How easy do you think it is to make money on Ebay? Amazon? Or even Udemy? Do you think you can put up some products tomorrow and within a few weeks you will become a gold standard seller?
Look at these titles, all on the top of organic google searches:
They all make it sound so easy. They prey on the fact the human nature wants us to be doing better and shows us that there is this glimmer of hope. It’s so doable. Many of the people behind the success stories are normal people, just like you or I. They started with nothing and now look where they are. I can be one of them, just look at how easy they found it.
This is solid marketing. Its designed to give you that fuzzy feeling. The feeling that everything is possible. Marketing is a play on emotions, and these emotions help influence the decisions you make. Do you think Ebay feel everyone that becomes a seller will make a solid living? Of course they don’t. They have the data. They know how long tailed their success rate is for sellers. It probably a longer tailed curve than what we see on STEEM. But it does not stop them using this as a marking tool.
I invite you to check out ebays own website, in particular this article
https://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/History-of-Ebay-/10000000008868464/g.html
Did you see what I saw?
EBay Income Possibilities
Almost half the article is focused on how it is possible, all you have to do is believe. Haha I love this marketing. It’s like Santa to children.
Ebay, Amazon, Udemy, Teacherspayteachers all these sort of sites where people can make money online thrive off the fact that some millionaires have been created because they empower people to become self-sufficient.
It’s these success stories that begin the snowball effect. These success stories feed the want from humans to replicate what seems like easy financial success.
Yet Steemit Inc and @ned got blasted for this:
For a while on STEEM we had Jerry Banified. He was our ‘You can do it to’ story with marketing campaigns like the articles shows above. Much to the dissatisfaction of many loyal steem users, Jerry quickly rose in the witness rankings. Yet many people, including me, called him a scam (okay so he has history on the web for making millions every where he goes, but you get what I am saying here right?, people want to believe they too can ‘Do a Jerry’)
Let’s face it, Jerry rise in the witness rankings was not only down to his own steem investment but also the traffic he was brining. The snowball effects.
Do you think Steemit Inc wanted to create a blockchain where everyone could gain financial wealth? If you think that you are daft. It’s as clear as day. Their words…….
The economic effect of this is similar to a lottery where people overestimate their probability of getting votes and thus do more work than the expected value of their reward
STEEM needs success stories to sell and Steemit inc know this. Why do you think they have allowed a system to continue where only bot boosted posts get to trending? We don’t have Jerry any more but we do have a pretrial from trending that, what people are seeking, this illusive easy financial success, is very possible. Trending provides this. Like it or not.
However, facts are, bidbots are not really providing these success stories. There are 4 bots netting over 10% of the rewards pool every month in bid earnings and curation rewards. And the people behind the posts boosted have no success story to really tell because they made no money. Bidbots are not about content. No matter how subjective ‘good content’ is bidbots can’t tell STEEMs success story because steem is about content, or is it about bots?
We need more success stories. And not just one or two. We need 50-60-70-80-90 even 100 success stories for each App created on the block. And we need to let these financially successful people gloat and sing their stories on the top of their voices from the highest tree. Some people that follow them will also be successful, however most wont.
I can already hear some of you say “But Paula what about retention, you have said yourself the expectation gap is one cause of poor retention?” and yes, this is very true. But facts are, we are still so small right now, and I know when Udemy was so small, their concerns were not based on retaining every new instructor, but finding the next success story they could use to attract more.
I’m not talking just about creators here. STEEM also need success stories for curators. Imagine the floods of new users when people are shouting from trees “hay look at me and I did this by curating” There are more content consumers in this world than creators. How are we missing this link so much?
There has been much talk about a proposal to change the payouts from 75%/25% to 50%/50%. Simple fact, right now we have a problem getting people to curate manually. Anything that improves this is good for creators, good for the platform and good for starting to create those curator success stories.
We want to create a demand for STEEM, a demand for the use of the Apps being created on the block. Like it or not, this proven marketing strategy works time and time again.
This post comes with Steemfest starting in just a few days. You may even be reading this while you are on your way. I so wish I was going, but with two young kids is not possible for me to actually get away. Marketing is a hot topic right now and many people are calling for Steemit Inc to make it happen and I would love to be part of the discussion.
My call on this is not to Steemit Inc or to @ned, but to all the developers creating apps. Many of which have been given a nice little kickstarter funding from Steemit Inc.. What are you going to do to market your app? How are you going to fund the marketing? Maybe you would all consider creating a shared marketing budget, funded with upvotes from your kickstarter funding. After all, funding the start of a project includes marketing.
Have a great time at steemfest, talk loads, drink load and come up with solutions.
Shamless Plug
Like what we are doing? Dont forget to vote for @steemcommunity as your steem witness.
As it happens I am on a flight there right now and reading this! This really hit the nail on the head about what Steem needs to succeed. I would write a longer reply, but it’s difficult on my phone on the airplane WiFi...
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have a fantastic time at steemfest, maybe next year i will be able to come and meet you all. I really hope that marketing becomes part of the discussion over there and if it does and people put in a plan, I hope I can get involved when everyone returns to normality.
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It always come downs to hardwork, consistency and perseverance to achieve any type of success in ventures like this. It should not be any different, if so, there is really no value to obtain from it. I have found it so interesting that while other blockchain projects have focused on marketing first and technology second, Steem (or Steemit Inc) has not been out there marketing the platform which I believe is a success considering the amount of transactions performed on a daily basis and a growing ecosystem. This imbalance is probably why Steem is no longer in the top 10 asset while protocols with no working blockchain are more valuable.
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I agree @newageinv, while I appreciate platforms which wait until they are developed to a certain point to market themselves, there's no harm in getting exposure, and showing off something half-baked to come back a year later with improvements, people respect improvement and we should trust people to take second and third looks at something. It takes years for brands to become trusted on a wide scale (though there are exceptions to this, why?).
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look at the game fortnite. Isnt that still beta?
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Great point - I haven't looked into how they marketed...
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I support your point. A lot of initiatives on here are geared towards fast results. Steem is barely 3years old, give it time. Let's develop and improve on our new and existing effort. Steem will stand the test of time. We are technocrats here, not. Bunch of greedy capitalists (no offense) trying to make ill-gotten gains. I would prefer we don't sell anything at all than sell a half-baked blockchain. Maybe it has worked for many, but we can do things differently and better
Posted using Partiko Android
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we can do things better, but look at the game fortnite, thats only half baked and still in beta and they are marketing the heck out of it. beta apps can still attract a lot of new users.
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Okay steemit inc have been weak on marketing, but maybe we dont really need them to do it. Im really thinking a fund and a marketing team working for all of the apps could be a really good idea.
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Looking at it from a purely content creator perspective, and an meritocratic, an ideological one, I have a few thoughts...(I do have them occasionally).
Ill post it later - but you are, like, really really knowledgeable on these statistics things and stuff, so I wondered if you could point me to a link that gives a list of users/size of account?
I'm sure it's easy to find, but I cant find it!.
...But I'm stoopid.
Tanks (as they say in bosnia), for any help..
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Something cool a couple months back Curie reached out to the sub communities they are supporting and ask for an update on how things are going for them in regards to their efforts. While I’m not sure what if anything they could be using at Steemfest that was submitted to them. Here is what I ended up writing.
https://steemit.com/archdruid/@enjar/archdruid-gaming-the-making-of-a-community
It is 2 months old so I hope you don't mind me linking it.
Granted we are no dapp and no one is getting rich by any means. I think it shows the power of someone getting a random invite out to a discord one day because someone liked what they created. While many things sure have changed in those 2 months since I wrote that it is still amazing.
I think it also paints the real picture. It takes a lot of work, time, and people wanting to support something to get anywhere in life and on this platfrom. You go into many communities out there and you see the same group of people it seems that are always an admin/high rank. The platform itself has always been in need of people wanting to take action and doing things. I see that in the many communities I’m a visitor in.
With good leadership skills and some funding Steemit seems like a great place to create a team and build something. We have seen that with quite a few projects. The talent is here the world just needs to know it.
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communities, like what you have shown are as important to steem as apps.
"The talent is here the world just needs to know it."
Could not have put it better myself
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I nominate myself for everyone to come together and make me that success story. I won't let you guys down.
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hahah the aim of this post was to nominate myself, now I have some competition.
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Nice post @paulag, nice to be caught up on Steem fundamentals, I haven't tuned in for a while.
I agree with your points about manual curation, it's great for everyone and we could all use a bit more incentive to do so.
it's also nice to see you putting marketing on developers to talk about.
It often feels like development and marketing are two very far away poles/disciplines which rarely overlap or appreciate each other; the functional & performance aspects of development vs. the appearance & communicative aspects of marketing are pretty different contexts.
Are there any marketers on here really having good discussions about this? Who's around? I see you calling on developers to taking on a bit more of a marketing perspective and I think this is good, and I think bringing a problem-solving/engineering mindset to marketing can be really effective; but it's not an easy task. What are developers planning to do with marketing? Do they appreciate marketing? Or is there still a level of ignorance/naiveté towards it?
I'm all for organic growth from the development of good tech, but marketing for the purpose of community engagement is so effective particularly in the short-term at early stages.
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Development and marketing ARE poles apart. This is common in every industry. The trick is to try and blend them. STEEM has amazing developers in the community. but we also have amazing marketeers and we can leverage these as well as we leverage the developers.
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A delightful article. Resteem.
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thank you for the resteem
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I agree with every single line you wrote here. I could detail our plans at SteemSTEM if you are interested. The short version is that it is damned hard to get the public we aim to get on Steem, and it is even harder to find investors both on Steem and in the outside world. However, it is already two years we are making our way here, and I guess this will continue (until we all burn out at work ^^).
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I would love to hear the detail of SteemSTEM plans. Please do share them.
And yes, it is so hard to get the general public onboard and to get investors, but maybe thats because there are to many little pockets trying when if combined these pockets could be more effective (from a marketing view)
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The long term goal is to get research institutes and scientists so that they could use Steem, via steemstem.io (our app under development), as a medium for science communication. Science communication is vital today and it would be great to have Steem playing a role in there. We have started SteemSTEM 2 years ago with the aim of making Steem a better place for STEM and we today have very ambitious goals. We hope that they are shared, and we are at the moment looking for early investors in the project.
On the mid-term, we will get on board a couple of institutes plus a know youtuber so that they will start using the platform. With something to showcase, maybe getting (internal and external) investors on board will be easier.
Here is the short version (so that there is a trace somewhere for people following this conversation ;) )
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Hi @paulag!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.975 which ranks you at #90 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 3 places in the last three days (old rank 93).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 243 contributions, your post is ranked at #1. Congratulations!
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
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The curation side of things needs to be addressed. I can't seem them doing anything in the short term however as @ned's response is always SMT's will sort this mess out just wait until next year. Which may be true, but it is putting a lot of eggs in one basket. In the mean time as much as I don't like them the bid bots are the only way to have content discovered by a reasonable audience.
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I agree, the curation needs to be addresses, there needs to be real rewards and success stories.
SMT's and Dapps are the answer, lets face it, steemit.com is not so great and it has been proven that a poor UI will increase churn.
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Yes the problem then becomes how to change the focus from steemit when that is what is associated with steem . The steemit links come up when you google and inertia seems to force everyone that way when they begin.
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This is very in depth discussion about the fundamental of the economics of Steemit without any big jargon words. I would agree on that we need people utilizing Steem blockchain to apply to real world application (like businesses). Without that, it will only stay as it is now, which all of us do not want that. Personally, I am working towards on developing a Dapp like others to empower more creative content creators to use the blockchain. Well, for a none technical guy, it is truly a hard thing for me, but let's just say a year later, I still bet this could somehow be something. Really do hope that the curation system can be changed to 50/50% which promotes more real interaction between users. (The Steemit Inc cleverly design the upvoting system to be so addictive like a lottery, but not to forget the real brand that can be brought up from Steemit and expand out of the blockchain to reach more people. It can become an incubator hub as well.)
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It's nearly a year since I started my journey on here. I've tried growing the organic path, with bidbots, even with joining communities and engagement. I invested countless hours trying to make it work. More than 3/4 of my combined SP are from investment.
Looking back, I wish those valuable hours lost were better spent. Your highlight of Steemit's words are so on par with we all strive to achieve on here, realizing too late that perhaps, it is not worth it afterall. Not everyone is a success story!
My investment now will be with Steem Monsters. I have earned more with imaginary cards than I have with the Steem cryptocurrency. In fact, all of my friends are investing and earning more with SM. Individuals that have never invested a penny in the Steem cryptocurrency have spent fiat investing in Steem Monsters.
I see all that Steem Monsters have brought to this platform and may I add that it is without funding/SP delegation from Steemit Inc. SM have yet to mass market and they are a game with imaginary cards yet people are willing to invest fiat. I don't know know of any other dapps out there that can claim their users are investing fiat into this platform. Hmm ok, maybe nathanmars with dtube, but he is definitely a one-of-a kind big investor.
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steemmonsters is for sure a success story on steem, but do you know, I have not not got involved with it myself. Games and apps for kids, we need more off. to me STEEM is the start of web3 and if you are here for steemmonsters or if you are here to share your art work, we are all early adopters.
Sometimes I also feel that the hours I have spent here over the last 16 months could have been better spent. My initial goal, of finding a way to monitize my existing online business via crypto has not yet been made possible and still feels rather far away. Not everyone is a success story! and that includes me, and although I dont do the lotto, I still post here on steem. Maybe one day :-)
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