Let me start of this post stating that I'm not complaining, steemit is an amazing platform, and it gets many things right, what I want to do in this post is make a small sugestion that possibly could make the platform even greater and could attract more top-tier content providers to the platform to add value to the platform.
The thing that prompted the below idea was this post by me and more specifically the stats for my post. As I posted a link to my post on Twitter that did rather well in terms of retweets, the post got a nice number of 11,837 views.
The overlap between my Twitter following and the Steemit community though seems to be rather low, so the post only got 11 votes, including upvotes from myself. As I understand how steemit works without any regular adds, it makes perfect sense that views from non-steemit visitors don't produce any revenues, at least how things are set up now, but this is where I think there is an interesting set of interests could align in a way that could be beneficial to everyone involved.
Promoting a post
Steemit offers the opportunity to promote your posts. Doing so will end your post up in the promoted tab, depending on your investment to promote, you will end higher in the list. One question though, how many exposures will that actually get your post.
Currently, if I understand correctly, promoting your post will just remove the money used to promote from everyone's control, as the money would end up with a special @null account that simply eats what is sent to it.
Why not use popular posts to promote promoted posts?
As my post's stats show in a small way, a little under 12,000 views might be nothing compared to what top tier content producers reach, it is clear that due to lack of overlap in userbase, trading in add revenues for upvote revenues from a disjunct user base would definitely be prohibitive for top content providers considering moving their content to steemit.
These would be the people who could really increase the value of the platform. If steemit can offer an alternative for add revenues from views by non-steemit users, this might help in attracting these top people. Help them to take the first step at least giving them time to build up a following on the new platform.
My sugestion
So how about bringing these two worlds together? Allocate part of, maybe 20% or 30% of SBD paid for promotion to a promotion reward pool. Then show one of the promoted posts on entry-point posts viewed by non users of the platform. That is, If someone brings in a viewer to his post from lets say Twitter, his post could show an add like link to a promoted post that overlaps in tags.
If after that, the new promotion reward pool is distributed, the distribution could be done based on the share of unique visitors, share of the add clicks, or whatever the steemit.com website developers or steem core developers deem most appropriate.
This would be a win/win/win solution in my view:
- The person paying for promotion wins because he gets more exposure of his content
- The person pulling in views into the platform wins because (s)he makes money from his/her folowing on other platforms.
- STEEM owners benefit because if more top-tier content providers choose to use steemit for their content, the value of the platform and thus of STEEM should go up.
It is quite possible that I am missing something that would make this a bad idea in some way, but from where I'm standing there don't seem to be any downsides for anyone if these things were to be aligned.
I definitely like how you didn't just complain, but came up with a solution as well. It is so difficult to get people to even view your post if you are not a "BIG" on the totum pole. I have been doing a push up challenge for the last 13 days performing over 1065 push up and hoping to get others to join me. I am all about fitness and motivating other to achieve their goals and I think the most I have ever received on a post is under 2.00.
Its just disheartening that if you don't pay for your reputation, upvotes, followers you will have difficulty improving your position is Steemit.
Well, I did think of taking a short-cut...if I make some money in real life. I will buy enough steempower to boost me, but I will also examine the wallets of posters I admire and where necessary, I will delegate enough for each of them to be strong enough to be seen by more viewers, for as long as needed, then take it back for passing on to others.
Now, all I have to do is wait...and wait...and....
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Sorry, I did not mean that I do not agree with your proposal. I do agree and it makes a lot of sense. I have tried helping a couple of posters with promotion, but decided that unless I can pay the max, it is not worth it, so there are posters I would have back that were not backed - and I saved myself a lot of money.
Your idea is one way for dealing with the one-way street that mostly goes nowhere
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