Speculators rotating in and out, even people dumping, all generate income. He earned passively while making nothing new. It also changes the funnel logic. A viral moment that brings traders but zero “customers” still pays the creator. Revenue from attention itself, not just conversion. And the incentive alignment seems healthier: instead of extracting one-time payments, the creator is motivated to keep the token (and community) alive long-term, because volume = income. Obvious counterpoints: fees only exist while there’s volume, volume dies when attention dies, and tiny tokens see most of their volume in week one. So maybe it’s just a different treadmill, chasing attention instead of chasing sales. Curious what people here think: has anyone seen creator tokens sustain meaningful fee income past the launch spike? Is there a real model here, or does this only work for the top 0.1% of creators?   submitted by   /u/alexsssaint [link]   [comments]