There had been multiple posts about referral systems and its effect on Steem. Currently, steemit.com has referral tracking but it doesn't give any incentive to referrers. In this post I will explorer some of the technical possibilities and specific implementation idea. Perhaps, can be adopted by Steemit.com as well...
Referrals and App invites are great way to onboard mass users. Especially decentralized platforms it can be huge given nature of the network. Almost all major social platforms provide this feature one way or another. Companies like Dropbox, Paypal, AirBnb, Uber, Evernote, Amazon Prime, etc. grew massively because of their referral programs and they still rely on them.
Example of implementation, Facebook has App Invites where you can invite your friends. This can be used by any number of apps to give users choice to onboard their network of users, friends, family, colleagues etc. Google also has Firebase Invites, or every app can implement their own tracking and referral system.
Now imagine combined effect of these systems on eSteem or Steemit or Busy.
I was exploring referrals and invites right from the start of eSteem. eSteem uses Firebase to send push notifications to users and implementing above will be great addition. Ultimately, what we want is to get everyone onboard to start using Steem and create not only social platform but Marketplace for mass. Fast forward today, I can already see multiple possibilities to incentivize users to go out there, do marketing, invites and start earning extra by referrals.
How?
Specific implementation I have in mind, involves beneficiaries that we will soon have with hf17/hf18. This feature allow us to reward app developers as well as everyone who is helping to onboard more people if properly implemented!
Invite friend, family, colleagues, other people and get reward from their future earnings. I believe this gives strong incentive to most people here to go out and do referrals because you know you will be rewarded once people you invited joins and start posting, commenting. People joining through your invites also get your support on their content if you follow and vote their content.
So the question is, What percentage of reward would be fair to give referrals?
Leave a comment, suggestions below to discuss pros and cons of above referral system.
it is my personal belief that Steemit cannot scale until communities are implemented, there is only so much content that can fit in 1 bucket. Once communities are rolled out (hopefully soon) a referral system would definitely juice things up! I would go for a $ of earnings...something like 1% for lifetime.
I hate this idea. Users are already not earning enough. People will invite other for financial reasons only. You have just created financial overhead of whoch we have already too much.
Ie longterm this is just going to be bad for price of steem.
If you really want to create incentive to onboard people give referrals 10$ or something in that range.
I agree with you!
When reward for referral, this shall be limited to an one time reward only IMHO.
I would be ok with referrals being rewarded with promotion. So, for example, every referral who signs up earns promotion credit (SBD?) that can be used for selected articles(your own or someone elses) but cannot be withdrawn.
I like the idea of communities and have thought about the same thing myself. I do not quite understand what you mean by 1% for a lifetime and if its related to the communities/groups or a referral.
they are unrelated but I was just putting this out so that we don't put the horse behind the cart.
Got ya, thanks for clarifying
Thank you for input, brother! You are right, communities will be killer feature to grow. I believe it is coming soon with couple month, I see some development on Github. Referrals I believe is extra to push grow further and quicker :)
Absolutely right, hopefully this gets out soon. I really want to invite my friends over steemit.
A percentage of that user's future earnings seems like the better option as it keeps people from just creating new accounts to collect some set amount of steem as a reward... also it saves steemit.inc money in that they don't have to pay out the steem.
Regarding the actual percentage of their earnings, perhaps somewhere in the range of 1%-5%...? Now the question becomes, is that feasible?
Overall I think a referral reward system is what will take the user base to the next level... can you imagine people holding steem promotion/signup conferences all over the world?! :)
I dont think thats a good idea. The platform should remail long term rewards in sharing content, curating or investing. That would create a ponzi squeme.
A referral program wouldn't change any of this, it would only add another way to earn steem.
A ponzi scheme requires new participants to invest their own money, how is a referral program a ponzi scheme? Plenty of legitimate website uses referral programs because it's the most efficient way of getting the word out, coinbase have a referral program , is coinbase a ponzi?
Lifetime 1 percent seems like a lot maybe 1 percent for 1 year
Everyone will be able to take advantage of the referral program. You will be sharing 1% with the person who invited you but you will also be able to refer many users which would make up for the percentage loss. A lifetime program encourages long term marketing.
I agree with @ender, we should not go into lifetime earnings from others, that is just building Steemit out on terms of finance than anything else. See my other comments to this post regarding my opinion to fees for referrals.
You are right! With upcoming beneficiaries feature we have number of use cases and my hope is to gather some input from community to see what range would be viable or if this type of referrals would work and scale...
You can get eSteem referals from the ongoing contests on @literature trail
You mean promotion not referral right?!
Yes
I have been thinking about promotion of posts on eSteem, will make a post about in-depth once implementation of this feature is ready 😉
Not everyone knows about the esteem app and what it does, so i think it would get more coverage on steemit, from partnering up with the contests being run by @literature-trail
You may be right, but now we don't have special place for promotion posts. You can use promoted filter by burning SBD for now until we have special or editor's pick type of posts
CAn you send me the download link for the Esteem App, I would like to introduce it on the contest I aam running for new Steemians
Referral feature YES, but I do not think this needs to be rewarded at all with some lifetime percentage of earnings of the new users a user referred. This will build pyramids! When a reward, then only one time fee. But, I also think that when we have the referral feature, it'll be used by any users that likes Steemit anyway, even if it is without any incentive! The referral method shall be super super simple and users will start to press the referral button, am pretty sure of that.
ok but where does that one time fee come from? Also what is to stop people from creating tons of new sock puppet accounts just to collect that one time fee?
I not technical enough to understand what can be implemented in a way that abuse cannot happen. Therefore I would say: no rewards to referrals if 1-time-fee is prone to abuse.
So now you fuck users that use referrals.
@good-karma, this is an important topic, so thank for bringing it up!
For me, the primary purpose of some kind of referral tracking (for all "versions" of Steemit) isn't really about rewards, but about knowing whether anybody is "listening" when I mention Steemit, outside the Steemit framework.
Let's hypothetically say I write a Steemit post called something like "Why I'm not hanging around on Facebook much, these days" and write a nice intro to Steemit. And distribute it in "my usual places." I did this with a "non-Steemit" related post a few weeks back, and it got about 1300 reads... so I at least know that my offsite followers read my stuff.
So, let's say I set this article free and include an "if this sounds interesting to you, click here to come join me!" link. Groovy. Some people will probably take a chance and do it.
BUT NOW... how do I know that somebody signed up as a result of my efforts? My issue is that I just want to be connected to these folks, somehow... because we're "selling" this as a community, and as a community member, I should at least be able to automatically follow these new people. That makes sense, right? What's more, it would be nice if they were "auto-followed" in a separate category called "referrals." So I know that they joined.
It would be even cooler if we had a message system here on Steemit (Yes, I know, busy.org has one... but I'm on Steemit, right now) so I could actually send them a personal message to (a) welcome them and (b) help/encourage them to start posting and become active. Again, that's what a community does. Or a least should do.
Now, for the rewards? Speaking from 20+ years of experience in user-generated content sites, the SINGLE BIGGEST ISSUE with "referral members" is basically "dead accounts." The REASON so many accounts end up dead as a result of referrals is that rewards are given simply for getting someone to sign up. Sooooo, I persuade 300 people to sign up to get my "rewards" and none of them ever post anything... STUPID... it's a financial drain and a waste of space.
So I would propose that IF there were to be rewards attached, it should be something along the lines of the referrer getting a 1% "royalty" of the referree's active posting rewards WHEN, and ONLY when they reach 1000SP, or something like that. In other words, I only would get rewards for someone who (a) posts regularly (or invests cash) and (b) doesn't just come in and cashes out every time they have $2 to their name... which is another "plague" that falls on reward based sites.
Sorry to go on at such length... but the experience of ALL BUT ONE SITE of this type having shut down in the course of 20 years... often over the issue of mismanaging referrals (usually in service of wanting to grow too fast), tells me it's something that has to be carefully planned and implemented with the utmost of care.
Let's not shoot the goose that's laying golden eggs!
The fact that there is still no messaging on steemit blows my mind.
If steem implement a referral system users would earn a certain percentage of referred users's rewards indefinetely.
It would be very difficult to give a reward per sign up without the system being gamed and abused. Centralized websites can do it because of KYC.
Well, I wouldn't want people to get a referral reward simply for signing people up... as you say, that would open up the system for being gamed and abused-- seen it happen lots of time. Mostly, I just want to be able to track people who sign up... so I can connect with them, and encourage them... which brings us back to the messaging system... MUCH needed.
Then implement a referral system without rewards. See my other comments to this post why I do not believe in indefinate referrals. It'll create pyramids of split earnings and I can tell you, some will be very focused on this and in the end will sit back, do nothing on Steemit and take quite a bit of earnings. I think Steemit should not provide such changes, Steemit will grow even with a rewarded referral feature.
Good points you bring up...Dead accounts are not issue in this case because they work only after they start earning by contributing.
A topic I was wondering about when I joined - while referral incentive is a driver to bring in people it certainly still has the opportunity to game the system. I have been on a lot referral based platforms in the last years and I do think we better skip that for now. It will create new fights I am sure - even there are only beneficiary reward unless you start posting and earning reward through contribution - doors are open within the rules to more or less game.
A referral program wouldn't make the system more gameable than it currently is.
Someone could create multiple accounts all linked to his main account, but then if he wants to earn 1% from each account he will have to post a lot from all these accounts. Basically he could just post from his main account or even create sockpuppets to post and that would be the same. There is more incentives to post your content from your main account to build up a reputation than posting all your content from different accounts anyway.
What kind of fights? please elaborate..
Exactly, thanks brother for clarifying idea on other comments! I think, once it is designed properly, educating people on how it works should be easy...Referral design in post still require few things to be fully functional :)
Fingers crossed @snowflake - another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels? It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote - if whales have agreed to do so. User can delegate / lend their SP now to various sub accounts so it is not too obvious. That would not even be gaming the system as it is allowed via rules but people will see and recognise and a fight might start - however the community has the chance to handle such instance too (in theory).
But what is gaming the system? Wikipedia says:
Gaming the system (also referred to as gaming the rules, bending the rules, abusing the system, cheating the system, milking the system, playing the system, or working the system) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.
I do hope people will play fair and the community is ruling it by themselves - saw similar things happening on other platforms which resulted in favorism battles and marked the end of some platforms - Thanks fro commenting @snowflake
The system that I envision is not MLM, it is a simple referral system where you earn from users that you have invited. So it's one level. You won't earn rewards from users invited by your own referred users. In such scheme you have to take a bigger and bigger percentage on new users to reward all intermediaries, this is really bad.
The best is to have a simple one level referral system where new users have the same chance to earn reward by inviting new users.
You don't need whale support to incentivize youtubers with a referral program.
Imagine a youtuber with more than 100k subs. This person post his invite link on youtube and promote steemit. He will probably get at least a thousands people join steemit.
Now let's take a conservative number here, say the average person earn $1 per day from posting reward, so all of them combined earn $1000 per day. That means this youtuber will earn $10 per day or $300 per month just for having posted a link on youtube.
Once someone found the site what is to stop them from making their own new account that gets 100 percent of the reward?
The referral program could be invite only. That would make it even more attractive to marketers
One level is good and I agree - the other point I might need to elaborate a bit more - let me think and try to explain in proper Englisch, my brain is too germanised still @snowflake - bear with me - just need to do my tax today but revert back :-)
MLM systems its proven it doesnt work... in the long run
We doubt if referral system is MLM! MLM constitutes deeper things. This is referral system is plain to see if it happens but what comes first, is steemit getting ready to host the masses especially interface-wise, which is in the making!
Great thoughts!
Exactly!
SPOT ON!
Afaik, it helps growth and it is not entirely MLM if done right.
I agree 100% and wrote a post about this recently actually
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/unleashing-the-power-of-wom-could-a-decentralized-referral-system-be-possible
Maybe that will be part of new marketing strategy from new marketing guy and new announcement later this week.
perfect
yeah, exactly it is your thing Craig :)
Maybe 3 % of the earnings of every recruited new member would be fair, but in my opinion that should last only for a certain time period, for example for one year (or six months), after this period everybody should be "free" and have the right to keep 100 % of his profit for himself. :-)
Maybe it would be cool if you could see how many people someone got on board!
By using
custom_jsonto register referrals it would be straight-forward to track that!Everyone will win if we go that route! I look forward to that day, when the platform can welcome warmly droves of new users while we, already on this virtual environment will reap benefits upon benefits!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and information on this subject, namaste :)
New users will also reap the benefits, that's the beauty of a referral program,people refer people that refer people that themselves refer people who in turn refers other people, the circle never ends until the whole world is on board.
Indeed! :) Thanks Eric!
If you can guarantee they are human referrals, and not bot referrals, I love this idea.
Each person should have to answer a captcha, like the ones shown on Bittrex with the mountains or street signs.
The referral incentive should be mediocre, to avoid it getting exploited by greed and fake referrals. Will be tricky, but if done right, will be great for all of us...
I think there is no incentive to create bot with above referrals system because referral only gets reward with new account posts or comments and start earning...
Bots can make comments and posts too. We see that already. Artificial intelligence actually works. If you ever run a Wordpress blog, you will see lots of bot commenters.
Yes you are right! And they do bring value if their comments are valued by community by votes... And of course, proper referral implementation would not allow automatic registration altogether and can be huge plus 😊
Keep in mind the incentive, with or without additional inputs, is inherent in the platform. The broader the popularity the stronger your vestment becomes. Another productive line of reasoning is to organize across the platform specifically for outreach. Use the baked in democracy and vote/promote material designed to educate Steem. There are some extremely smart people here. Join forces, build a strategy using the system we are promoting, and collectively employee it. Massive coordinated blow-outs, blasts of Steem into every form of social media! Not blasts of 'Steam' or vapor. Not hot air! 'Steem' like 'steem' as in 'esteem' (respect) what is happening here. Esteem Steem by sharing. Think about the impact of a day set aside inside the community to reach out in harmony. S-day! A planned invasion, one of many, a coup d'état meant to topple the structure. Blockchain is revolution! S-day!
If the group can earn more than each individually, then it will make sense. Then attracting new users from the circle of their friends and acquaintances will pass to the active stage.
And getting a reward for every new user without a group is not so interesting in my opinion. This could be realized by increasing the strength of the group's voice compared to each individual voice.
After we have community feature perhaps this should be reviewed again...
Of course, there are many variants of realization. It's like one of the options. Thanks for the answer.
I still think a on-chain referral program is best. Registrar and referrer get a cut of author rewards, probably with a cap, probably with a lower percentage even 0 when reward of a post is below a threshold, but it doesn't rely on client software/app, also can't be bypassed by "bad developers/users".
You are right, above can be incorporated into Steem. Not sure complexity of implementing, but it is just one more parameter,
referral_rewardor something similar which works ascuration_rewardexcept split goes to referrals..I actually think that easy way of referring needs to be part of the system, but without any incentives. And when incentives are given, this should be 1 time, not a percentage of all future earnings. Not be design at least. However, if you as a user are onboarding lets say an ezine you can make a deal outside of Steemit with that ezine on some revenue split, or payment of you helping that ezine to come onboard.
So I said there can be a "cap", but not all future earnings.
Correct, Could be a possibility, although I actually think referral could/should be done without any incentives, not build in at least. When launching a referral feature, I would for sure start without incentives, and see how people are using it and how the platform will grow.
I even would argue with the amount of funds Steemit Inc got (and I expect they got those funds super cheap), it should actually be part of their funds (ie already minted Steem instead of new Steem coming into the reward pool daily) that should pay for growth of the platform, whether this are individual users or companies. Drop the funds a new user gets when signing up, but use that to pay for the referral.
I dont like a referral system. It is just a financial drain.
Only scams and crappy products need such a thing.
Use the money to spend on something that is actually valuable for steem. We have so many design issues and incentive problems, creating yet another one is not what we need at this stage.
If you want to attract new users invest in a vip or marketing.
Also it is much more important to retain users than getting new ones.
You are right, retention is important and I believe everyone is working to improve that. It needs to be balanced though, on-boarding new user and retention, marketing, UX, innovation, etc...
I have just made a blog on a referral program on Steemit ;)
I greatly look forward to some form of referral and incentivizing apps with STEEM and new users.
One time or continuous referral reward may make sense as I have seen both examples used successfully.
Keep up the great work and ideas!
Thanks virtual for the comment and input! Sure, i think we need to see how one implementation works and can extend or experiment different ones 😉
Welcome and agreed.
A percentage based referall system would probably be more attractive for most user, but hard to implement.
I like the idea. But there are a lot more things to consider like bots, people that just create new accounts and so on...
It is already implemented in blockchain level and supports with
beneficiaryreward sharing. Creating new account won't give you beneficiary reward unless you start posting and earning reward through contribution.1% is simple. It adds incentive without drastically affecting payouts.
Of course, as with all features, it becomes challenging to counter gaming the system.
Thank you for suggestions! Would you elaborate on gaming the system part?! ;)
Well, if you get a percentage of the earnings of anyone you refer, then it could be gamed by creating tons of fake accounts that continue curating and/or post just to make that tidbit for the referrer. If someone created a lot of these accounts, they could make enough to make it worthwhile.
Would it be worth it? No clue... just possible. No matter what is done, however, someone's always finding a way to game it. I love the idea and hope it comes through soon.
Yes, beneficiary only works on post and comment rewards. And if someone creates a lot of accounts, earns through making post/comment which means they bringing value, because people rewarding their contribution. You are right about nature of humans :)
Hello my friend
People's Advocacy Program (referral)
Well, if initially, people are rewarded with a percentage that may increase the use of this system
This is interesting. So you could set up a beneficiary split as a referral program, am I right in assuming the split would only occur on activity made through eSteem then?
I'd assume (and want) eSteem will have a small beneficiary share as well. I'd also advocate for 1% or less share. That could still be greatly rewarding if the right folks are recruited!
I agree a revenue split makes it difficult to game the system, as the extra effort put into multiple accounts inherently has little benefit over simply maintains one quality account.
If adopted by all apps on top of Steem, not only eSteem can attract more users but all apps through their respective loyal users...
The referral program is interesting. But how are you going to deal with multi-accounts? This is a problem of many referral systems, when 1 user registers several accounts on his own link.
In this example, multi-accounts are not issue, because they won't get any reward unless accounts are actively participating (commenting, posting)
In this case, reward should not be a fixed amount and % of referral earnings. You can try to start with 1% and estimate how many new users will come by referral link.
I MUST be a Percentage or yeah multi-account will rain over steemit. But i think we must start at mini 3% to encourage people to attract more people from other social media and when we reach a limit of new user lessening the percentage to 2 and again to end at 1 percent
Yes affiliate marketing is still a hot thing, been thinking about this also. I think that at least, you attract a lot of new Steemians! What can go wrong?
Indeed, they can be powerful tool... :)
Good job, beuatiful @good-karma
Resteem
Great Idea, refferal will make steemians more "agressive" to invite their friends, also make people want to join steemit. But for percentage for refferal reward...hmmm... I do not have any idea about that. Nice ! :)
A referral program is not a must IMO, but many users want it. I think the incentive of referring a friend is that they would vote you for sure.
If we are thinking about referral systems, I prefer lifetime stuff, and multilevel is a no-no. I also don't like the idea that my friends would have rewards cut because they would register by me.
I would rather give bigger return to those who holds SP and refer users. I would solve this like SP dilution was/is solved.
The power of a referral program is that it incentivize people to refer as many people as possible, not just their friends. For example a youtuber with 1 000 000 sub could post his link and he would reap massive rewards from all his followers posting on steemit.
If you want virality a referral system is key.
Your friend would have the opportunity to earn back by referring new users.
If you don't referring anyone, you don't have the full rewards. Still it sounds me like some MLM shit.
Many users don't click ref links because no one want potential loss even when there is no fee built-in. They're right. All the others would have 'f* it moment'.
MLM is based on selling products to people, it requires people to buy stuff in order for other to take a percentage. Steem doesn't require anyone to invest or buy something so I don't see a referral program controversial at all in this instance.
I'm not talking about the product part of MLM, but the system where the last one sucks. That's why I've written that
Also, I'm not saying that referral systems are evil, but it must be well thought or Steem will be another item in the ad/spam filters with a lot of "get rich quick" ads.
I like the idea @good-karma has written about, some kind of mentoring seems nice. However, users want money without active work. I know about some sites that mentor their acquired users because of life time interests. Rare, but they exist.
Back to the referral system and MLM 'confusion': yes, referred users wouldn't buy anything, still they lose money on long term when they sign up trough an affiliate vs normal accounts. It could only work if making a new account would be unavailable by the normal, non-referred way, so there would be a referrer in any case.
If there would be referred and normal accounts, I'd say "please, don't be stupid, never ever use Steem affiliate links, use the original registration form (make a new account if necessary)."
I think, you are confusing referrals with MLM...referrals doesn't cost anything from user and only person who joins through referrals would share very small percentage of future earnings, which they don't even have to see. Also people who referred them have incentive to support them by voting, because it will, not only gives them pleasure to do so (because they are friends, family) but they also receive small extra reward. Just like curation, you like the content you vote and you also get small reward.
If Steemit will have a referral system it will grow very big because people will make promotion like crazy. I know if it is good bad yet for the authors because it will be so many and it will be a mess on the platform. I think the platform must be more easy for people not so smart and ready to learn. I saw accounts here with hundred of dollars abandoned. When Steemit will have refferal system that will be the real launch but for now i think it is not ready for that. (this is just my opinnion)
nice post @good-karma thanks for sharing
nice share @good-karma
INCENTIVIZE EVERYTHING!!
Due to the open source nature it is probably very important to incentivize all areas and aspects of the ecosystem to avoid the 'tragedy of the commons' effect. Great to think that these things are possible with blockchain wizardry
Awesome idea!
nice post
nice idea... good going
It should work but steemit still too new for a lot of people
Referral program would help in the growth of steemit. Long live steemit
We have a small community. And this community loves steem
I like the invitation thing, makes users feel privileged. Upvoted!
yes, it does and it is way more friendly when someone you know invited you.
send me the link brother
Good Idea, more people will join steemit, and for the percent 1-3 % seems good
This could be a good idea in the future. I feel Steemit needs to develop a whole lot more before implementing this :)
I feel the inverse. We need to attract more people as fast as possible, I think some Twitter "addict" can find their happiness here. We just need people and implementation of a percentage like 3% for referral will push people to take time to explain how Steemit works, why it's better that they are using etc...
After a certain time or a certain number of new "Steemers" ( people who join steemit ( i find it sounds good ]) the percentage must be lessened to 2% and 1% after another level reached.
I thought I was following you but found out I wasn't. Glad you stopped by my post and commented. I am now following you. You have the best and most informative posts. I love using esteem app for steemit. Thanks!
Thanks for the info!
nice post
Your ideas are great, but the whole benefit stuffs might make it look like a ponzi.
great suggestions, but Steemit doesn't seem to want to leave the "beta" yet ;)
let @zurvanic know about this
It'd be flooding with alt accounts only made to leech the system, as any "referral" website has.
I understand this way of rewarding referrals, but be careful not to get into a pyramid game here. I would think: 1-time reward for a successful referral instead of a percentage for all what the referred user is earning in the future.
I know I'm late here @good-karma, but I don't think it should be a percent of earnings so much as 10% influence bonus. If you refer someone with $1k influence, you get a bonus of $100 influence.
This would obviously lead to greater rewards, but would encourage you to refer active, high-quality users.