another question is how many levels deep will the referral system go, one level or multiple levels?
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.
It is easy for someone bringing in a great blogger or YT star by promising them to support them via whale vote
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 :-)