The World Of Startup Businesses Has Gone Through Many Ups And Downs. Web 2.0, Tools And Programs Provided By Facebook, Mobile Devices, And In Recent Years, Virtual Technologies, Have Been And Are Part Of The Best Opportunities Available To Startups. 

Also, if we look at the developments in the business world, we will find that the gig economy has become one of the main arteries of the business world.

Startups like Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, and similar examples have found a fit between the product and the market and have grown their business.

But what is the next move in this field? Economists and great experts in the business world believe that the next significant transformation will take place in the form of a concept called “The Passion Economy.”

An economy that Lee Jin, the founder and management consultant of Atelier Ventures Institute, has thoroughly and carefully examined the passion-based economy.

He pointed out valuable points that we mention in this article.

Changing the work pattern in the future

An author on the Substack newsletter platform earns over $500,000 yearly from reader subscriptions. The top content creator at Podio, the video course and digital membership platform, makes over $100,000 a month. Teachers in countries like the United States make thousands of dollars every month from teaching in private and virtual classrooms.

These statistics and figures indicate that a more significant trend is taking shape. The trend is moving towards creating and organizing data structures (Creator Stack) and commercializing the consumer (enterprise of the consumer). That means today’s consumers have the passion for creating tomorrow’s businesses!

Important indicators of the passion-based economy

Before the emergence of virtual markets, people were classified in specific formats according to their expertise. This issue made the advantageous characteristics and abilities of each person be ignored. The formation of new platforms has enabled each person to start a business that may not have been defined before and earn money in this way, according to their unique skills and abilities.

Among the important indicators of this economy, the following should be mentioned:

•  Rebuilds the service economy. Many future software platforms are emerging that allow producers, freelancers (influencers), and service providers to work on what they love and earn money.
•  SaaS solutions are built into the platform to help people in the passion economy get their work done, especially when it is inherently digital (such as streaming video or publishing audio).
•  Now, we can use platforms that have billions of users. Employers find professionals, and service providers find their audience more quickly. Media need to create features similar to commodity marketplaces, Places that enable transactions.
•  They provide detailed mechanisms for practical education and training. The reality is that most educational institutions are not built to teach passion-based economics skills. For this reason, aspirants should look to online schools, programs, and training to learn the changing skills in the tech ecosystem.

Every startup will become a fintech. Fintech services will significantly help the needs of commercial businesses and individuals and provide them with innovative financial options regarding financial affairs.

If the above sounds appealing, don’t be afraid to know that an extensive list of changing working patterns and significant trends will redefine working. As a society, we are all at the heart of this change. You may have noticed that startups like Uber, Patreon, Shopify, Substack, and many other groups have been on this path for a long time.

These stories show that the business world is moving towards consumer investment. The gig economy isn’t going to die and will continue to do so, but there are now more ways to capitalize on creative ideas. In new platforms, anyone can earn money from their unique skills. Users can gain a large-scale audience and make a living from their passion for a particular skill. For example, you can make money by playing video games or creating visual content. These great entrepreneurial concepts create what we will know as jobs in the future.

The transformation of the economy based on interest and passion

Unlike in the past when people had to go to work at certain times and work as employees, today it is possible for all people to work at the times that are possible for them and in the fields, they are interested in. These platforms create demand and supply and do marketing. As a result, businesses no longer need to spend time on marketing.

They also balance supply and demand so that people can focus on their areas of expertise, such as motor couriers, restaurant food preparation and delivery, etc. All these things are only for people to have more freedom of action and to work and earn money whenever they are interested.

Although these platforms paved the way for millions of people to become self-employed so that there was no longer a concept of superiority, they also forced people to confine themselves to a few specific specialties. In other words, their unique abilities are not used, and only one dimension of their abilities is exposed to use. For this reason, the concept of a passion-based economy has been developed to enable people with new digital platforms to start a new business based on their passion and thereby earn money and contribute to the economy.

Individual income

New digital platforms allow people to earn money individually. These platforms give service providers more power to communicate with customers, better support their business growth, and provide them with better tools to differentiate themselves from the competition. In this approach, they establish a new model of entrepreneurship based on the Internet.

In terms of dynamics, there is a difference between Amazon’s model, a standardized system with extensive integrated products, and Shopify’s stand-alone system. However, they help users to have a direct relationship with their customers. This change is still visible in the markets related to physical products and is expanding in the services field.

These platforms have some standard features as follows:

•  They are available to everyone, not just businesses and professionals.
•  They see individual skills as a tremendous competitive advantage.
•  Their focus is on digital products and virtual services.
•  They provide accurate tools for the growth and operation of a business.
•  They create new ways to do things, or, more precisely, they offer a new definition of work.

How does the gig economy differ from the passion-based economy?

An important question is a difference between the economy based on passion and the gig economy or freelancing. Among the crucial differences in this field, the following should be noted:

It is available to everyone and is not limited to businesses and professionals

New consumer products make entrepreneurship easy for anyone. In the mid-2010s, the rise of the freelance industry allowed high-end producers to earn money through advertising. These platforms have expanded to support a broader range of revenue-generating activities, from producing physical products to making personal videos with different software.

Today, the ability to earn money based on creative skills has spread among people, which has helped people a lot in starting and growing their businesses. Previously, companies needed a skill such as software engineering to build websites or applications to emerge.

Now websites are efficiently designed for any business without coding and through popular web builders such as Webflow and Glide. Today’s startups are building sites designed for mobile first, and later, they offer lightweight versions of desktop software. For example, Kapwing is a web and mobile editor for videos, GIFs, and images that looks set to replace legacy software.

They look at the person and person-centeredness as a feature

In the past, service markets were occupied by standard and conventional jobs. Still, with the introduction of new platforms, a diverse range of workforce emerged, which caused diversity in the choice of users and achieved greater profitability.

Take, for example, the OutSchool platform, an online marketplace for video classes featuring retired school teachers and stay-at-home parents. On this platform, teachers can create their lesson plans or browse the list of courses requested by users. In addition, in the user interface of this virtual platform, sections are defined to introduce teachers, their backgrounds, and experiences. Also, parents and students can communicate and message teachers directly.

On new platforms, when users can communicate directly with their preferred provider in a continuous manner, they may be inclined to share offline. In other words, the platform may be removed from the process, and the provider will no longer be able to monetize it.

In this case, the client and the provider work together and exchange money, but the platform does not earn money. As a result, this model can be associated with risks.

Virtual marketplaces can minimize the desire of users and providers to leave the platform by providing tools such as scheduling and invoicing. Likewise, incentives and motivating factors are considered so that providers and users continue to use that platform.

Marketplaces that nurture these direct relationships can succeed by focusing on areas like education and teaching. Since in educational fields, the subject and content may change. As a result, there may be a compulsion for teachers and instructors to change, but they can’t remove the platform.

The focus is on digital products and virtual services.

A platform built specifically to package and sell digital products differs from one made for physical, tangible goods. While previous generations of entrepreneurial empowerment platforms focused on selling physical products (Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Shopify) or face-to-face services (Taskrabbit, Care.com, and Uber), new maker platforms focused on digital products. SaaS platforms include Podia, Teachable, and Thinkific, which allow creators to earn money through direct sales of video courses and subscriptions. At Havenly Interior Design, designers work remotely and interact with clients online. The advantage of the above method is that the designers have steady customers away from the usual problems because Havenly takes care of the marketing part. Also, designers can work whenever and wherever they want.

A comprehensive tool for growing and starting a business

Unlike discovery-based marketplaces that generate revenue through advertising or membership fees, new platforms based on advanced structured data often generate revenue through SaaS payments, increasing over time as the provider grows and develops. The rest of the media receive a percentage of the sales of businesses as a commission and generate income in this way. In this case, the media try to encourage companies to grow, expand, and increase sales because the platform also earns more as businesses grow and their customers increase. Some venues offer marketing tools such as custom landing pages, coupons, co-op systems, etc. Sometimes, platforms provide services to people to build their businesses. For example, Walden connects budding entrepreneurs to mentors for strategy and accountability.

New types of jobs will emerge.

New digital platforms are creating new forms of business that we have not seen in the past. To understand how human capital causes transformation in new industries, it is enough to look at the performance of companies and users in China. On blogging sites like Weibo, users sell content such as questions and answers, exclusive chat groups, and membership fees or stream membership cards. This approach allowed many traditional freelancers, such as financial advisors, bloggers, and professors, to enter the digital world.

Those above are the characteristics of new platforms that have emerged as virtual marketplaces and “service as a product” platforms, but these media types differ.

Job Marketplaces vs. SaaS Platforms

When a company emerges in such a space, it is essential to consider the needs of its target creators and audience. Also, there are many trade-offs between marketplaces and SaaS platforms. But what is the difference between them?

Marketplace service providers can join and earn money with minimal setup. The strength of the two-way network effect of these marketplaces is directly related to the value proposition of those who act as intermediaries. A simple example of this is the model that Medium works on, charging readers a subscription fee to access stories on the platform. An author’s money is proportional to the time readers spend reading an article.

In contrast, product-based service platforms require providers to work independently to acquire customers. Such media may provide producers with tools such as marketing and attribution services giving them enough time to focus on their business. For example, Substack has features like an author homepage, email list, payments, analytics, and a variety of subscription services, and Substack collects a portion of the provider’s (creator’s) revenue.

In the model that Medium works on, the author earns money based on the traffic his content attracts. In a SaaS platform similar to Substack, a service-as-a-product platform, the author must increase his readership and paid subscribers. This feature allows them to check their customer list at any time and be aware of the number of readers and the amount of reading.

As you might imagine, marketplaces have created an excellent opportunity for service providers—people looking to introduce themselves and attract audiences. Service tools in the form of a product are often helpful for providers who have established and well-known customers. In response to this dynamic, many startups are building service-as-a-product platforms that aim to attract and attract prominent providers in the market.

Look forward

The passion economy will continue to grow in the coming years. New integrated platforms give entrepreneurs more power to earn income and flourish individual creativity. More precisely, we can imagine a future where the value of each unique skill and knowledge grows and is enhanced by consumers.