Grow Steemit Grow - A Viable Referral System with Steemit Spirit in Mind
The Referral System Should Mirror the Values of Steemit
Many posts have been questions about a referral system. Steemit has, "...a kind of built-in referral system." according to the developer, in which you refer friends and then they will upvote you with their free steem. This feels more like an incentive to create multiple accounts to abuse the system. The short-term reward is little and the long term reward is less, especially without a good way to see the posts of people you follow.
This is not about the negative, though.
As a community we all want growth, and in my research, I found the article linked below about PayPal's rapid growth. I was glad to hear Ned and Dan reference PayPal referral system which companies like Dropbox and Airbnb(article here).
Referral Candy article featuring an interview with Elon Musk on PayPal's referral program.
The Solution
We treat referrals like blog posts. Active members with a good reputation should be the deciding factor for rewarding referrals and a form of quality control to enrich the community.
How does the reward work?
- Each referral of a new member will have a potential reward capped at... Say 10SD.
- Then over time the referral reward will be filled based on the new user's contributions and upvotes.
- The more valued they are the faster that 10SD is reached.
- For new users who can't out perform the basic bots, it will take long time for the referrer receive the full portion of their reward.
- Incentive to refer active members.
- Referrer's will be encouraged to engage their referrals providing, education, encouragement, and upvotes.
- We will attract blogger's with large followings due to the new earnings model.
- For the reasons there are so many popular steem-help posts.
- Steem can be confusing even if you are familiar with crypto currencies.
- If the referrer has enough power to upvote a post to make that dollars amount move it will provide encouragement. Also it will further encourage referrers to seek out good referrals they are willing to upvote.
- Combat attrition from all the reason mentioned above.
The referral program should be seen as an investment; therefore, the algorithm should seek to balance of quantity of votes and steem power. The referral program is about bringing on active real people with a long-term goal of having an active full community. I dislike when I see posts with 100's of votes and little reward and other posts with 40 votes and huge rewards. The referral program should seek to reach the reward cap of the average user in 1-2 years, and like bitcoin mining the average user's activity should dynamically change as difficulty changes in comparison with the mining power.
-Thank you and I look forward to your feedback.
Creators' Interview on the issue
Related Posts:
InstaSteem Classical Conditioning for Social Media - It's not about the money anymore.
I like that there are minds like you thinking about ways to improve the Steemit experience. This is the reason I invested in STEEM, it is the power of the people at work here. Upvoted you for visibility. Hope you succeed in your plans...
Thank you! I hope that the "Steemit experience" proliferates into the global culture in which society will begin to value creativity over money. Crypto was a great step and Steemit can be the next one.
Well said.
This is exactly what steemit needs, you hit the hammer on the head there.
A financial incetivized referal system will bring more steemers way faster then any billboard campaign or race car for sure.
Keep up the great work @tralawar
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this is a great article and should be taken into consideration, referrals indeed will make this community more richer..specially to those who dont know steem yet and has excellent work vlogs and blogs
The referral program can be something like for every person you sign up you get whatever the sign up bonus is added to your Steem Power. Although, the user you signed up would have to do a certain amount of posts or something to keep it fair.
I thought of this option and the reason I shy away from it is because it becomes a multi-level marketing (MLM), which would most likely fuel the Ponzi scheme fire. I strongly feel a cap on the reward that is more or less earned by choosing strong referrals or help the not so strong ones along will a more uplifted vibe in the community. I can easily picture anger rants about the people who got in earlier are siphoning off most the reward for doing nothing, even if they are doing things. With everything transparent it would be easy to choose targets for negative rants.
just great