How I Sell Skeptics (And The Tech-Un-Savvy) On Steemit - Part #1
Being the true believer in Steem that I am, I often find myself trying to explain to friends or family why they should bother to change their habits and sign up at Steemit. Overcoming a combination of natural skepticism after a lifetime of seeing actual scams, and the inertia of habit can be a tough task.
You must forgive people their skepticism. In fact, you should applaud it. The truth is, I was pitched a multi-level-marketing vacation club scheme at a recent event that was pitched to attendees entirely as a "party". It was just enough of a party to qualify for the title (it had food and alcohol), but the entertainment were several people trying to recruit you for their downline in what amounted to a rotating vacation timeshare.
Add looming financial crises around the world to a financial and Wall-Street culture that Cartman eloquently sums up below, and you must expect to be forced to pass a high bar of evidence to pitch an idea as radical as Steemit, particularly to those that aren't even familiar with Bitcoin.
I'm not a marketer at all, and I tend to approach people purely one-on-one. However, thanks to a recent post by @inquiringtimes on having an elevator pitch ready, I thought I'd dedicate a post to explaining where I start with Steem skeptics.
I tend to begin by explaining Steemit, rather than Steem, as that skips the step of immediately establishing the separation between Steem the currency and Steemit the platform. This lets you establish a connection between a website they will know, such as Reddit or Facebook, and can entirely sidestep a complete lack of cryptocurrency knowledge in your audience, at least until the cash-out questions.
Steemit is a social media platform that pays rewards to all users each day based on (theoretical) contribution of quality (determined by delegated-proof-of-stake) to the community from a shared reward pool created from a static and linearly-decreasing hard-coded inflation rate.
OK, you know how on Reddit every upvote is worth 1 point (they're called karma)?
Imagine if every Reddit upvote was worth $1, and you could trade them, but you could only make 10 per day and you couldn't duplicate accounts. Now imagine that the more total lifetime upvotes (karma) you have on your account, the more your upvotes were worth. Your upvote could be worth $10, or $100, or $1000 if you had received many votes without selling them, and the more your upvote is worth, the more you receive back in rewards for voting, called curation. If you further imagine that you could cash out those upvotes into a free market of buyers and sellers, you have a good enough analogue of Steemit for conversation.
From there, questions tend to revolve around whether or not Steem/Steemit is a scam or pyramid scheme of some type. We all know the ones – we've heard them anytime we try to explain Steem to someone. I think I will address some of them in a near-future post, such as:
How is Steemit not a scam or ponzi scheme?
Where does the money come from?
How do I get my money?
How do you know the price won't crash?
This sounds too good to be true?
follow 4 follow?
If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).
We also have a Radio Station! (click me)
...and a 4800+ user Discord Chat Server! (click me)
Sources: @inquiringtimes
Copyright: South Park, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Steemit, Yerp Council (lol): http://yerp.yacvic.org.au/
I have not been able to convince anybody to start, or even try using Steemit, unfortunately :( God knows I've tried.. Even telling them I made money on here 'out of nothing' ... I even know people who have contacts in Africa, and I keep telling them to pass the information about Steemit on to the Africans so they can get onboard as the money is probably quite significant to them. But nobody seems to want to listen... Not even getting to the part where I can explain to them about where the money comes from.
It's 100% the same thing as back when the internet was new. People have this 'cryptocurrency is too confusing and difficult to understand' attitude like they used to have when you tried to get people to use e-mail. It's sad, really.
"It's 100% the same thing as back when the internet was new. People have this 'cryptocurrency is too confusing and difficult to understand' attitude like they used to have when you tried to get people to use e-mail. It's sad, really."
It's Bitcoin all over again.
Oh well, it's this kind of resistance that is necessary if we're ever to have a "moonshot."
This is a tough one. The killer is explaining where the money comes from without losing them trying to explain the economic model and the inflation and the reward pool distribution and...and...and...
I have tried using an analogy. Imagine you had a magazine subscription that costs $20 per year, but you could pick and choose which articles and authors you wanted to pay rather than just the whole lot.
Now imagine you put $1000 into some shares that pay a dividend at 2%pa that earns $20 each year which you use to pay your magazine subscription.
This is what it is like, you put $1000 into Steem Power and you get votes to financially reward those authors and support the content you like.
"The killer is explaining where the money comes from without losing them trying to explain the economic model and the inflation and the reward pool distribution and...and...and..."
It really helps if the person in question has a solid understanding of economics. Of course, I realize that's a rather shockingly small demographic these days.
If they understand how the money supply is currently created in the West from nothing (communal inflation), then the idea of Steem should immediately seem plausible.
I’m a firm believer that the best way to lead is by example. The best way to sell your idea is to have so much fun doing it, that others start to question and say, hmmm…."Whatcha’ doin?"
"Hunh?...Oh…Didn’t I tell you?…"
When it comes to where the money comes from, politely and with all due respect, ask: “What do you care? It's all legal; and, best thing, they’re not asking you for any.
Besides, if you get so rich that you want to invest, then we’ll talk further details.
However, by then you will have become so hooked on Steemit, you will learn this answer for yourself.” (LOL!)
Of course, a Steemit t-shirt with the Steemit url and your @username is great advertising, too!
Great post @lexiconical!
Peace.
"What do you care?"
It's important to understand where the money comes from when determining whether or not to invest. It's a critical question when answering "how risky is this?"
I think if I hand-waved that question off, I'd have a weak argument.
this
@lexiconical oh dear! the dodgy stares I get when I try to pitch steemit to my family and friends. I think it is my enthusiasm that makes them suspicious :D I will try your pitch next time!
I know I've certainly been there! I know what you mean about the enthusiasm level. You have to calmly respond to the many objections that are natural, and that can be tough when you are excited. Perhaps my posts can be useful for others to direct new users to in this regard. I'm going to dig into those questions in part 2, which I am hoping to get out soon. Maybe even later tonight, if luck is with me.
Yes, I'm very curious why this is not a pyramid and where the money comes from, I want to read about it in a simple and understandable language.
The most simple explaination I can give you is: everyday there is new steem being created in the network, which is distributed to authors and curators. You might wonder how can steem (money) just appear out of thin air, and it doesn't.
The supply of steem increases everyday which effectively makes 1 steem less worth. Quoting some parts of a post made by @warjar
How the steem is distributed
A better explanation than my own.
You are too kind sir :P
I'll respond to those exact questions in part 2. That's almost always exactly where the discussion goes next!
In short, the rewards pool comes from the annual inflation that is agreed up on by all stakeholders. It's currently 9.5%, reducing by a flat .5% each year.
Overall, a far more reasonable inflation curve than almost any fiat currency and even a lot of coins which had explosive early inflation.
nice post
Good job