it is my personal belief that Steemit cannot scale until communities are implemented, there is only so much content that can fit in 1 bucket. Once communities are rolled out (hopefully soon) a referral system would definitely juice things up! I would go for a $ of earnings...something like 1% for lifetime.
I hate this idea. Users are already not earning enough. People will invite other for financial reasons only. You have just created financial overhead of whoch we have already too much.
Ie longterm this is just going to be bad for price of steem.
If you really want to create incentive to onboard people give referrals 10$ or something in that range.
I would be ok with referrals being rewarded with promotion. So, for example, every referral who signs up earns promotion credit (SBD?) that can be used for selected articles(your own or someone elses) but cannot be withdrawn.
I like the idea of communities and have thought about the same thing myself. I do not quite understand what you mean by 1% for a lifetime and if its related to the communities/groups or a referral.
Thank you for input, brother! You are right, communities will be killer feature to grow. I believe it is coming soon with couple month, I see some development on Github. Referrals I believe is extra to push grow further and quicker :)
A percentage of that user's future earnings seems like the better option as it keeps people from just creating new accounts to collect some set amount of steem as a reward... also it saves steemit.inc money in that they don't have to pay out the steem.
Regarding the actual percentage of their earnings, perhaps somewhere in the range of 1%-5%...? Now the question becomes, is that feasible?
Overall I think a referral reward system is what will take the user base to the next level... can you imagine people holding steem promotion/signup conferences all over the world?! :)
I dont think thats a good idea. The platform should remail long term rewards in sharing content, curating or investing. That would create a ponzi squeme.
The platform should remail long term rewards in sharing content, curating or investing.
A referral program wouldn't change any of this, it would only add another way to earn steem.
That would create a ponzi squeme.
A ponzi scheme requires new participants to invest their own money, how is a referral program a ponzi scheme? Plenty of legitimate website uses referral programs because it's the most efficient way of getting the word out, coinbase have a referral program , is coinbase a ponzi?
Everyone will be able to take advantage of the referral program. You will be sharing 1% with the person who invited you but you will also be able to refer many users which would make up for the percentage loss. A lifetime program encourages long term marketing.
I agree with @ender, we should not go into lifetime earnings from others, that is just building Steemit out on terms of finance than anything else. See my other comments to this post regarding my opinion to fees for referrals.
You are right! With upcoming beneficiaries feature we have number of use cases and my hope is to gather some input from community to see what range would be viable or if this type of referrals would work and scale...
Not everyone knows about the esteem app and what it does, so i think it would get more coverage on steemit, from partnering up with the contests being run by @literature-trail
You may be right, but now we don't have special place for promotion posts. You can use promoted filter by burning SBD for now until we have special or editor's pick type of posts
Referral feature YES, but I do not think this needs to be rewarded at all with some lifetime percentage of earnings of the new users a user referred. This will build pyramids! When a reward, then only one time fee. But, I also think that when we have the referral feature, it'll be used by any users that likes Steemit anyway, even if it is without any incentive! The referral method shall be super super simple and users will start to press the referral button, am pretty sure of that.
ok but where does that one time fee come from? Also what is to stop people from creating tons of new sock puppet accounts just to collect that one time fee?
I not technical enough to understand what can be implemented in a way that abuse cannot happen. Therefore I would say: no rewards to referrals if 1-time-fee is prone to abuse.
@good-karma, this is an important topic, so thank for bringing it up!
For me, the primary purpose of some kind of referral tracking (for all "versions" of Steemit) isn't really about rewards, but about knowing whether anybody is "listening" when I mention Steemit, outside the Steemit framework.
Let's hypothetically say I write a Steemit post called something like "Why I'm not hanging around on Facebook much, these days" and write a nice intro to Steemit. And distribute it in "my usual places." I did this with a "non-Steemit" related post a few weeks back, and it got about 1300 reads... so I at least know that my offsite followers read my stuff.
So, let's say I set this article free and include an "if this sounds interesting to you, click here to come join me!" link. Groovy. Some people will probably take a chance and do it.
BUT NOW... how do I know that somebody signed up as a result of my efforts? My issue is that I just want to be connected to these folks, somehow... because we're "selling" this as a community, and as a community member, I should at least be able to automatically follow these new people. That makes sense, right? What's more, it would be nice if they were "auto-followed" in a separate category called "referrals." So I know that they joined.
It would be even cooler if we had a message system here on Steemit (Yes, I know, busy.org has one... but I'm on Steemit, right now) so I could actually send them a personal message to (a) welcome them and (b) help/encourage them to start posting and become active. Again, that's what a community does. Or a least should do.
Now, for the rewards? Speaking from 20+ years of experience in user-generated content sites, the SINGLE BIGGEST ISSUE with "referral members" is basically "dead accounts." The REASON so many accounts end up dead as a result of referrals is that rewards are given simply for getting someone to sign up. Sooooo, I persuade 300 people to sign up to get my "rewards" and none of them ever post anything... STUPID... it's a financial drain and a waste of space.
So I would propose that IF there were to be rewards attached, it should be something along the lines of the referrer getting a 1% "royalty" of the referree's active posting rewards WHEN, and ONLY when they reach 1000SP, or something like that. In other words, I only would get rewards for someone who (a) posts regularly (or invests cash) and (b) doesn't just come in and cashes out every time they have $2 to their name... which is another "plague" that falls on reward based sites.
Sorry to go on at such length... but the experience of ALL BUT ONE SITE of this type having shut down in the course of 20 years... often over the issue of mismanaging referrals (usually in service of wanting to grow too fast), tells me it's something that has to be carefully planned and implemented with the utmost of care.
Let's not shoot the goose that's laying golden eggs!
It would be even cooler if we had a message system here on Steemit (Yes, I know, busy.org has one... but I'm on Steemit, right now)
The fact that there is still no messaging on steemit blows my mind.
The REASON so many accounts end up dead as a result of referrals is that rewards are given simply for getting someone to sign up
If steem implement a referral system users would earn a certain percentage of referred users's rewards indefinetely.
It would be very difficult to give a reward per sign up without the system being gamed and abused. Centralized websites can do it because of KYC.
Well, I wouldn't want people to get a referral reward simply for signing people up... as you say, that would open up the system for being gamed and abused-- seen it happen lots of time. Mostly, I just want to be able to track people who sign up... so I can connect with them, and encourage them... which brings us back to the messaging system... MUCH needed.
It would be very difficult to give a reward per sign up without the system being gamed and abused. Centralized websites can do it because of KYC.
Then implement a referral system without rewards. See my other comments to this post why I do not believe in indefinate referrals. It'll create pyramids of split earnings and I can tell you, some will be very focused on this and in the end will sit back, do nothing on Steemit and take quite a bit of earnings. I think Steemit should not provide such changes, Steemit will grow even with a rewarded referral feature.
A topic I was wondering about when I joined - while referral incentive is a driver to bring in people it certainly still has the opportunity to game the system. I have been on a lot referral based platforms in the last years and I do think we better skip that for now. It will create new fights I am sure - even there are only beneficiary reward unless you start posting and earning reward through contribution - doors are open within the rules to more or less game.
A referral program wouldn't make the system more gameable than it currently is.
Someone could create multiple accounts all linked to his main account, but then if he wants to earn 1% from each account he will have to post a lot from all these accounts. Basically he could just post from his main account or even create sockpuppets to post and that would be the same. There is more incentives to post your content from your main account to build up a reputation than posting all your content from different accounts anyway.
Exactly, thanks brother for clarifying idea on other comments! I think, once it is designed properly, educating people on how it works should be easy...Referral design in post still require few things to be fully functional :)
Fingers crossed @snowflake - another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels? It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote - if whales have agreed to do so. User can delegate / lend their SP now to various sub accounts so it is not too obvious. That would not even be gaming the system as it is allowed via rules but people will see and recognise and a fight might start - however the community has the chance to handle such instance too (in theory).
But what is gaming the system? Wikipedia says: Gaming the system (also referred to as gaming the rules, bending the rules, abusing the system, cheating the system, milking the system, playing the system, or working the system) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.
I do hope people will play fair and the community is ruling it by themselves - saw similar things happening on other platforms which resulted in favorism battles and marked the end of some platforms - Thanks fro commenting @snowflake
another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels?
The system that I envision is not MLM, it is a simple referral system where you earn from users that you have invited. So it's one level. You won't earn rewards from users invited by your own referred users. In such scheme you have to take a bigger and bigger percentage on new users to reward all intermediaries, this is really bad.
The best is to have a simple one level referral system where new users have the same chance to earn reward by inviting new users.
It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote
You don't need whale support to incentivize youtubers with a referral program.
Imagine a youtuber with more than 100k subs. This person post his invite link on youtube and promote steemit. He will probably get at least a thousands people join steemit.
Now let's take a conservative number here, say the average person earn $1 per day from posting reward, so all of them combined earn $1000 per day. That means this youtuber will earn $10 per day or $300 per month just for having posted a link on youtube.
One level is good and I agree - the other point I might need to elaborate a bit more - let me think and try to explain in proper Englisch, my brain is too germanised still @snowflake - bear with me - just need to do my tax today but revert back :-)
We doubt if referral system is MLM! MLM constitutes deeper things. This is referral system is plain to see if it happens but what comes first, is steemit getting ready to host the masses especially interface-wise, which is in the making!
Great thoughts!
Thanks for they input!
Right, if we can reach consensus between different apps, it should then be adopted and used in all apps. But given the nature of network (decentralized) each app can have different incentive mechanism to onboard users... From all inputs so far I think, 0.5 - 1% should be good and can be changed occasionally with promotion or marketing, holiday challenges etc.
But given the nature of network (decentralized) each app can have different incentive mechanism to onboard users
That's why it should be on chain. People were crying because dash has such good marketing, we can have our marketing on chain too :-)
Every app is using steem to register new accounts.
Maybe 3 % of the earnings of every recruited new member would be fair, but in my opinion that should last only for a certain time period, for example for one year (or six months), after this period everybody should be "free" and have the right to keep 100 % of his profit for himself. :-)
it is my personal belief that Steemit cannot scale until communities are implemented, there is only so much content that can fit in 1 bucket. Once communities are rolled out (hopefully soon) a referral system would definitely juice things up! I would go for a $ of earnings...something like 1% for lifetime.
I hate this idea. Users are already not earning enough. People will invite other for financial reasons only. You have just created financial overhead of whoch we have already too much.
Ie longterm this is just going to be bad for price of steem.
If you really want to create incentive to onboard people give referrals 10$ or something in that range.
I agree with you!
When reward for referral, this shall be limited to an one time reward only IMHO.
I would be ok with referrals being rewarded with promotion. So, for example, every referral who signs up earns promotion credit (SBD?) that can be used for selected articles(your own or someone elses) but cannot be withdrawn.
I like the idea of communities and have thought about the same thing myself. I do not quite understand what you mean by 1% for a lifetime and if its related to the communities/groups or a referral.
they are unrelated but I was just putting this out so that we don't put the horse behind the cart.
Got ya, thanks for clarifying
Thank you for input, brother! You are right, communities will be killer feature to grow. I believe it is coming soon with couple month, I see some development on Github. Referrals I believe is extra to push grow further and quicker :)
Absolutely right, hopefully this gets out soon. I really want to invite my friends over steemit.
A percentage of that user's future earnings seems like the better option as it keeps people from just creating new accounts to collect some set amount of steem as a reward... also it saves steemit.inc money in that they don't have to pay out the steem.
Regarding the actual percentage of their earnings, perhaps somewhere in the range of 1%-5%...? Now the question becomes, is that feasible?
Overall I think a referral reward system is what will take the user base to the next level... can you imagine people holding steem promotion/signup conferences all over the world?! :)
I dont think thats a good idea. The platform should remail long term rewards in sharing content, curating or investing. That would create a ponzi squeme.
A referral program wouldn't change any of this, it would only add another way to earn steem.
A ponzi scheme requires new participants to invest their own money, how is a referral program a ponzi scheme? Plenty of legitimate website uses referral programs because it's the most efficient way of getting the word out, coinbase have a referral program , is coinbase a ponzi?
Lifetime 1 percent seems like a lot maybe 1 percent for 1 year
Everyone will be able to take advantage of the referral program. You will be sharing 1% with the person who invited you but you will also be able to refer many users which would make up for the percentage loss. A lifetime program encourages long term marketing.
I agree with @ender, we should not go into lifetime earnings from others, that is just building Steemit out on terms of finance than anything else. See my other comments to this post regarding my opinion to fees for referrals.
You are right! With upcoming beneficiaries feature we have number of use cases and my hope is to gather some input from community to see what range would be viable or if this type of referrals would work and scale...
You can get eSteem referals from the ongoing contests on @literature trail
You mean promotion not referral right?!
Yes
I have been thinking about promotion of posts on eSteem, will make a post about in-depth once implementation of this feature is ready 😉
Not everyone knows about the esteem app and what it does, so i think it would get more coverage on steemit, from partnering up with the contests being run by @literature-trail
You may be right, but now we don't have special place for promotion posts. You can use promoted filter by burning SBD for now until we have special or editor's pick type of posts
CAn you send me the download link for the Esteem App, I would like to introduce it on the contest I aam running for new Steemians
Referral feature YES, but I do not think this needs to be rewarded at all with some lifetime percentage of earnings of the new users a user referred. This will build pyramids! When a reward, then only one time fee. But, I also think that when we have the referral feature, it'll be used by any users that likes Steemit anyway, even if it is without any incentive! The referral method shall be super super simple and users will start to press the referral button, am pretty sure of that.
ok but where does that one time fee come from? Also what is to stop people from creating tons of new sock puppet accounts just to collect that one time fee?
I not technical enough to understand what can be implemented in a way that abuse cannot happen. Therefore I would say: no rewards to referrals if 1-time-fee is prone to abuse.
So now you fuck users that use referrals.
@good-karma, this is an important topic, so thank for bringing it up!
For me, the primary purpose of some kind of referral tracking (for all "versions" of Steemit) isn't really about rewards, but about knowing whether anybody is "listening" when I mention Steemit, outside the Steemit framework.
Let's hypothetically say I write a Steemit post called something like "Why I'm not hanging around on Facebook much, these days" and write a nice intro to Steemit. And distribute it in "my usual places." I did this with a "non-Steemit" related post a few weeks back, and it got about 1300 reads... so I at least know that my offsite followers read my stuff.
So, let's say I set this article free and include an "if this sounds interesting to you, click here to come join me!" link. Groovy. Some people will probably take a chance and do it.
BUT NOW... how do I know that somebody signed up as a result of my efforts? My issue is that I just want to be connected to these folks, somehow... because we're "selling" this as a community, and as a community member, I should at least be able to automatically follow these new people. That makes sense, right? What's more, it would be nice if they were "auto-followed" in a separate category called "referrals." So I know that they joined.
It would be even cooler if we had a message system here on Steemit (Yes, I know, busy.org has one... but I'm on Steemit, right now) so I could actually send them a personal message to (a) welcome them and (b) help/encourage them to start posting and become active. Again, that's what a community does. Or a least should do.
Now, for the rewards? Speaking from 20+ years of experience in user-generated content sites, the SINGLE BIGGEST ISSUE with "referral members" is basically "dead accounts." The REASON so many accounts end up dead as a result of referrals is that rewards are given simply for getting someone to sign up. Sooooo, I persuade 300 people to sign up to get my "rewards" and none of them ever post anything... STUPID... it's a financial drain and a waste of space.
So I would propose that IF there were to be rewards attached, it should be something along the lines of the referrer getting a 1% "royalty" of the referree's active posting rewards WHEN, and ONLY when they reach 1000SP, or something like that. In other words, I only would get rewards for someone who (a) posts regularly (or invests cash) and (b) doesn't just come in and cashes out every time they have $2 to their name... which is another "plague" that falls on reward based sites.
Sorry to go on at such length... but the experience of ALL BUT ONE SITE of this type having shut down in the course of 20 years... often over the issue of mismanaging referrals (usually in service of wanting to grow too fast), tells me it's something that has to be carefully planned and implemented with the utmost of care.
Let's not shoot the goose that's laying golden eggs!
The fact that there is still no messaging on steemit blows my mind.
If steem implement a referral system users would earn a certain percentage of referred users's rewards indefinetely.
It would be very difficult to give a reward per sign up without the system being gamed and abused. Centralized websites can do it because of KYC.
Well, I wouldn't want people to get a referral reward simply for signing people up... as you say, that would open up the system for being gamed and abused-- seen it happen lots of time. Mostly, I just want to be able to track people who sign up... so I can connect with them, and encourage them... which brings us back to the messaging system... MUCH needed.
Then implement a referral system without rewards. See my other comments to this post why I do not believe in indefinate referrals. It'll create pyramids of split earnings and I can tell you, some will be very focused on this and in the end will sit back, do nothing on Steemit and take quite a bit of earnings. I think Steemit should not provide such changes, Steemit will grow even with a rewarded referral feature.
Good points you bring up...Dead accounts are not issue in this case because they work only after they start earning by contributing.
A topic I was wondering about when I joined - while referral incentive is a driver to bring in people it certainly still has the opportunity to game the system. I have been on a lot referral based platforms in the last years and I do think we better skip that for now. It will create new fights I am sure - even there are only beneficiary reward unless you start posting and earning reward through contribution - doors are open within the rules to more or less game.
A referral program wouldn't make the system more gameable than it currently is.
Someone could create multiple accounts all linked to his main account, but then if he wants to earn 1% from each account he will have to post a lot from all these accounts. Basically he could just post from his main account or even create sockpuppets to post and that would be the same. There is more incentives to post your content from your main account to build up a reputation than posting all your content from different accounts anyway.
What kind of fights? please elaborate..
Exactly, thanks brother for clarifying idea on other comments! I think, once it is designed properly, educating people on how it works should be easy...Referral design in post still require few things to be fully functional :)
Fingers crossed @snowflake - another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels? It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote - if whales have agreed to do so. User can delegate / lend their SP now to various sub accounts so it is not too obvious. That would not even be gaming the system as it is allowed via rules but people will see and recognise and a fight might start - however the community has the chance to handle such instance too (in theory).
But what is gaming the system? Wikipedia says:
Gaming the system (also referred to as gaming the rules, bending the rules, abusing the system, cheating the system, milking the system, playing the system, or working the system) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.
I do hope people will play fair and the community is ruling it by themselves - saw similar things happening on other platforms which resulted in favorism battles and marked the end of some platforms - Thanks fro commenting @snowflake
The system that I envision is not MLM, it is a simple referral system where you earn from users that you have invited. So it's one level. You won't earn rewards from users invited by your own referred users. In such scheme you have to take a bigger and bigger percentage on new users to reward all intermediaries, this is really bad.
The best is to have a simple one level referral system where new users have the same chance to earn reward by inviting new users.
You don't need whale support to incentivize youtubers with a referral program.
Imagine a youtuber with more than 100k subs. This person post his invite link on youtube and promote steemit. He will probably get at least a thousands people join steemit.
Now let's take a conservative number here, say the average person earn $1 per day from posting reward, so all of them combined earn $1000 per day. That means this youtuber will earn $10 per day or $300 per month just for having posted a link on youtube.
Once someone found the site what is to stop them from making their own new account that gets 100 percent of the reward?
The referral program could be invite only. That would make it even more attractive to marketers
One level is good and I agree - the other point I might need to elaborate a bit more - let me think and try to explain in proper Englisch, my brain is too germanised still @snowflake - bear with me - just need to do my tax today but revert back :-)
MLM systems its proven it doesnt work... in the long run
We doubt if referral system is MLM! MLM constitutes deeper things. This is referral system is plain to see if it happens but what comes first, is steemit getting ready to host the masses especially interface-wise, which is in the making!
Great thoughts!
Exactly!
SPOT ON!
Afaik, it helps growth and it is not entirely MLM if done right.
I agree 100% and wrote a post about this recently actually
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/unleashing-the-power-of-wom-could-a-decentralized-referral-system-be-possible
Maybe that will be part of new marketing strategy from new marketing guy and new announcement later this week.
Between 1% and 3%. Invitation should be mandatory if you don't want people to dodge refcodes.
Thanks for they input!
Right, if we can reach consensus between different apps, it should then be adopted and used in all apps. But given the nature of network (decentralized) each app can have different incentive mechanism to onboard users... From all inputs so far I think, 0.5 - 1% should be good and can be changed occasionally with promotion or marketing, holiday challenges etc.
That's why it should be on chain. People were crying because dash has such good marketing, we can have our marketing on chain too :-)
Every app is using steem to register new accounts.
perfect
yeah, exactly it is your thing Craig :)
Maybe 3 % of the earnings of every recruited new member would be fair, but in my opinion that should last only for a certain time period, for example for one year (or six months), after this period everybody should be "free" and have the right to keep 100 % of his profit for himself. :-)