Do you Believe?

As I was about to poor my beer to sit down and crank out a quick power up post I decided that it wouldn't suffice tonight. Instead I wanted to share my thoughts prediction belief in what is to come for @pifc. This isn't going to be a cheerleading post but rather some thoughts on what can be done and needs to be done to help new members coming onto steemit. Hopefully this will show my belief for what can be achieved long term with the proper support from the community.

Short term there are plans already in the works to start new contests and help steemians have a place to engage with other steemians and earn rewards/prizes at the same time. We have had a nice influx of Pay It Forward minded people coming into the PIF Discord room and it's only the beginning. Delegations have come in and I fully expect as we grow more will come in to turn @pifc into a force that can make a difference. But what is the long term vision...what is beyond a discord room and contests? Why do all of this? What belief fuels all the effort that goes into the Pay It Forward Movement?

I'd like to talk about the start of every steemians journey. How we get started and what it looks like these days.

Someone Arrives on Steemit, Now What?

When someone first arrives on steemit they are lost. They tend to look at the tabs across the top of their screen finding the tabs and Trending is first. Naturally they want to know what is trending and when they go there they see a bunch of bullshit posts who are earning hundreds of dollars in rewards. They see these posts and think this is what I need to do if I want to make money...real money here on steemit.

But the truth is those people are only there because they have enough SBD or Steem to buy their way there, it's not because anyone actually likes their content. While they are making a return on their investment it's not nearly as high as one might expect as most of the money earned went to paying for votes to get the rewards they are getting. More important to play that game you already need hundreds of dollars worth of SBD to buy your votes in the first place. IMO these are not the people to emulate and they set up new people to have unrealistic expectations and ultimately set them up for failure.

At some point a person realizes they should make an introduction post. Many spend hours writing, editing, figuring out how to upload photos, and so forth. For this effort they are rewarded with the following:

• spammed by countless bots which are a waste of space on steemit and offer no value
• spammed by the "follow me and I'll follow you" bots
• spammed by the "follow me and I'll follow you" humans
• spammed by scammers and then the bots warning not to click on the scammers link (these are good bots!)
• spammed by the cut/paste "welcome to steemit come to our discord channel because we are the best" people
• spammed by the "welcome to steemit" comments who don't upvote the post, but upvote their comment huge so they earn more then the post itself jackasses. You all really should be ashamed of yourselves.

Then just maybe they are lucky enough to get a comment or two from real humans who found the post and read it. A comment showing they actually read the introduction and cared enough to say a few words. They took a little time to give a little encouragement without wanting or expecting anything in return. These people if they arrive might be the only positive experience someone has with their introduction post. The rest are just a ton of reasons not to post on steemit again...seriously do you like spam? Unless you are from Hawaii I don't know anyone that does.

So what can be done to help the brand new person?

See I truly believe long term @pifc can create a group of people to help welcome people to steemit. Once they see someone that appears to have potential to watch them for a few weeks still giving some encouraging words and maybe linking to some posts which will help that person avoid the "resteem services" which might be the largest scam on steemit, teach them some basic formatting concepts/code, teach them about plagiarism and why they need to post original content, and so forth. Idea being at first we just help guide the new fish in how to swim, but don't bombard them with discord channels, contests, and so forth. Just keep them away from trouble and hopefully help them on the path towards being a valued steemian.

Once @pifc is running at full power we will be spinning off some extra SBD that can be used to reward those willing to help newbies in this way. Kind of an onboarding team. This will be down the road, at least the ability to reward those doing the task will be down the road. Near term I hope to test the concept out and get posts written that will be available long term to link to.

From there I believe we can then help newbies by directing them to great groups including @pifc that offer assistance in helping curate minnows and below. Those groups who are there to help grow small members of steemit and help create a real middle class of steemit which will help steemit grow and become truly sustainable. Groups that will help upvote content and speed up the growth process of those we are helping.

As the newbies have been guided along a path towards success from the @pifc team I truly believe we can make a real difference in steemit's turnover rate. Helping keep more members here on steemit long term vs jumping on and leaving after a couple weeks or months. By giving people the chance to become part of a real sincere community of people that want to help each other grow I truly believe that we can make a long term difference in the lives of many future steemians.

Belief

Feel that steemit members as a whole know we need something beyond groups like @curie who are designed for a one time rewarding of a great post. That steemit as a whole knows that the handful of whales like @surpassinggoogle who support minnows can't do this all on their own. Yes there are many other great efforts out there and Orcas, Whales, and Dolphins doing their part to support smaller fish, but there just isn't a true onboarding process designed to help take a brand new person and show them how to become a valuable member of steemit.

My belief is over time that while we will never be able to help everyone that @pifc will be able to take enough steemians and show them the correct path towards long term success.

Now this process isn't going to be easy and there are so many hurdles to deal with. But I know that with the collective minds of those who already support @pifc that we can come up with a solid plan on how to go about this. I truly believe that some of the best people on steemit already are here supporting the idea that we need to help others and in return good things will come. Those with a true Pay It Forward Mentality are here and ready to find ways to help even more people.

Tag & Resteem

Please tag others who you think might be able to help with ideas or support and resteem this post to give greater exposure.

Next Steps for @pifc

So the long term vision is great for @pifc, but what is about to happen now? How are we moving forward and what should you all expect in the next few weeks?

1. We are currently at just over 1,600sp in delegations and will be moving the Pay It Forward Curation Contest over starting next week.
2. We have a new contest that will start up next week. Wanted it started this week, but with vacation there just was no way to get it started.
3. We also will have a Pay It Forward Spotlight Post which will come out once per week curating the great posts written by @pifc members. Each featured blog post will get an SBI share from me directly until @pifc can afford to pay for this or someone offers to sponsor these.

Current Delegation List

Here are the members who are making this all possible. Without the support of these members @pifc would not be able to give upvotes large enough to launch the Pay It Forward Movement. Hope that we can pull in a few more delegations over the next few days before we launch the contest, but this is a great starting point! Thank you to all of these amazing people who are giving without asking for anything in return.

@kaliju | 500.123 SP
@eroche | 10.004 SP
@bjgeese | 500.374 SP
@anlurob | 50.038 SP
@roleerob | 50.038 SP
@erodedthoughts | 250.191 SP
@energyaddict22 | 250.210 SP

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Well this was a multi beer post and took a little longer then expected. Really hope that people understand that short term we will do our best to crank out some great contests and contest to support newer members, but long term @pifc is here to help build a much stronger Steemit as a couple hundred people at the top with a massive turnover rate for everyone else just isn't acceptable. We do need support to make this happen and how things progress will largely be based on what support flows in.

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Photo was taken by me at MSI Chicago.