[Sndbox] My Amazing First Two Weeks w/ Steemit’s Creative Incubator + Ideas for the Future

Sndbox is a digital & physical community that helps to onboard and retain talented people to Steem.

You can find info here: https://steemit.com/toolkit/@sndbox/master-toolkit-steemit-resources-sndbox-updates

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_{(note: This post was directly inspired by @fingersik’s post a few days ago: https://steemit.com/sndbox/@fingersik/sndbox-first-week-report-brainstorm-about-possible-improvements)}

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When I received a message from @hansikhouse asking if I would join Sndbox… the answer was obvious: YES! I’ve been a huge fan of his work with @voronoi in the @hitheryon collective, particularly their Steem Park project: (https://steemit.com/steempark/@hitheryon/the-official-recount-of-steem-park-s-opening)

In fact, to this day I believe that Steem Park is the single greatest grassroots project to happen on Steem. It’s a physical installation representing Steem in a busy park in Brooklyn. That's awesome.

Joining Sndbox

_{image by user @invein from the Sndbox thumbnail competition}

The idea behind Sndbox is simple: They offer tons of resources to help Steemians succeed. Members range from long-time Steemians like myself (I joined in January, back when Steems were at the all-time low price of $0.07) to brand new users that join specifically to take part in Sndbox.

It’s a group of active creatives in a variety of fields: Philosophy, music, architecture, and much more. The tribe is full of industrious and generous people, trying to improve the world through ambitious creative work.

One huge benefit of participating is that members are able to get full power upvotes from the Sndbox account, to a maximum of 1 per day. This has been a huge game changer for me, because it lets me know I have a guaranteed payout for some posts.

Of course - there are high standards for that vote. You have to make a great post, and Sndbox recommends guidelines for the number of words, images, and the post format. For me it’s been amazing, because the guaranteed upvote means I can spend 2-3 hours crafting an excellent post and know that I’ll get some reward for it.

Overall, the biggest benefits of Sndbox are the combination of community and guaranteed minimum reward. It creates an upward spiral of collaboration, distribution (posts hitting the “hot” page more often), and better content creation.

Increased Responsibility

_{Image used with permission from pixabay}

One side-effect of Sndbox is that I feel a greater responsibility to be the best Steemian I can be.

As a rule of thumb, I try to give back 3-5x as much value as I receive in any situation. This is how I try to pay it forward and make life as cool as possible… and with Sndbox, the job of giving back has become much larger.

Being accountable for your actions is a great thing. For me, as an independent freelancer / artist type, it’s particularly useful to have a community to be accountable to. So, the increased responsibility of being a part of Sndbox is a GREAT THING.

Ideas for Improvement

_{original artwork :-D}

So far I think Sndbox is absolutely on the right track.

The biggest improvements for me would be anything that increases post visibility. It’s no secret that on Steem, post views are generally very low. Great users with excellent content may struggle to get more than 100 views on a post… which is crazy!

Anything that Sndbox can do to increase the Steemit viewership will be a huge service to the platform. A few ideas:

(1) Using a % of Sndbox’s membership fee to pay for advertising that sends new users from other social networks (FB, Instagram, Reddit) to Steemit, specifically to posts by Sndbox members (which should be consistently high quality, thus a good starting point for new readers). This could boost views in the short term - the question is, would these new people stick around and keep reading?

(2) Resteeming the best of the best Sndbox posts on its own account, or even building partnerships with the most popular steemians and getting THEM to resteem it, thus creating a larger distribution network for Sndbox content.

(3) Performing Data Analysis on Sndbox posts, or even Steem as a whole, to help Sndbox members understand what topics, keywords, strategies, etc are most effective to reach the largest number of people. I would be very curious to know what the top 10% of Sndbox posts are, and to see the commonalities among those posts.

Beyond that, I hope that the idea of building sub-communities within Sndbox can come to fruition - for example, a music crew, an architecture/urban planning community, and many more besides. The challenge is: can we maintain a high standard of quality as Sndbox expands?

I am hoping that as the months go by, more and more Steemians will come to see a Sndbox logo as a sign of great content. A brand they can trust.

And I’ll be doing everything that I can to contribute and help to grow this wonderful incubator… it’s a great project.

Thanks again @hansikhouse and @voronoi, you are both huge inspirations to me!

:-)