すごい面白い記事！！
You all loved my idea but let's be real: none of you actually thought I could pull it off. Well guess what buckaroos, I did the unthinkable: I found someone willing to be the whale. But we'll get to that in a second.
For those of you who didn't read my last post, let me give you the summarized version so you know what I'm talking about:
The problems
Minnows don't make any money from their posts
Minnows get no exposure for their posts
There is no incentive for high SP accounts not to rape the reward pool
Steemit is flooded with unedited, low quality content
New users leave quickly once they realize that paid upvotes are the only way to reliably make money and get exposure
These are all problems that everyone has acknowledged.
The solution(s)
A new account is created whose purpose is specifically to pay minnows in SBD for contributing content
Agreements are reached with high SP accounts to upvote every single post on the account (similar to the @haejin - @ranchorelaxo arrangement)
Rewards are split between the writer, the whale and the posting account
If you want to read the full post, you can find it here.
While I haven't been able to get the exact solution I was looking for, I got something that is close enough to get this party started. It requires a bit of explanation, so buckle your seatbelt and get ready for another ride on the @YallaPapi Hype Train.
Choo Chooooooooooo
I won't lie, after making my last post, even I had doubts that I'd be able to pull it off. But you'd be surprised how motivated you are to follow through when you publicly announce you're going to do something.
So I figured I would at least start at the basics and send messages to a bunch of whales and explain my project. I probably sent ~100 messages to the top whales as ranked on SteemWhales. Guess how many responses?
Zero.
Okay, no problem. They're not the only game in town.
Of course, it would have been nice to have a partner with a money-printing machine. Unfortunately, I haven't been around long enough to meet anyone who owns one. Other than a few interactions with @haejin in the comments section of some of my previous posts (and a few spirited "discussions" with @berniesanders), I don't think I've had contact with any whales. Maybe some of them are moonlighting in my Discord chat, but somehow I doubt it.
Anyway, those of you who have been following me for a while know that I do marketing for ICOs and blockchain startups. This blog started as a place for me to rewrite crypto news articles that I could show to clients as a way to let them know that I was familiar with the industry.
After doing this kind of work for a few months, you meet a lot of people. Some of them have a massive reach with lots of resources at their disposal. When I realized that the whales I contacted weren't going to write me back, I decided to see if some of my other contacts would be interested in my proposition.
I didn't have to look very far.
One of the people I contacted is very well-established in the ICO market. The guy has been on a guest on CBNC, flies around the world doing important things, and knows all the people who are worth knowing.
I assumed that he didn't know all the inner workings of Steemit, upvotes, SP etc so I sent him a long email explaining how it all works and my plan for using it to create a profitable business. Took him five minutes to reply with, and I quote: "I'm definitely in. Let's run with it."
I'll keep his identity private for now, but if the rest of the plan comes to fruition then you'll be seeing his name everywhere, believe me.
I won't bother pasting my email to him as it's 1400 words, but here's the gist of it:
We create our own online cryptocurrency publication on Steemit
We hire writers from Steemit and pay them either a flat fee or a % in the SBD payout after 7 days
We brand the account under a new digital agency that represents blockchain startups and ICOs
We use the account to create high quality content like you would see on Coindesk, CCN, etc.
The account is used as a selling tool for potential clients and a way to attract new clients
Instead of buying Steem, we lease the SP from MinnowBooster and use it to fund the account via upvotes
A portion goes to him for funding the deal and supplying the infrastructure, a portion goes to me for putting it all together, and a portion goes to the content-creators for doing the actual work
The benefit to all parties is pretty clear here. He makes money and helps his clients, I make money and build out my brand, and Steemit users make money by getting paid to write articles.
It's all about the Satoshis, baby
In order for this to be profitable, we will be posting 10 articles per day from the account and upvoting all of them with the leased SP. That means 300 additional payouts to professional writers for contributing high quality content that passes through an editor before it hits the presses.
We are effectively turning Steemit into a professional online publication.
The plan is to do this for 4 weeks and then reevaluate. If it goes well, it will be an ongoing thing. If it goes extremely well, then we will replicate it in other niches.
Theoretically, with several of these "magazines" in place, we could give Steemit a much needed facelift and give the reward pool a more even distribution. Instead of Steemit being flooded with low effort, unedited garbage posts, it will suddenly be dominated by professionally written, edited and formatted articles.
My partner already offers a service to his clients that writes and places articles on cryptocurrency news sites. Part of the reason he agreed to the deal is that he is already producing too many articles and needs somewhere to place them. So in the beginning, not ALL of the work will go to Steemit users.
Especially for this 4 week trial run, we want to be able to control as many of the variables as possible. We've never contracted any work out to anyone on Steemit. We don't know how long they will take to deliver, if they're flaky, if they can produce the volume they say they will, etc. My partner already has a team of writers that is producing work as well as an editor that makes sure they're magazine-quality.
That said, I've managed to convince him to hire some Steemit authors for the trial. So we'll ideally be employing anywhere from 5-10 authors from this site to produce 5-15 articles EACH in the span of 28 days. It might be more and it might be less. Depends on who is interested and how much they can produce.
Unlike the other #sharkschool initiatives, these are open to everyone.
I feel I should point out that while I'd love to help poor people living in Venezuela improve their living situation, this is a business first and foremost. We have to pay to lease our SP. So unless you can reliably submit 300-500 word cryptocurrency articles with excellent spelling, grammar and spacing, this first run is not for you.
And even if you can write, you're going to need to write at a high enough volume to keep up. All you're doing is rewriting news articles and making press releases for clients. It's not that hard. I can write 10 articles like this a day if I want.
I know most of you are probably not professional writers. But you have to understand that this little trial run is going to cost us a lot of money and we want to recoup our investment with some left over for us as well.
We are giving a few of you the opportunity to get involved in this, but because of the comparably high rewards compared to 99% of the posts on this platform, the standards for being accepted are high as well.
If you want to be involved, I want you to pitch me on why you're one of the ones I should pick.
You can make a post and tag me, send me a 0.001 memo with the link, send me a message on Discord, email me... whatever. I don't care.
The requirements:
Interest/understanding in cryptocurrency
Able to write 300-500 word articles
Have good spelling and grammar
Show me samples. Doesn't have to be crypto.
Can produce at least ten articles per month. Preference given to those who can handle higher volume.
Don't fucking outsource this to your Nigerian writing farm either. If I wanted an agency I would hire an agency. I am looking for Steemit users who want to make money writing high quality content for the platform.
The #YallaPapi Epoch
Honestly, I don't have to hire any of you.
Those posts that I made about encouraging people to step their game up? I wrote them because I stood to directly benefit from the initiatives inside. I gained followers from each post. I grew my Discord. And I further cemented my reputation on this platform as someone who is smart, ambitious and gets shit done.
Do I really want to help any of you? Like, do I care about your personal lives or how you pay your rent every month? Not really.
But I see that there is potential to turn this platform into a place where people are essentially paid to contribute high quality content to a series of online publications. And by doing all the work, contacting investors, hiring writers and all that other boring stuff, I get to be the one in charge.
Maybe for some reason you DON'T think that's a great idea. I know I have some haters out there. Strangely enough you were very quiet on my last post. Maybe because you realized my plan was solid. And let's face it - did you even expect me to get this far?
Well guess what? We're here now and this shit is happening.
Soon, I will pay people to write articles on Steemit. They'll be paid in SBD that they can use for whatever they want. Isn't that what this platform was designed for in the first place?
If this goes according to plan, then there is literally work for hundreds if not thousands of you. Here are some other potential niches that are on the table:
Finance
Dating
Fitness
Celebrities
Employment
Networking
Food
Travel
You get the idea.
Every silver lining has a cloud
I'm very excited for this and the rest of you should be as well.
But do you know what I'm worried about? I'm worried that you won't know what to do now that you've gotten what you've asked for. Where will you direct your aggression now that there is a clear, realistic plan for you to make money by using this platform that DOESN'T depend on 6 months of kowtowing to the right people or random @curie upvotes?
If this lease is approved, then you all really WILL be able to make money by contributing to the platform.
Will you be able to write about whatever you want? No.
Will you be able to write whenever you feel like it? No.
Will you be able to submit your flabby posts and make money because you made the right friends? No.
This is an ongoing freelance gig for the right people. Let me come right out and say it: that isn't most of you. Most of you are bad writers. Why do you think I started #sharkschool? Because I like you? No. Because most of the content on here has no direction and is laughably bad.
I'm sorry if that offends any of you, but let's call it what it is. You sit down and write about god knows what, add a couple pictures and click publish. You don't proofread it. You don't edit it. Most of the stuff on here would never be accepted anywhere - and you expect to get rewarded for it? Please.
If you want this place to be anything other than a money-printing machine for 200 people, then that needs to change.
Love me or hate me, I am giving you what you have been clamoring for this entire time: a chance to make reliable income by submitting your content to this site. This is the beginning of an opportunity for massive exposure and to be part of something that can eventually replace your full time job.
Those of you who were here before me, who paid in sweat equity to network, comment and engage with other users, I respect your effort. But there is working hard and there is working smart. With the system weighted so heavily in the favor of the 1%, you are relying on the goodwill and generosity of mostly-inactive members to spend their valuable time reading and upvoting your posts.
Why would they waste all the time necessary to do that when it's so much easier to just delegate their SP to a bidbot or a program like @minnowbooster and make a passive income for doing literally nothing?
They wouldn't. And they don't.
And that's why this place looks the way it does today.
The vast majority of posts on here go unread, getting only low-effort shit comments from bots, phishers and people living in $1/day countries who actually seem to think that begging for upvotes will get them somewhere.
What about the people who DO get exposure? You know - the ones whose names you recognize? Aside from the lucky few that were in the right place at the right time and now control high SP accounts, the rest of us spend massive amounts of money to upvote our posts. I spent $300 SBD to upvote my last post and will probably spend the same on this one.
That's $900 USD. Nine hundred fucking dollars to upvote a goddamn post about soliciting less than 200 high SP account holders - all with the purpose of getting enough popular opinion on my side to launch the project WITHOUT being overrun by haters who don't like me - just because I ask them that we all do the unthinkable: take responsibility for our lives.
Did anyone come to me and offer me this deal? Did someone tell me, "Hey @YallaPapi, you should like, lease out a million Steem Power for a few weeks and use it to pay Steemit users to write articles for a new business."
Nope.
Did an investor come to me and say, "Hey, do you have any new business ideas I can invest in that are blockchain-related?"
Nope.
Did anyone force me to sit at my computer for the past three months and write more than most of you have written in your entire lives?
Nope.
Maybe you look at me and you think, "Wow, I could never do that."
But what did I really do? I wrote a few posts and sent a few emails.
Yeah, I had some money, but so what? Am I spending my own money to get this online publication started? Nope. But I proposed an intelligent deal to the right person and they jumped at the chance to be involved.
Nothing is stopping you from doing the same thing.
Normally in my posts I would emphasize the previous sentence with harsh language and a patronizing tone, but I say the following as one human being to another:
All of you are limited only by your own creativity. You can all design solutions like this on your own. Not just on Steemit, but in every area of your life.
You can live on a beach in Southeast Asia and work from your laptop. You can get famous on YouTube or Instagram. You can create a company that generates millions of dollars a year.
Take the neck pill so you can handle the crown
Honestly, none of you should want to write for this publication that I'm starting.
In a perfect world, I wouldn't hire any of you. You'd be such big thinkers that you'd all be working on your own projects.
You'd be too busy pitching deals and managing your own people that you wouldn't even CONSIDER writing for me except as a way to promote your own project.
I realize that's not the case. Is it your fault? Who cares.
Because the reality is that starting right now, right this second, before you even finish this post, you can choose to take your life into your own hands and design it any way you want.
Don't get me wrong. If you're up to the task and can produce quality, I'd love to hire you to write.
But I'd rather you come to me and tell me that you want to be in charge of the Steemit Health And Fitness Magazine that I'll start once the crypto one is stabilized.
I want you to tell me how you're going to handle finding the writers, make advertising deals with supplement companies, reach out to Instagram Influencers in the fitness niche, and all the other ways you can help both of us make lots of money. Writers are a dime a dozen.
If, for some reason, you don't want that for yourself and just want to keep it simple, alright. No problem. Do your thing.
But you have to understand that the lower you are on the totem pole, the less control you have. You don't get to choose what you write about. You don't get to make deals with anyone. You don't get to utilize anyone else's brainpower and time to put money in your pocket. You have to do all the work yourself.
The less control you have, the more easily you can be replaced. Writers are commodities these days. I can go on Upwork right now and hire 20 writers with full portfolios for less than it would cost to hire people from Steemit. And they're reliable with a proven reputation.
But what will that do for me? Yes, I do want to make money. For sure that's my main priority.
But I also want to build goodwill on here because I know that if you all like the direction I'm taking the platform, if I am directly responsible for putting money in your pocket, if I am creating an ecosystem that gives Steemit a reputation as a place where people can reliably make money AND go to consume excellent content, then every move I make in the future will be met with less and less friction.
Welcome to Vault 13
Regardless of what you think of me or my plan, I'm sure you'll agree that it's clear that we've been left to fend for ourselves. This place isn't capitalism - it's anarchy. There are no devs to update us, there is no executive team to guide us. It's the nuclear apocalypse over here baby.
The only difference is that instead of killing and pillaging each other, the system is designed so that the only way to earn significant rewards is by creating programs that benefit the majority of users. All the bidbots, @minnowbooster, @curie, @adsactly, @smartmarket, @dtube et al... all huge initiatives that distribute rewards to lesser-known users and put mega bucks in the pockets of the users who run them.
Anyway... this is too long, even for one of my posts. I'm going to create the account soon and put a request for a 500k - 1M lease for 4 weeks at 400 SP per Steem. That's the best rate that MinnowBooster allows on their order form.
If you know anyone who is leasing SP and you want to see this happen, then I encourage you to express that in a comment.
And if that doesn't work? Don't worry, I have more tricks up my sleeve.
Do you or someone you know want to be a crypto writer?
Tell me why in a comment!
Want more #sharkschool?
Sign up for the newsletter: Right here baby.
Join the Discord channel: https://discord.gg/56Pnrwc
Can't get enough of me? Follow me on Instagram!
office death.png
Recommended reading:
Hey Steemit Whales, How'd You Like To Fix All Of Steemit's Problems And Make Bank By Doing Absolutely Nothing?
Introducing The Kingmaker Writing Contest, #SharkSchool University, And Omniloquent Publishing - Three #SharkSchool Initiatives That Incentivize Steemit Users To Step Their Game Up
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Follow, resteem and smash dat mf like button...
I spend way too much time on these posts.
Please resteem this so I feel good about myself.