Steemit Referral Program and Incentives.
How Do We Continue to Build a Solid Foundation Under the Steemit Community.
Over the last few weeks I have been in discussion with fellow Steemians about how to best scale the user base of Steemit. These ideas are 100% unofficial. As many of you know I am totally against paying new users a sign up bonus. I would rather see that money get paid to influencers who join the platform and share their content and their Steemit success with their audiences.
Anabell and I were riding back from the city the other day and we were discussing the topic. We thought about our situation and how much more motivated we would be as influencers to spread Steemit and teach others how to use it if we were paid a referral bonus and a small percentage of the profits of the new users.
Think about it for a minute. What is the biggest problem we have as a platform? Frankly it is the difficulty of using it. Many people who are not technical come to Steemit, try to post and get frustrated because it is not intuitive like other social networks. Now imagine if I was vested in the success of that new user. I would feel more obliged to help them with their first few posts. The problem is that it takes time to teach people. Most people, 95% in fact will not make the effort to learn on their own like we did.
For example, Anabell's Brother Ariel aarauz joined the other night and made his first post. It took over an hour and a half for him to set up his first post formatted properly with Anabell's help. I personally do not have time to do that but I know for sure that I would find the time if I knew there was a long term benefit. Please follow him, he could use the love and support.
So what do you think? Would you be more likely to refer more people and help them succeed if you had a small incentive?
Merry Christmas!!
great idea, I made a video about this same idea back in October
Interesting concept, though I'm a bit hesitant to see an infinite number of referral rewards so to speak, be implemented on the platform. I'm not sure what this would do to the economy at large. Please read my comment too if you've got the time.
if not for all time, then at least six months
That sounds more reasonable to me.
I love the verification idea. Maybe rolling out verified accounts could be the way to avoid abuse. This is exactly what we are thinking. Thank you for making a video about it Craig.
Bonjour , j'ai de la peine a comprendre pour Steemir ( j'ai de la chance cela c'est configurer tous seul sous youtube!) Donc je me demande quel est URL a referer pour steemir ? est ce notre lien seemit ? SoS - merci
Hello, I have trouble understanding for Steemir (I'm lucky it's set all alone under youtube!) So I'm wondering what is URL to refer for steemir? is this our connection seemit? SoS - thank you
I think a program makes alot of sense but we must be careful not to turn people off from it sounding like an MML. but it makes sense for steemians to get some reward for taking thier time to teach people how to set up a steem account and get them started. maybe just they get a one time referal bonus of a few steem.
Since we have such a large social media base it would be great if we new when people come over. We know about the bigger accounts but have know idea when smaller people from twitter or elsewhere come over. Being able to have analytics would be huge.
I agree that it's hard to get going with the platfrom.
This is yet another reason in my opinion (though not at all suggested as a complete solution to the specific problem you are discussing here) to implement the idea I proposed earlier; Reward early supporters of good writers.
If a good writer comes on the platform and you were the one introducing them to Steemit, chances are you're gonna be among the first ones voting for them.
However if they don't get noticed as good writers (maybe because their first post isn't actually that advanced in nature and they just want to test things out, or because they're just one of the unlucky few that didn't get a whale welcome) then you will hardly be rewarded for this curation and as such there's an even greater "risk"/"cost" to voting for this new user, than voting for someone "safe".
That's why I suggest we reward early supporters in hindsight, as the next few couple posts start to rack up some dollars. That way we'd have a semi "referal like" program + we would further incentivize the entire community to vote for 1 "expected to be good writers" and 2 good content that may not get noticed, not simply out of the goodness of their hearts, but by putting the profit motive to work in a new way.
-To me this seems like good economics. @smooth @dantheman @anyone with more knowledge than me, tell me if I'm being too short sighted?
Sounds good to me, I am open to anything that will help us grow with a solid foundation.
What does this look like in application? Can you give the steps along the way, kind of an outline or flowchart?
Thank you for the idea. I will try to make a post about this and include something like that.
(although I could not give you the technical details of actual implementation in the blockchain, since I'm far from educated in that department)
Let me try to explain it like this though;
1 You vote for an "unknown" new blogger that just arrived on Steemit - or for a friend that just joined, thanks to your efforts.
2 The rewards are payed out as normal and maybe this time there is little to nothing given to this "good" new writer, though had they been on the platform longer or were a celebrity they would have been paid handsomely.* -Thus, neither did the voters so far get rewarded for the use of their votes and they may even experience some "pain".
3 In x amount of time after the first post, the average total payout on all posts made by the blogger would be automatically calculated.
4 This would prompt a payout to the original voters for the first post made by the blogger. -Thus reincentivizing those voters that had been feeling the pain of no initial rewards, to continue voting for unknown authors - or for those promising users they successfully onboard.
This is of course only a very brief explanation, but maybe the best I personally can do without making a post about it. There would be many parameters to consider before actual implementation.
*(Nothing wrong with celebs or verified users getting more money though, that's not the issue here. The issue is that a really good post could end up bein priced at nothing or "too little" and the really creative writer would end up with nothing other than a bad first impression; "Quality is not rewarded on this platform, only status". My idea primarily seeks to reduce this risk for the author, by reducing risk/increasing the chance of rewards for the voters.)
That's an interesting idea.
I'm not technically inclined either, so wouldn't know whether the benefits would justify the change. I will say that it's hard to get noticed in any field, regardless of the format. One has to pay their dues. I suspect that too many of us who saw large payouts a couple of months ago tend to expect to be able to do so today.
Having said that, topic specific curation is becoming more common as SteemTrail continues to grow. This means that it is much easier now to get recognized for excellent content in a curated Trail than it once was, regardless of one's "seniority" here.
I curate two trails right now. It's been difficult to find great content for them, though there's a lot of decent-to-good stuff out there. I sort according to tags rather than authors, then glean based completely on content. A couple of authors are almost always toward the top. Others get recognized once in a while, while some only seem to get one-time recognition.
These are upvoted and resteemed, as well as promoted elsewhere, including social channels. The impact right now is probably minimal, but the goal is for it to increase as the projects mature. And a couple of these articles are submitted to the main SteemTrail for curation, usually getting the added influence of the trail.
The current challenge for this model, right now, is monetization. How do you make enough to justify the intensity of the effort? The TRAIL token is designed to help with this, but isn't currently traded enough to make it particularly valuable. But if we were to bring in writers for our specific categories, promoting excellent content both on Steemit and through various channels, then receiving a commission of sorts on their added value would be a nice perk.
Without the tools in place, all this is just talk. Hopefully the best solution will be implemented and promoted soon.
Very interesting. In the long term I'd like to see most of the trails going away, but for now there is a lot of great work being done by those institutions. I know @kevinwong of Project Curie (@curie) has expressed similarly, that they don't want to continue forever.
I had not even heard of the TRAIL token. Is there somewhere I can read more about it?
The risk I see with creating coins is that we spend too little effort on integration.
My "Cooperative Agorism" is largely centered around this; Volountary "syndication" so to speak, to create stability and ease of use rather than splintering everyone into their own small isolated market where they can neither be seen nor heard.
Here you go.
Yeah, Curie is generalized. Once the wealth spread to a certain point, their efforts shouldn't be nearly as needed. That's a bit different than focusing on promoting specific topics. Maybe you've seen the Garden-Trail promoting articles for instance. It's something they understand and love, so they assemble the cream of the crop and promote them for greater visibility.
Consider that you're into cooking, as an example. You want to read as much about cooking as possible, so you'll look at the cooking tag. Then you wade through the articles, maybe 1/3 of which are actually good. Would it not make sense to have a location you could go to in order to find articles that were already deemed high quality by curators? And following such curators, at least the ones you appreciate or line up with most, will help promote good material, hopefully including from new authors.
Well, that's the thought process anyway. Motives may vary... :) There is some resistance. But I think it's somewhat inevitable that things will move in this direction as Steemit matures. Doing so can't really hurt anything, as far as I can figure. But it can go a long way toward promoting the site as a whole. Maybe there are holes I am not cognizant of though?
Too bad the platform limits where I can answer you lol so this might be confusing...
I'm in agreement with you. Trails are generally just an aditional service and can certainly be a very useful thing. It depends on application.
Curation guilds aiming to achieve a more "fair" distribution of payout though, to be specific, is what should go away with time. That shouldn't be necessary in my opinion. It seems to me that things should and hopefully will work very differently in the future than they do right now.
That is very interesting idea, actually. The benefit is not as direct but encourages the finding of new good creators, by early support indicating a decaying proportion of shared curation rewards, small but not insubstantial. It should decay in order to drive continued competition to find new users whose posts are regarded as good.
I think you could add something like this to the rewards distribution and it would keep people searching for new good stuff. The benefit could be substantial without having to be huge. Sorta like a bonus for early prediction accuracy. It does have some connection with prediction markets anyway, the whole curation thing. This would be a natural expansion of the basic princiole to add "before it was cool" as something you can have as a factor in calculating rewards. it would disadvantage trend following autovote whales too.
I agree! Thank you for the support!
Sorry it took some time getting back to you here, but I was tired when I first noticed the comment and for some reason my foreign brain couldn't get over the second sentence in your comment. Then I simply lost thought of it and it got burried in all the other comments I sent and recieved.
Yes, the expression "before it was cool" would probably be a much more digestable term for what I'm attempting to get at here, rather than my complicated "hindsight (averaged) rewards".
Yes, in simple terms curation is about those with the best eyes for the will-soon-be-cool. For that reason also the change to 7 day single payouts will make it work a lot better, the votes will have more time to digest. If you want everyone to get their voice, really since our lives run on weekly cycles this is the minimum for ensuring every eye that might vote, has the time. It will also get people hunting categories more too, less time pressure, better judgement...
I don't like the idea of a referral program here. I always give Steem free promo. Because I like it.
My thinking is similar in some ways. We want dedicated users and "natural" growth more than anything else.
I've seen referal bonus attempts succeed and I've seen them fail. When they fail is usually when the draw is so great that a few sharks flooded the system with unqualified people who only hung on until the payout. It tends to build it's own pyramid scheme within the established marketing plan, because some few of the shark's recruits will be sharks themselves.
As long as that is prevented, referral programs that I have seen worked very well. Personally, I already have that incentive because as a newbie trying to earn with content rather than curation, every little vote counts. People I draw in will vote for me, and they also will improve the value of STEEM over time.
I think Craig has a great idea to make sure users can't game the system. Verified accounts is key. We could also set it up where users who refer others have to stay active on Steemit. If they don't they lose their referrals after a set amount of time. We all know their are affliliate marketers out there that will make a mess of things unless they are kept in check.
YES :)
I like Craig's idea for the method. I have a question though. Do you see the 10% coming off the referred member's payout, or being made of new minted STEEM? I think only the latter would work. The former would leave us with members who get paid less per post just because they were referred. So if it's the latter, do we increase the total amount of STEEM or is it had from a reduction of current levels of STEEM, a tax, as it were, on the whole system.
The best way is that when the referral program starts 10% of the rewards pool goes to pay referrals, how the devs technically implement it is up to them, but I am sure they are smart enough to come up with the proper code or mathematical formula to make it work
Like a general tax spread across the whole system then. Better than targeting one group or another. And yeah, it would have to be constantly readjusted or there could be incentive to keep referrals low so as to get more of the pie for less work.
Please see my separately posted comment, it includes a way to in part circumvent this possible issue.
Totally agree!
Give the initial Steem to the referrer, or at least reduce the amount for new users and give a specific amount, plus "commissions" to whomever recruited them.
I understand that there is a mechanism available to make this possible, but it has not been implemented. Not being very technical, I can't say much more about it.
Other features are being developed that can help with editing, but some of it is still a bit difficult. The Ladder project and Streemian's post scheduler both are helpful.
The idea of having a Disqus type plugin, as has been discussed, providing cross posting of articles, comments and votes, would be a huge benefit, IMO. This would provide a major means of pushing the use of Steemit far beyond Steemit.com.
For now, the simple task of importing articles and converting the format is problematic. Even getting that sorted would be a nice step.
Merry Christmas
Interesting take on the referral idea. What do you think about the concept of hindsight rewards that I proposed separately in this comment section?
Since we are still in Beta I would love the focus to be on making the platform easier to use and make sure the Steem financial markets are stable. Then we can go scale the hell out of this gem. Cheers!!
I made this comment in the thread comments, I will post it here as a standalone for you to make it easier to find. perhaps:
Have some of the payouts to blogger and mentor pegged to and auto-paid after 7th post.
And again maybe at further legacy points on the chain or milemarker -- maybe even simple to remember ones like 5th / 10th/ 20th/50th -- the more I think about it the more that makes sense to me where I am at with things.
-- encourages both parties to develop their habits and also reach an attainable goal / goals.
That sounds like a great idea as well Barry.
It would benefit people, :)
Anyone who is serious about it could build a nice income alongside of their post income. I would be super motivated to do it.
If you have a lot of friends to refer, I don't have anyone :(
I like your thinking, @son-of-satire is on the same quest! https://steemit.com/steemit/@son-of-satire/how-dan-and-ned-could-use-trust-to-make-steemit-the-global-network-and-economy-of-the-future
I just put my two bobs worth into his concept but a meeting of minds may be apt!
Thank you for your constructive thinking!
I do believe it would be cost effective. As you know influencers is the other way to build the platform but if they don't participate and support the users they bring to the platform it will be for naught.
Merry Christmas!!
Merry Christmas to you too!
Here are the comments I made in response to the @son-of-satire post
https://steemit.com/steemit/@son-of-satire/how-dan-and-ned-could-use-trust-to-make-steemit-the-global-network-and-economy-of-the-future#@ebryans/re-son-of-satire-re-ebryans-re-son-of-satire-how-dan-and-ned-could-use-trust-to-make-steemit-the-global-network-and-economy-of-the-future-20161224t174249776z
It is all about taking care of and keeping newbies - you are on a pre-subscription concept - maybe the two dovetail?
It's great to see all of this being discussed by some visionary minds! Kindly have a look at my idea too if you've got the time. Maybe it will give you some food for thought or maybe you can point out some flaws in my thinking.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@hilarski/steemit-referral-program-and-incentives#@the-ego-is-you/re-hilarski-steemit-referral-program-and-incentives-20161224t190500192z
As I have mentioned before, my biggest stumbling block when it comes to encouraging my family, friends and acquaintances to join the Steemit platform is being able to explain how the founders or anyone here is making the currency, we are all dabbling in.
At this point, I can't easily explain in under 2 seconds, who's pocket the currency is coming from.
It's one of the first questions that is asked as soon as I tell them that they don't have to "pay to play" on this platform. If it's coming from the bytes of information that are used to construct blocks on the blockchain, who is buying and paying for this?
The next questions are:
" What happens to the original content that I create? Do I still own it?"
I cannot answer these questions with confidence and certainty.
Perhaps I have missed this basic information. If anyone can share how they respond when these questions are asked of them, I would really appreciate any guidance that might be offered from anyone reading my comment.
I believe in Steemit and am happy to fill a role as a Steemit guerrilla marketer, but I require the ability to easily explain how it works accurately.
As far as where the money comes from:
1-When you post people vote on your content.
2-The votes earn you points. Those points are called Steem.
3-You can trade those points for local currency on an exchange or for merchandise on Peerhub.com or with a merchant that accepts Steem.
Think on how when you use a credit card you can earn rewards that you can later use to make purchases.
As far as ownership of your content:
You are the owner, Steemit Inc does not own your content. You can publish it somewhere else if you desire. However it cannot be taken off the blockchain. The bockchain is a public record of who created the content.
Thank you @zorg67.
I can explain the first 3 points, easy enough...
What I can't explain is:
Where did the currency come from to fund the whole thing from the beginning?
Was it only from Dan and Ned's pockets and a few of their closest friends or did it come from other sources?
How do the owners of Steemit make money from their platform?
People are looking for a catch and when I can't easily answer these questions I lose credibility and their interest at the same time.
Given he fact that Dan & Ned setup the network to begin with you can say that yes it came out of their pocket including all of the early miners & investors, then it took a life of it's own.
How do they make money? The same as everyone else...by selling steem.
The problem is that the general public does not understand that not only the government can create money (banks do it all the time but it would be a long and technical explanation on how they do it).
If they don't get the analogy about the credit card rewards then I am not quite sure what to say.
The piece about making currency from selling steem is the piece I was missing.
I can explain the benefits of buying crypto currencies as another form of storage for wealth. I just needed an easy way to explain how the founders are making currency from the platform.
The points are printed at a set and specific rate every day and then go into a 'rewards pool' that is distributed among authors and curators. For example 100 new Steem points are created on Christmas by the Steem blockchain and are then paid to Bob, Josie and Susanne. If they know Bitcoin, it's a lot like how bitcoin are created by Bitcoin to pay miners.
Also, it's not free money. You have to put in wok when creating a post, gain followers, etc.
It's an opportunity not a giveaway.
I had the same difficulty. When I finally figured out a way to say it in one paragraph using no crypto-terminology I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget.
https://steemit.com/steem/@baerdric/where-does-the-money-come-from
The second paragraph is so you can compare it to gold.
Thanks @baerdric. I appreciate your analogy of it being similar to physically mining gold and people who want to buy the gold already mined.
What I can't explain is:
Where did the currency come from to fund the whole thing from the beginning?
Was it only from Dan and Ned's pockets and a few of their closest friends or did it come from other sources?
How do the owners of Steemit make money from their platform?
People are looking for a catch and when I can't easily answer these questions I lose credibility and their interest at the same time. (These are the same questions that I am discussing with @zorg67.)
I have learned that if I don't give information that is simply enough, people won't even look into it.
Well, that's the thing to understand with all currency, even gold. There was no money to begin with. Gold was useless as a coin until someone wanted it but didn't want to go down in a hole to get it. The only value any currency has, Gold, Dollars, Steem, is that some people want it and it's hard to get.
You can't eat Gold or Dollars or Steem, but you can trade them for food. Since someone wants them (that desire came first, from speculators) we are willing to trade our effort (writing and voting, or digging a hole) for those currencies. We put in work that others didn't, and we trade it for work they did but we didn't.
That's the only value they have. It's the only value anything but straight barter has. If you trade me corn for eggs, we can both eat what we traded. They have intrinsic value. But we are still trading work we did for work we didn't do. The currency, that's just markers for work we did.
Steem is just another system of markers, the original mining is us writing and voting, it puts our work value into the electronic tokens (just marks on a spreadsheet). They gain that value, the value of our work. Poof, as if from thin air. But really from our work.
They are markers of our work, and other people, people who don't want to do that work, will pay us Dollars or Gold or in goods and services for those markers. There was no need to put money into the system (although some people did), so asking where it came from is fully answered by saying we worked hard for it and other people want it.
Let's imagine that we are both Egyptian slaves digging holes. You work hard digging but I have a sore back. So at the end of the day, you have a lot of extra marks on the sheet for holes you have dug, but I don't have any marks at all. I will probably get beaten. So I say to you, I will give you ten pounds of corn for ten of those marks on your page. Suddenly, those markers have a value. Only because you put work into them and I want them. Poof. You invented currency!
Thanks for your explanation.
I can't help but think that there had to be some value of some sort to originally start with. I have yet to read about a definitive answer. Was it created out of nothing? Or, was it backed by something originally.
People have been buying and selling steem, converting it to bitcoin and converting that to US dollars to use their store of wealth. My understanding is that this is done so that the individual can use their store of wealth without limitations, as the US dollar is still perceived as one of the world's reserve currencies.
Do you have an opinion on how you think the founders of Steemit are making currency themselves?
No, there's no original money. Except maybe their bill for the internet connection. They just said, "I declare a new cryptocurrency" and enough people wanted it that it became real. People were willing to work for it. Other people were willing to trade goods and services for it.
You and I could decide to create one right now. If someone watching thought we had the knowledge and skill to make it spread, they would want some. Poof. Now that they want some, it has value. That's really it.
The people watching, if they are smart, will want us to show that we know how to do it, so we publish, for instance, a whitepaper. A plan to introduce the currency widely enough so that someone might actually trade goods and services for it. If the plan works, the currency takes off, if it doesn't work, we sit around looking silly.
Now someone will come along and say, "Oh, they had to put a lot of their own money into it developing the backbone " or whatever. But that money was all to convince people to use Steem as a type of money. It was not required for Steem to be a type of cryptocurrency. It just helped it spread better.
And some people did buy large amounts of steem with real US dollars. I bought about $10 worth to see how it was done. But again, it wasn't necessary. Just being hard to get, and having people want it, that's all you need.
A really good example just happened yesterday. SteemTrail simply announced that they would be issuing Trail Coins. I had been watching SteemTrails for a little while and I made a guess that they knew what they were doing, so I said I wanted some. Poof. They have value, I am willing to do work to get them and some few other people maybe willing to trade work to get them back from me. Just like that. No USD$ ever changed hands.