What Might a SteemStarter Campaign Look Like?

in #steemstarter6 years ago (edited)

Just continuing to muse over what would go into the formation of a Steemstarter campaign. Think of this post as a forum for us to talk about how to adapt to the pros and cons of the steem ecosystem.

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

(1) I think that a Steemstarter campaign could be as long or as short as a person wants. Obviously your payout is on a 7 day wait-timer, but with the use of Steemitreports or other such similar software, you could ask it to compile data over a longer period of time than that. My initial hunch is that a 2 week campaign might be a good place to start.

(2) I'm thinking of this, not as a single post that you promote like crazy, but as a series of posts that you hope will collectively get you where you need to go. i.e. over 14 posts across 2 weeks I hope to garner 100 SBD and 1,000 upvotes! Also, you'd for sure need to use the Steemstarter tag in each of your posts so that we could build this community up, and also make your project easier to find.

(3) I think that during your Steemstarter, you'd have to only post your daily Steemstarter post. If you continue your normal schedule of blogs, art contests, etc, it would be very hard for to organize the data. You'd get all kinds of cross pollination in the upvote department, and that could screw up whatever reward/ranking system you'd devised.

(4) Next, I think it is important that there is a time limit on your campaign. Kickstarter is right about one thing, having a sense of urgency/exclusivity definitely helps to motivate people to back your campaign. Whatever rewards you opt to hand out should be exclusive to people who supported your Steemstarter during its actual run. I think every Steemstarter post you put out should include how many days are left to support the campaign, and how much of your goal is left.

(5) I think that at the bottom of your post you should include a ranking system to show who has supported your project the most, in terms of money raised, and also #of upvotes. Minnows are people too, and loyalty is loyalty! To this end I think that you should include the handles of everyone who has upvoted your project at the bottom of your post. Give them a little love/publicity (and an incentive to vote)!

Now, onto rewards, the most important and perhaps tricky part to implement...Like with kickstarter I think they should build. So a tier 2 backer would also get the tier 1 reward...Now this part is totally subjective, anybody can devise their own system, but whatever you do, make sure you're upfront about how your system works! Include it near the top, and in big letters!

(6) I think that even a basic upvote should provide something of value to a steemian. Perhaps it's their handle being listed in the thank you portion of your posts?

(7) Multiple upvotes should be rewarded as well! Perhaps upvoting half+ of your Steemstarter posts will result in an upvote from you. Perhaps a series of upvotes? Digital rewards would be good for this tier as well, like a HD wallpaper based on the thing you're Steemstarting. Or in my case it would like be 8 finished pages of the comic for free.

(8) Upvoting all of a Steemstarter campaign's posts deserves an even juicer reward. I think following that person is a nice move (as well as some promotion in your Steemstarter ranking system), but here is where a super exclusive digital reward should be placed. Maybe a custom sketch for that person, or a digital poster. Perhaps a custom banner for them to use in their own posts, a way for the steemit community to know how generous and passionate that person is.

(9) Physical rewards should be developed for people whose upvotes translate to enough steem to actually pay for such an award. Given the price of printing and shipping I'd imagine a person would need to contribute 10+SBD to a project (at our current price anyway) in order to make something like that cost effective. Though you should also prepare a digital reward for people who contribute 1 SBD+ worth of voting over the course of a campaign.

(10) I think there could also be a reward tier that gives people something for just transfering you steem or SBD directly. Certainly that kind of donation would be easy to track, and so something more personalized would be nice for that tier. Perhaps giving that person a 100% upvote would be a good reward, or a few resteems. They should also be thanked by steem handle in your Steemstarter posts.

(11) Resteems are hard to keep track of, I don't know how or if they should be rewarded...Perhaps there could be community rewards. Like, "if we raise 50 sbd then I will release this original song for everyone to download." That kind of group reward would help gamify things and incentivize people to resteem.

(12) Include stretch goals! Upvotes don't cost people anything, but your art isn't free! Don't stop when you've hit your minimum, incentivize people to keep giving, whether it's swag, publicity, or something else! I for one will offer to give notes on a persons script/story if they donate/upvote enough to the upcoming Ithaqa Steemstarter campaign.

That's a lot of words, and not many pictures...sorry fam! Excited to hear your thoughts Looks like I sketched out my 12 commandments of a steemstarter campaign haha

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Just a quick thought - what about, instead of upvotes, delegating Steem Power during the course of the SteemStarter?

The more (and/or longer) someone delegates becomes the value with which to determine rewards, with stretch goals being decided once the post(s) hit a specific point.

Just some more spitballing

That's a great idea for a reward tier! Is there an app that lets you track who has delegated how much steem power?

Delegating SP would be a great way to build momentum for the campaign, and the person delegating could just set it up for how long the steemstarter is!

There’s tools for tracking, though I’d have to track them down! Delegation is inherently “lossy” because at the end of the campaign the delegator would have a week waiting for the SP to return. So on a monthlong campaign it would cost them 25% more than if they’d just cast the votes themselves. It also could make the posts appear less popular as what would have been multiple follower votes are instead aggregated into one large self vote by the campaign itself. I think it would be better to point people toward an auto voting or curation trail type resource during the campaign duration, rather than delegating.

how does curation trail work?

Great thoughts.

I’m very much in favor of digital & low cost rewards for minnow votes, as well as publicizing backers - giving them mentions in posts & even the printed work perhaps. I’m not as keen on “vote backs” being an announced reward. It just seems off somehow...

Rather than direct transfers having their own tier, I think they should just combine with the vote value tally. That way if a backer’s votes are worth $5 during the campaign, they could send $5 in Steem directly to reach the $10 tier.

I think campaigns shorter than a month would be more difficult to build momentum and hit goals. Especially in these early days, a person running a campaign should also “price in” Steem value volatility. Sure it may work in your favor, but it could also hurt! So if you need $10 to make a reward economical... you’d better make it $15 to be safe so you could survive at least a 33% value drop.

Campaigns should do their best to “lock in” value as posts payout by regularly converting to Stable coins & fiat as fast as possible. They could even set up something like a specific bitshares wallet for the campaign holding the bitUSD. Those interested could readily see the campaign progress by glancing at the wallet value.

Of course, votes don’t have escrow! If a project doesn’t get fully funded it still makes off with the invested votes unless the campaign runner sends equivalent funds back to supporters. The overall system is inherently based on reputation and trust.

People who participate should always be advised to only vote on projects they’d be happy to support even with no rewards.

The other potential use case is a Patreon style system. Run reports & distribute rewards monthly with no set end date to support an artist or project over a long term.

Just some rambling phone typed thoughts... 🤔

I'm excited by this idea. I may have missed an earlier post to which this is a continuation?

Here are some concerns I have of a practical nature:

  • I've noticed in the last couple weeks less interaction on the site. My feed is very light... Presumably this is because of the drop down to around $2, rather than the heady $7-days of yesterweek. Anyway, less people on the site means less people to find and support the project.

  • Most of the current upvotes I get are from minnows that are worth $.01 to $.05. Super appreciative for the love, but it's hard to translate that into a crowdfunding reward. Say you run a campaign for the two weeks and post every day, and the supporter upvotes every one - that's about $.42 (for a 3 cent average).

I like the idea mentioned below about delegation as a possibility - but minnows are in a similar boat here, since they have nothing to delegate.

  • @bryan-imhoff brings up a valid point about having no escrow-type workflow in place. I agree that having specific funding goals and time-cutoffs are important and helpful to motivate action. But if the goal isn't met, it would be a bit disingenuous to pocket what was sent.

I think the public wallet showing an amount raised is a pretty awesome idea (though somewhat beyond my crypto knowledge/ability at the moment). But for that I'm assuming we're talking about transferred SBD/STEEM rather than value of upvotes.

I'd love to explore this some more to see if we can make this workable. I think you know that, like you, I'm about ready to pull the trigger on Kickstarter for my Polis comic, and I'd love to have something going in parallel here.

Maybe that's another way this can work, at least in the short term? Have it as a campaign going in parallel to a campaign on Kickstarter? Still though, if the KS campaign fails, there's no escrow system for the amounts pledged/transferred on Steemit.

Thanks for posting this and getting the idea started!

I am so happy to see this topic. Thanks to @enternamehere who pointed it to me. And so I remembered this earlier post about crowdfundings @drwatson.

You bet I am also super interested in seeing a form of crowdfunding emerging on Steemit!

About your idea in particular, what hits me, is that it seems too complicated :D. Writing the posts is already time, on top all this tracking and indeed, what if it doesn't works out because you only get minor votes.

This is something I am still mitigated about but until being convinced of the otherwise, I think Steemit is not yet the best place to sell something physical coming from "outside". Maybe if you mostly propose digital rewards but that is still a lot of working time.

Apart that, all the ideas I read until point 5 seem great to me. The further points I was starting to get lost :D.

If in the (hopefully close) I master Steemit enough to run such technical stuff, I guess I'd try.

At the moment I'd only be in favour of, like @jpgaltmiller says, a parallel campaign. It is already like that anyways, campaigns are cross-platforms. The one on Steemit would have a way to reward decent upvotes and its blog format is perfect to have nice display of the project's progress reports.
On top I imagine that it would for sure attract curious minds to steemit =)

I am looking forward to see this developing!

Thanks again.

How excellent you are! I love your post a lot @drwatson

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