We will be successful when we have more investors and more content creators. MANY more. We have only about 6000-8000 active here now. This is not sustainable over time.
We have many initiatives that could be successful in drawing those people. I cannot predict which of those WILL succeed. I can only push those most promising to me. But if the few that are here now cannot make it work, we will never get there.
Now people are promised to make money to get them in the door and then told they need to "invest" instead. This happens when they plainly see others who do make money here. The place is too complicated to make them understand easily.
This is why I rarely recruit now and help those that are trying and somewhat succeeding over rep 45 and with 100+ sp. I have a much better success rate in this manner. Many people I help or have helped are doing much better than me since they are not dumb enough to work here more than full time writing minnow tips. So this is why some of those end up helping me financially on steem and off of steem.
There are only a handful of people trying to help the little people grow. I'm hoping the recent fork changes that and see some good progress.
We get about 1000 people in the door each week now. 950 are gone in a month. Maybe 10 of the remainder can succeed long-term with our current paradigm. We need to do better.
I still don't get what's your vision of success.
Investors, also known as 'smart money', want return in order to invest in something and, as long as the world doesn't suffer some sort of catastroph, the current buying power is still fiat money (usd/eur/gbp).
Yes, it's possible to make returns on the Steem blockchain through dividends, either curating or delegating. Let's move on to the second subject.
Investors also work with something called risk exposure and risk/reward ratio. It's possible to make returns with Steem, but from the investor's perspective, is it worth the risk? Is it worth putting hundreds of thousands of fiat money (buying power) on Steem, where the money will be vulnerable to a gigantic selling pressure + the money stays locked for 12 weeks, so you won't be able to cash out in case of a big dump, or in something where the main company behind the system sells Steem to cover expenses. It doesn't sound very attractive for investors.
For me it's a huge problem, more users = more people dreaming with cashing out for some juicy dolars = more selling pressure = not good for real investors. Even if we had millions of users it would only make the rewards smaller for everyone and lesser the chances for those who are new. Plus the coin willcontinue to depreciate via inflation due to its nature.
I believe my last two repplies explain better my point of view about the conflict of interest and how a inflacionary/depreciating invironment works.
Now again, ***users who are giving up may be getting a deluded idea of what they really want from the platform. ***
Am I being negative about Steem and rooting for its failure? Of course not, but that doesn't mean I can't be realistic.
Honestly, at this point it's nothing short of delusion. This "95% kill rate" is ignoring the sheer number of people that come here with the intentions of making money, then realising it isn't promised and that they may not even have anything they care to post in the first place; that, as well as the fact that the earnings they do make just aren't worth their time and effort when they have jobs, student life, etc.
I, myself, used to post about three times a day for what I remember being almost a year. I never expected earnings, I never expected followers, or even comments. Skipping to now, I've received a 40k SP delegation to encourage, and support smaller users on the platform. The ones that do know what they're posting but need the boost, but that's genuinely the majority here that are struggling and likely to leave as a result of the lack of motivation and rewards.
I recently gave 500 Steem to one user, alongside, from what I remember, another 500 Steem in delegations to 5 other users. All minnows that I felt had potential in their chosen areas on here.
Having read the replies, I can't help but get a strong sense of entitlement. If you believe you deserve to be paid for educating users, fair enough, but you can't expect to be paid a living wage. As someone capable of providing a larger reward: I'd rather hand it to those minnows that need supporting and not those attempting to educate them.