In my last post I alluded the concepts of “Steem”, “Steem Power”, “Steem Dollars”, “$figure” being a potential banana skin in terms of people’s expectations. In this post and Part II, I intend to elaborate on this, by drawing on the experience I’ve had communicating the concepts to people I know.

Over the last few days, I've been waxing lyrical about Steemit. Mainly to bloggers, content creators and creative types, people I feel would bring value to the site.

From my experience ‘on the road’, they get the blogging part. They get the curation part. The one reoccurring sticking point is 'how does the money work?'

The money part is just complicated (even to me at times!). This may be necessary. However I think it can be made more simple (and not get in the way of user adoption) but changing the ‘sale pitch’.

Curation will not make you rich!

I first want to start with ‘curation money’. Curation should not be sold as an activity that will make anyone rich. Not to say it won’t make a very small percentage of people rich. It just should not be SOLD as something the majority of people can make significant money on.

I’ll draw an analogy.

Some people can make money off Twitter by sending sponsored tweets. Some people make money on Instagram by shaking their ass. Some people create shill accounts/ automate fake likes to serve their purposes. However the vast majority are not 50 cent or Kim Kardashian so won’t make a cent off of Twitter or Facebook. The vast majority don’t care to.

The difference between Steemit and Twitter, Steemit gives them some rewards for their endeavour (but not much). If at the end of the year, they have a bit of cash to take their ‘significant other’ to the cinema, as compensation for all the time they spent voting for people on ‘that DAMN social media site’, that will probably be adequate. They get nothing for the time they spend elsewhere, besides a warm glow inside.

Sure yes, there are Whale curators that make lots of money, bots that don’t play fair… yada yada yada… however most people are not going to ‘compete’ in that space by curating alone (unless they are a demon sharp shooting voting machine). I don’t think they would care. You know why? Because it’s actually BORING to most people who aren’t into Crypto or computing!

I know a lot of Steemit early adopters come from Crypto. Crypto is a space where they can make x10 or x100 or x1000 returns from a little outlay on an ICO and a little banter on Bitcointalk. The idea of spending a few hours clicking upvotes each week to get some popcorn and a flick at the end of the year is anathema. However to your average Facebook, Twitter, Instagram enthusiast, it’s money for old rope! And that exactly how it should be sold a bit of money for something they would do for free.

What I found when speaking to people, is when I lowballed ‘Curation money’ it worked better and was in line with their expectations.

Describing 'Steem Power' as 'money' doesn’t work

Describing 'Steem Power' as 'money' to people on the street, simply doesn’t work. I say this because it comes with too many caveats. People are used to money being more liquid than Steem power is.

I had a conversation with one of my neighbours, it went something like

"Yes and by the way you can convert Steem power into money.”
“What like money I can put in my bank?”
“Yes… IF withdraw it weekly… over two years in even chunks…”
“Like instalments into my bank?”
“Not into your bank, into a thing called Steem. That thing called Steem you can send to a thing called a Cryptocurrency exchange and exchange it for a thing called Bitcoin. That thing called Bitcoin you'll probably need to withdraw into a different exchange... and blah blah blah blah."

I had lost him. Someone else just said, ‘Oh, you'll sort that bit out for me right and give me the cash?"

Steem power may be money to someone with a crypto or financial bent. Because we know it has value and are comfortable with the methods of getting that into BTC, fiat or whatever. But for people that are not Crypto heads and just see social media as a bit of fun, Steem Power being described as money is just mombojumbo. And worse still, it’s so convoluted that it SOUNDS dodgy.

Voting as a fun altruist pastime

I find curation clicked better with people when I emphasised its altruist value. Most people are like seeing people paid what they’re worth. Most people hate seeing talented people not getting paid or rewarded. When I said things like:

"As a consumer, Steem is like going through your Facebook/ Twitter feed… crap… crap... crap… crap… crap… good! Upvote (instead of like or retweet). The great thing is when you upvote it. The person that provided it gets a little money. If a lot of people like and upvote it, they could get a lot of money. It’s better than the ‘nothing’ they get on Facebook right? Particularly if it’s a blog or artistic piece or something they’ve spent ages doing, they deserve to be compensation over the shareholders at Facebook. Every time you upvote something early, that turns out to be upvoted by lots of people, you get more kudos in the form of Steem Power. It means when you upvote next, the people you upvote get more money because the system knows you’re a great judge of content. IF you keep picking right (and not over vote) you get more and more Steem Power. When I browse find I’m more selective over what I read because I know I could be reading better stuff that people can actually get paid for. Also apparently Steem Power can be converted into cash but it’s complicated and I wouldn’t worry about it until it’s easy to do.”

It helped when I resisted the urge to start talking too much about crypto because that was my agenda, not theirs! (Unless they’re really interested of course)

How can Steemit help me, help Steemit!

I just think we need to lighten up on what voting can do for the mass market. The world is not going to turn into an army of clicking monsters, clucking for the next upvote! People will see as a bit of fun that actually pays talented people.

What might help me ‘pitching’ to people is if Steemit had

*(i)Steem power achievement levels. E.g. You could start wearing 'armband', graduate to ‘swimmer’, progress to ‘dophin, then ‘whale’, ‘steemboat’, ‘steemship’, ‘steemliner…. whatever. Sounds silly but giving incentives outside of $$ for people to want to collect and keep Steem power would appeal to a certain demographic.
*(ii) If people could track how much Steem power they've gathered daily. People like to see how they are doing and compare how they did on previous days. As well as track progress through different levels.
*(iii) if there were leaderboard (global leaderboards and leaderboards you could create for your family/ friends). People like to compare themselves with others (particularly people they know)

Let’s wrap it up, it’s taking too long

There will, of course, be those that will vote as a means of making money (as we’ve discussed in posts of the last couple of days). However I think there is a bigger picture. The “crypto/ whale/ bot market” is tiny compare to the market I see. The social media market. I see a market of people that will use Steemit as a fun way to view great content whilst supporting those who create stuff they like.

We should focus on catering for them.

Just a thought.

If you enjoyed what you read here, don't just 'retweet' it, don't just 'like it' elsewhere. Make sure you sign up and UPVOTE it, here on Steemit and share in the rewards! (Signed up already? Add a strapline to your posts to let others know about Steemit)