Selling Future Earnings!? How to Solve Steemit's Curation Problems
I have been thinking a lot the last few weeks about how steemit's curation mechanism works. My main goal is to try and figure out how to help the best content get the most rewards (as I'm sure the rest of you would like).
The way I see it now (correct me if I'm wrong) the way to be successful on steemit goes something like this:
- Start following interesting people and making good comments on their posts
- Start writing good quality posts
- Post your posts in the relevant communities on steemit.chat
- Hopefully you start getting some followers at this point
- Use voting bots to try and get some attention to your posts (this is my personal least favorite)
- Repeat these steps and hopefully, maybe, someday, your post gets on the trending or hot list and you can really start making some progress.
This process isn't too bad (its pretty similar to how the real world works) but I think it could be better. Here are some problems/inefficiencies I see with this system.
Voting bots!
I don't think it is good for the system to be able to buy votes. I understand that it is almost a necessity for people to get started, but I hate that!
Posts with wasted potential
What about all those posts that you posted at the beginning that got less than 10 views. They are basically worthless now because even if someone finds it in the future, you won't get anything from it after the first few days. (Or is it a week?)
Solutions!
It's easy to complain about problems, the hard thing is to come up with solutions. Well I have a few propositions that I think might be able to help.
Longer term payouts
Now I'll admit that I don't totally understand why you only get paid for 7 days, it seems that it is either a technical issue, or it is so that the reward pool won't be full of old post. I cannot do anything if it's a technical issue but if it's just about the reward pool, I don't see why the old content can't compete with the new content. What if someone puts out a timeless article, video, song, etc. Why shouldn't they get paid if people like it next year too? I think they should get paid more if anything because it has to be great content for it to be popular for that long.
Investing in People
This is the main purpose of this post and why I saved it for last. What if there was a way to purchase a person's future earnings. For example, I buy a "share" of your future earnings say 1% and then I get 1% of all your future post payouts until you buy that share back from me. In this way, it would incentivise finding undervalued accounts so that you can invest, help them to reach their potential, and profit from your discovery!
How this could work
I haven't decided on a specific way that this could work but I think it could be fairly simple. Here are a few ideas:
The investor could simply buy a share for a certain price. Probably set by the account holder or possibly with an open market (Though I think an open market might not work unless there are a lot of people wanting to invest in different people. Otherwise the prices might be too easy to manipulate.) Then each shareholder would receive a percentage of all payouts. I think it needs to be easy for the account holder to be able to buy back shares in themselves. I'm not sure how to figure that out. Maybe they would just always have the option to buy it back at a certain price, or a percentage above market value or based on how much earnings have come in. Also I think we should consider having a cap to how much the shareholders can receive, but that might not be necessary if the account holder can buy them out at any time.
Another idea is to make it similar to how curation is done now. When you resteem a post or upvote it. You get a share of all the author's future earnings. For example. if 100 people have upvoted any of your posts so far and I have upvoted you 10 times I get 10% of the amount set aside for curation in all future posts. Of course, as more votes and resteems come in, my percentage would go down further. Again, this would incentivise people to vote posts from undervalued accounts. The problem I see with this, is that it might make people simply vote on every post by a relatively good account even if a certain post isn't as good as another just because they would get the same future reward.
You might be able to have a similar thing from just following people, where you get the average increased earnings from everyone that you follow. So if you follow a new account that makes $0.50 per post and then next month they make $1 per post (100% growth), you would get rewarded more than following an account that, in the same time period, went from $300 to $310 (3.33% growth) This would incentivize following undervalued accounts and helping them to grow.
Those are all of my ideas for now. Please share some more good ones in the comments and upvote your favorite ideas. My goal is to find a good solution for bringing undervalued posts to their real value and finding undervalued accounts and bringing them to their real value.
I am also open to trialing this idea if anyone is interested let me know. I might be willing to sell some shares of my future earnings. We'll have to figure out something that is a good deal for both of us.
Be sure to resteem this so we can get the most ideas possible (and if it helps me get more votes, well, so be it. haha)
Don't forget to upvote and follow me to help me continue to research and bring you guys quality posts. Thanks!
Good post, Joe. Regarding an open reward window, consider that as time goes on there will be a cumulative diminishing of each bit of the rewards pie each new post can get, because it is also competing against the whole history of the blockchain. I think there's certainly room to increase it from 7 days to something longer, however. I've also posted before about my "reverse curation" idea. I won't bore you again with the details ;) , but I can fill anyone in on the idea if they want to hear it.
Regarding this, I'm planning on recycling some of my old posts when I get a bigger reach.
Regarding your 'investing in people' idea, I think this is an excellent idea. I'm going to have to come back to the rest of the post, as it's still too early in the day (4pm) for my mind to be firing on all cylinders... ;)
I think you're right, the more I think about getting rewards indefinitely, the less I like it. I think recycling old content could work just as well. I look forward to your further thoughts. :)
The 7 day limit and all the rest of it is due to technical limitations for sure. It all comes down to anonymity and spam prevention etc. At some point, I think we might need to make major changes to the chain or node system in order to close these security holes and be able to expand on more sustainable grounds.
However, these ideas that you mention would be ripe for testing with the new SMTs. Basically, all sorts of features could be implemented as opt-in, either entirely or to be required on particular Steem apps/sites. That way we can "simulate" another token used to reward blogging/verification and either keep the simulation, or make it a permanent feature of Steem itself at some point.
Interesting! I'm starting to get excited the more I learn about SMTs. Thanks for your comment!
I was agreeing with your above article, but then you changed your mind because of 'revo', so now I'm off on my own again.
You are looking at the ideas just from your point of view. Here is what I think (I have made my arguments with some of the whales, but I was ignored).
I found an author who is posting a page or two of their novel per day. They were on post eighty-something. I liked what I read, so I looked for the url for post 1. For all those eighty-something posts, I cannot thank the author with an upvote. I think it is wrong! (Never mind that she had already finished another novel which i got to read without rewarding the author).
Basically, I see these kind of rules as the equivalent of politicians (and corporate dictators) who think they are entitled to limit us so that we are forced to live according to rules that suit them.
For instance, another pet peeve. I had someone mention a mistake in grammar and I wanted to correct it. However, the 'edit' button had been removed. It means that for as long as the blockchain exists, anyone who reads my post is going to have to read the shitty version. I reposted a corrected version, but then was warned that the community frowns on reposting and cheeta could flag me. It nearly made me leave Steemit.
I am not an anarchist, but I do not see why rules that limit our freedom exist just so as to suit the few.
EDIT:
PS. If YouTube can reward you for your video for as long as people watch it, I hate to think that Steemit is more small-minded. Hmm, what if I asked you to advertise my product on your site, but I will only pay you for any sales for the first week, month or year! Surely if you are compelled to keep my advert on your site forever, then you should also be rewarded forever?
Or are we against free trade and common sense?
Thanks for your reply! I have been doing a lot of thinking since I first wrote this post and I think I have decided that I agree with my original opinion. Why shouldn't that novel get votes after the first week? If there are less rewards for the new content, so what? What about the old content now? Why is it worth any less?
There might be a technical reason why you can't receive rewards after the first week, but if not, it should be done! I think it is the same with editing. I think after a certain amount of time, the post is locked into the blockchain and it can't be edited. But if they can think of a way to make it so you can, that would be great.
Thanks for letting me know. I took a look at some of the other comments. I understand the points made by most of them though I don't have a clue as to what SMT's are.
As for the comment by 'nedspeaks', I maybe have not understood, but I did not think the point of our comments was that we want to deprive investors, we were, well, I was, hoping for a way for talent to be rewarded, instead of those who only concentrate on clicking posts. I just saw one of my posts has had 19 votes, but only 4 visitors! I don't want those votes, I want the 'missing' visitors/readers!
By the way, guess which was my best rewarded post? When you opened the post, all it had was one word!
Heck, if people decide my stories were worth reading, they are more than likely going to tell themselves, let me give this story an upvote, I enjoyed it/it made me think/it made me feel...or whatever. That would mean far more to me.
Exactly, it is about making connections and learning from each other. Then, as an added bonus, people might reward us with some steem.
People have tried everything possible. Because it is a business the only way you can be rewarded is invest in the business and buy steem. If not then do it for the love of blogging. The pool is limited and if steemit does not give back to investors, they will leave. So Steemit will never reward quality posts. It will reward investment. I am appreciative of your thoughts. Don’t take my replay as a negative. It’s just business.
Hey, thanks for your reply! I think you have a great point. I am all for investors making money. But they also should want the product to get better (in theory) so that their investment grows. Otherwise something better will come around. I would like to support steemit and see the project grow. I think the best way to do that is by helping the best content get found. I'm not ready to give up yet.
More power to you joe
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