I'm Nathan Mackenzie Brown, chief architect of one of the most successful local currency in the US, a professional marketer interested in promoting Steemit.com and someone interested selling his services for SMD.

in introduceyourself •  8 years ago  (edited)

Hello Steemit!

Currency background - helping build potentially the most successful local currency in the US:

I'm Nathan Mackenzie Brown, the chief architect of the ELM System at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

"...as of May 5th 2016, the ELM System had $101,781.15 worth of currency in circulation with $975,603.85 worth of transaction volume over the last year. This is a significant accomplishment for an alternative currency that is used by approximately 60 individuals and 30 businesses, nonprofits, co-ops, and community groups in rural northeast Missouri."

I've talked with a number of local currency experts including Michael Linton, who created the Local Employment and Trading System currency model, and Stephen Belgin, who co-authored New Money for A New World with Bernard Lietar. Bernarnd is probably the greatest money systems thinker the humanity has ever seen. He ran the most profitable hedge fund in the world for a number of years, created the system to merge the different European currency into the Euro and he's now become a big supporter of ecovillages and alternative  currencies.

In talking with both Michael Lenton and Stephen Belgin, neither of them knew of any other local currency in the united states that has come close to achieving the trade volume of the ELM System on a per capita basis. Furthermore, the ELM System comes close to rivaling the most successful local currencies in the US on a volume basis without adjusting for our size.

Professional background - selling to make the world a better place:

The work I've done with the ELM system has been something I've done on a volunteer basis. Professionally I work as an online marketer with a primary focus on email marketing and conversion optimization. That said, I'm not your typical marketer in that I'm dedicated to using marketing science to solve societies greatest problems.

For example, about 4.5 months ago I founded Really American, a Facebook page dedicated to defending truth, democracy, social justice and the environment. Over the last 4.5 months I've built an email list of over 50,000 email subscribers and almost 600 donors, the vast majority of whom are Bernie Sanders supporters (as am I). I did this through Facebook advertising while also generating almost $3k in profit, which is almost unheard of in the industry. Most organization expect to lose money in order to initially acquire email subscribers and donors with paid advertising and they make their money over time by cultivating these subscribers and donors on an ongoing basis. So, making money right away while building an email list and picking up new donors is a big deal.

The results I produced were so impressive that I quickly picked up a consulting gig with SchwartzForMayor.com and I'm running some tests right now for CalBike.org that may result in a gig for them as well. In both cases I'm helping them to acquire email subscribers and donors with Facebook ads, using very similar strategies to how I built my Really American email list.

So, what does all this marketing have to do with Steemit.com? Well...

Promoting Steemit.com to my 50,000+ email subscribers:

I'd love to email my Really American subscribers regularly with content that you all produce that would appeal to their interests and encourage them to join this platform. One of the biggest weaknesses I see with this platform currently is that so many of the people are here only wanting to make money and when they don't they leave. Sadly, 95% of users or more will never be able to earn any significant income because of the basic mathematics of how the rewards are allocated and having this constant churn of people joining and dropping out is hurting the growth of the platform.

In the long run the majority of people need to use this platform because they like the content on it, they like the discussions and social interaction, and/or they like supporting the content producers and causes that post content here. I think Bernie Sanders supporters and other similarly driven activists have the potential to drive a lot of value for this platform as they could be very happy just up voting content that supports the issues they care about without much concern for the income they can earn themselves.

In addition to helping this platform growth through promotion I also want to help reduce the need to turn SMD into USD to get economic value from this platform...

How you can spend your SMD with me to make more money:

You whales could make a lot more money if you used the exposure from your content to build an email subscriber base of Steemit.com followers instead of just depending on them to follow you on this platform. If you built yourself a solid email list of Steemit.com users, then right when your content was about to hit the magic 30 minute mark you could email all your subscribers, greatly increasing the chances you'd get lots of up votes. I'm happy to help you develop and refine your email acquisition and marketing strategy while taking my pay in SMD.

Those of you who are not whales, if you have a need for email marketing or conversion optimization services off this platform, I'm still happy to do work for you and get paid in SMD.

Let's work together to make Steemit.com grow and prosper:

Well, that's enough about me, tell me more about you and how you think we could work together to make Steemit.com strong and healthy in the comments below.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Glad to see you post your introduction here! I look forward to going to Dancing Rabbit soon to answer more questions about Steemit! Thanks for posting!

I don't know why this didn't show up as a reply for me to engage with. I just happened to see this comment from you due to checking out a new tool. Anyway, thanks for the props and help getting started!

Thank you for your support and dedication to this world changing entreprise: All for one and one for all! Welcome aboard. Namaste :)

You are welcome and thank you!

Though I'd be a thorn in the side of any Bernie supporters, I love your concept. It makes a lot of sense, but seemed like something that would mature later on as the platform develops. Tell more.

Why do you think it it would develop later as the platform develops?

My thought was that it would mature and, since it's in the form of a blog, that other services would naturally develop, such as newsletter services, maintaining email lists, account linking, etc. Seems like you might be ahead of the curve, if I'm reading correctly.

For now you would probably have to do it manually, but if the system let you make an RSS feed from your posts it could bbe automated.

haha, when I voted for your response, it got things out of order. I doubt there's much we can do about that.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that. It might be a great to build a mailing list.
Cool. What else did you have in mind?

I'm not sure why I can't reply to your last post. Looks like Steemit.com limits how nested the conversation can get, which I find annoying. Anyway, to do what I'm suggesting requires having your own domain to put up a simple page that provides a way for people to subscribe to your content via email. You'd need to use something like aweber.com to manage the email list and notify people when your content is at the 30 min mark.

Yeah, it can only go so deep, then you have to find the previous post to reply.
I have one with MailChimp, though I haven't done much with it for a couple of years. More recently I've used XYZ's newsletter plugin on another site where he actually has some subscribers. :)
Are you able to set it up so it automatically emails, or does it have to be done manually.

I doubt that the platform will develop email list management functionality, but it is possible. Right now someone can drop links into their posts to encourage people to get their strong performing content right at the 30 min mark via email and this will help the authors and the curators make more money.

I was thinking maybe plugins or something like that, even if it's offsite, like WordPress has or some of the apps that are able to read a feed then broadcast it.
I'd love to learn more. Just a little minnow today, but I have aspirations to brave the open oceans. :)

Well, it will mostly help the authors make more money, but it will entice some curators to participate as well.

I didn't have much else in mind besides building an email list, other than emailing that list with your Steemit.com posts as they near the 30 minute mark.

Sweet idea. Thanks for sharing.
My recent article has done pretty well, though it's well past the 30 min mark. I don't know that it's the right material for your readers though. My perspective is clealry different. What do you think?

Hello! Could you please post proof, so that we know it is real you.

What would you like me to post as proof?

Welocome to steemit. Now keep calm and steem on @nathanbrown

That's the plan :-)

Welcome! I saw you in steemit.chat and you seem off to a great start!

Thanks!

You mentioned the "magic 30 minute mark", and I also saw it pop up in the steem.chat feed but was busy and never hunted down what it was referring to. What exactly is that?

It is explained in the white paper, but basically in the first 30 minutes the curation rewards basically go just to the author. After the first 30 minutes they are split between the author and the curators.

ah, good info. I skimmed the white paper last week but never saw, however a quick google search confirmed it. first 15 minutes almost all of the rewards go to authors, next 15 minutes curators keep 50% of curation rewards, after 30 minutes curators keep 100% of curator rewards.

Nathan, very interesting ideas. In a nutshell, can you tell me what's the difference between author and "curators"?

I do Vipassana as taught by SN Goenka. That being said, I'm not a "one true way" kind of Vipassana mediator. How often do you meditate and for how long?

You get paid author rewards for posting and commenting. You get curator rewards for up voting content that isn't popular yet, but that becomes popular later.

thank you Nathan. By the way, I practice Transcendental Meditation, I am a Siddha. Is that what you do as well as meditation two hours a day?

as of May 5th 2016, the ELM System had $101,781.15 worth of currency in circulation with $975,603.85 worth of transaction volume over the last year

Interesting that your money velocity was greater than 9 and for the USD it is less than 2.

How are you calculating these numbers? I'm not see how I gave you the data you need to calculate our USD velocity.

USD velocity comes from the Federal reserve:

Oh, I thought you were talking about the velocity of USD in our community, not the velocity of USD nationally. Yes, our velocity is much higher because it doesn't make sense for people to hold a lot of our local currency in savings. It would create a lot volatility in our small money supply that could cause a liquidity problem.