I am really into exponential ideas and how they will impact everything. (check out Peter Diamandis, Kevin Kelly)
I have been fascinated by the concept of Steemit and I am excited about it because it is the first time I'm seeing an exponential idea in action before most other people (on the planet that is there are currently 200k members and 2000+ are joining every day!) and am able to be part of it at a relatively early stage.
Most people will get on Steemit because of STEEM (the cryptocurrency).
But only looking at it as another cryptocurrency is seriously underestimating what is going to drive Steemit's growth.
I think Steemit, and STEEM as a currency, has a huge first mover advantage for blogs.
To start with: have a look at this counter http://www.worldometers.info/blogs/
it shows the number of blogs written TODAY.
Already at over 3 million just today. How many people do you think will EVER see a single penny from that?
The mantra with blogging was:
Content gets traffic,
(some) traffic gets ad-clicks and then
ad-clicks get (some) money
Really only pennies unless you have a million + per month hits.
Most don’t see any revenue. most of the revenue was earned by Google of your ads and content.
The promise of normal blogging to earn money turned out to be hollow,
yes it could be very lucrative BUT you had to be able to build a whole on-line marketing and maybe product generation machine behind it.
That is a job in itself, aside from the writing which is hard enough!
The incentive for many people to display ads is going away fast, it is just not worth it anymore! The people who are able to monetize blogs directly are those who have massive amounts of traffic.
The whole ad process is broken and probably has a pervasive influence on the quality and content of blogs.
If you are constantly writing with sponsors and ad SEO in mind your are probably gagging yourself and putting artificial constraints around it!
Do you know how refreshing it is to not have a million ads and extra links around the article I'm reading on Steemit !??? I feel my distraction going away and the writing experience is hyper focussed because it is so bare bones (It’s in Beta right now but eminently usable, formatting is a bit challenging still !)
Users of Steemit however simply don't have to bother with all that ad circus anymore!
They don't need to have icky ads plastered over their website (which only pay pennies per month anyway).
Steemit shortens the writing-to-money cycle to
Content gets traffic,
most traffic gets upvotes (if content looks valueable)
upvotes are STEEM POWER + Steem Backed Dollars.
(As I understand it 50% converts to Steem Backed Dollars which is convertible to STEEM and then money (increasingly so) 50% converts to INFLUENCE (or STEEM if you power down).
But it is not over there!
For your READER your content is now much more valuable than simple entertainment or enlightenment!
It is also a potential way to make money and influence, simply for liking and up-voting you!
So the INCENTIVE for the reader to take action (curate and maybe promote and re-steem your content) is much higher.
So that can snowball:
content gets some Steemit traffic,
traffic gets upvotes,
upvotes attract more upvotes because of curation rewards,
more upvotes is more visibility,
more visibility is more traffic.
Several ways there are positive feedback loops that can create virality.
SEO wise, because Steemit ranks better than an individual blog on google, the opportunity for organic traffic is also much higher, which can also start this cycle.
Added to this, is the network effect of Steemit itself: the more people join the more useful it becomes, the more people are then enticed to join.
From wikipedia.
(I explained this network effect in another post on exponential functions:
https://steemit.com/steem/@the-t... )
Going back to @surfyogi 's article especially his #4 hit me as another mind-blowing feature, I am not so familiar with crypto-currency so did not realize THIS:
"4) Steem does not charge a fee for transactions. That's going to kill all the other altcoin (there are hundreds), in many ways. Not ETH, but most of the others, have no game like this.
They pale in comparison; just pure hype in comparison. “
So all in all:
The first mover advantage Steemit has is that it is a complete system for bloggers and normal people who want to make money straight off their ideas without hassle:
no bother with gaming that day’s SEO, no bother with ad-sense and buying ads.
STEEM + Steemit provides a low drag micropayment system that goes DIRECT from reader to author and not only that,
it is a place where an audience will SEE what you are blogging about and has an INCENTIVE to curate your content because THEY will benefit with REAL money and INFLUENCE.
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Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://www.quora.com/Whats-your-opinion-on-Steem-and-SteemIt
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