How one voting bot can increase the value of STEEM

For the past week or so, I've abstained from posting. In fact, I considered leaving the platform altogether, as stated in my overly-angry post. But instead of flouncing away like the drama queen I might seem like, I decided to take a step back, talk to people, and rethink my approach.

I've read some very interesting posts on the topic of voting bots, power distribution and the importance of curation. Posts by @acidyo , @aggroed , @rhondak , @reggaemuffin and @beanz (just to name a few) - all leaving me with a lot of things to think about. I also spoke to dozens of people from different steemian communities on Discord, which might explain why in my week of absence my number of followers rose by over 100. 

No actionable or even discussable solution came to mind. So I refrained from posting anything and kept reading, asking, commenting and listening.

Today, I finally had an idea worth sharing and breaking my no-post diet of a week and abit. An idea that might help raise the value of steem, increase reader traffic on the website, and do it all with a voting bot.

Image Source: Coin Telegraph

Disclaimer

I am not a mathematician, economist or cryptocurrency specialist. I am a marketer and content producer. And as such, I view steemit a bit differently than most. It also means I might not have a clue as to what I am talking about, and it's up to you to correct me.

In addition, and I've said this before, Steemit can't currently produce the income my day job does. And so, it's not my main income. In fact, I personally prefer to treat STEEM like monopoly money. It's pretend money, sitting on the blockchain to present value on content.

The Circlejerks Killing Steem

Voting bots are a natural evolution of the platform, brought on by HF19. Stakeholders who don't want to spend time curating were given an option far more profitable than trailing curation accounts - vote selling and SP leasing. There are many issues with that (half my feed is people trying to come up with solutions to them), but @beanz drew my attention to one I didn't consider while focused on content quality and abuse prevention: STEEM's value will not rise as long as many stakeholders continue to power down and withdraw funds from vote selling. The inflow of value into STEEM will continue to be low as long as people don't buy STEEM. 

And who's going to buy it? And how will they pay for it? I'll get to it.

The second type of circlejerking on steemit is the limited monetizable audience. Since the only people who can increase the payout for content on the blockchain are minnows and the few whales who curate manually, those are the people you need to target with your content. This is very bad for authors and creators who want to use steemit as a content publishing platform they can profit from, and market it globally.

Here's an example:

Let's say I am a creative publisher who can choose to do one of 2 things: I can publish my creative blog on a platform like Patreon, and market my profile there in order to receive rewards from my audience. I can even let them set the rewards. And it's all in (what they call here) FIAT that doesn't need converting to pay the rent.

Alternatively, I can publish my content on steemit, and hope to impress the locals. Sure, I can send my audience to my posts on steemit or busy.org, and hope that one or two of my fans will register on the platform, and someday grow enough SP to truly reward me. But Patreon just offers so much more, allowing for a much larger monetizable audience.

The hurdles a reader must overcome on their way to a Steemit account to reward their favorite author is usually not worth their effort.

But there might be a workaround.

(Image source: Pixabay)

The Voting Bot Solution - Curation for the Masses

Currently, voting bots charge platform users SBD to upvote their content for increased visibility and some added payout value. But what if we had a bot that did something smarter than that, and helped bring in money into the ecosystem? What if let Internet users without a steemit account and wallet pay for upvotes of posts on the blockchain?

Example:

Let's say Jimmy Bob really likes my stories. He wants to support my creation but unfortunately for us all - knows nothing about cryptocurrencies and pays online with his PayPal account. Jimmy Bob is not a content creator. In fact, he rarely posts anything online.

In an ideal world, when Jimmy Bob is done reading my post on steemit, he can click the "Tip Author" button, and be offered ways to buy me an upvote using FIAT or cryptocurrency. 

Jimmy Bob then picks the sum in Dollars or Euros or just about any currency to reward me with and pays the bot with his credit card, PayPal or some other online payment solution. The voting bot then uses this money to purchase STEEM on the market, and upvotes my post as if I had sent the sum to a voting bot in SBD. Investors delegating to the bot get paid in STEEM, freshly purchased on the market. Authors get the SBD and SP in payout because their fans love them without having a steem account.

That "Tip Author" button will be a perfect replacement for the unused and neglected "promote" button. It'll be impossible to ignore as authors will very likely to encourage readers to use it.

(Image source: Pixabay)

Your Turn, Steemit!

I am not an economist, or programmer or crypto expert. I mentioned that in the disclaimer, and it's worth mentioning again. So there's a pretty good chance that this whole post is me talking out of my back side, and I have less of a clue than I think I do. In that case - feel free to downvote this post, but please take the time to enlighten me in the comments.

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Note: I am not back to posting regularly, but I couldn't help myself when this idea popped into my head. So sue me.