RE: Perspective: customer acquisition and retention on SteemIt
I'd still put CAC at zero or the $2 initial sign-up. Maybe retention or the "value proposition" has a cost to it that is definable to keep people from places with more critical mass. But if new users come to your site organically, and not through ads or sales channels, then your CAC should be considered low or zero.
And to be clear, I am not saying there aren't costs and issues with payouts as they wax and probably wane going forward. But maybe it's worth framing what Steemit is actually competing with.
Is it Facebook?
Is it Medium (you know I think that's the easiest H2H match-up)?
Is it reddit?
Is it Yelp?
Is it Tripadvisor?
is it Craigslist?
Is it Wikipedia?
Is it Wikihow?
Is it Answers.com?
Is it Wordpress?
Is it Tumblr?
...
Is it all of them???? (except Epinions, which didn't last long enough to lose to Steemit)
At the moment it seems to be Medium by content length, Reddit by quality mechanism, to some extent Wordpress/Tumblr by ease of entry.
You're right that traditionally CAC is measured in marketing dollars, and that's not what's happening here. But as a real-life experience of the very real cost of conversion: try converting a tech un-savvy user to Steem and see how that goes. You know, that hypothetical neighbor of yours who is a freelance journalist.