Today we are both proud and excited to share what we believe is truly a plan to onboard the masses to Steem and to realize our vision of
an open web where anyone can be a part and own a part.
Since the beginning, one of our goals has been to onboard many of the WordPress blogs and websites out there, which currently makes up 30% of the internet. To achieve this, it has been vital to not only provide a unique and compelling product, but also an onboarding process that is easy and effortless for the new users and their audiences, while also efficient and scalable for us. Next for growth to truly take off, is ensuring that more active users create a network effect that brings in more users at an exponential rate.
Accomplishing this has perhaps been the biggest challenges for all Steem apps. It is therefore what we have spent most of the last year trying to solve. We now finally believe that we have come up with our own workable solutions, and perhaps more importantly, brought them together as a complete product and growth strategy that makes sense both technically, financially and in terms of user experience.
In short, user growth on 4 key factors namely exposure, conversion, retention and network effect. In other words the number of new people introduced to Steem through various channels (exposure), times the rate that create a Steem account (conversion), times the rate that stays active (retention), and finally the number of new people they help introduce to Steem through content and other outreach (network effect). Unfortunately, these are all four areas where Steem and several Steem-apps (including SteemPress) have much to improve. We believe, especially with regards to:
- marketing
- user onboarding
- user experience and retention
- network effect and external reach
To which our new solutions, which are also the steps in our new roadmap, are:
- A quality-focused referral program targeting specific growth segments.
- Instant sign up to engage with content for new visitors.
- A curation policy and voting guidelines built to encourage and support user and community growth.
- Gamification and positive reinforcement through design.
- Connect users to community projects, support their growth, and offer chances to contribute to shared goals.
To better see how these issues and solutions are related to growing Steem and SteemPress as well as onboarding the masses, we've summarized it in the following infographic:
We hope you'll be as excited as we are these days after reading our plan. Below we will elaborate on why we believe they are key to solving the problems, how we will implement them and what we will be delivering and allowing the community to contribute to.
A quality-focused referral program targeting specific growth segments
Next week we will launch our new referral program together with the early version of our new website. Here, Steemians can access their referral link which will direct a visitor to our new sign up page for blogs looking to connect their WordPress website to Steem. We will then provide free accounts to blogs that can verify their website through their own WordPress dashboard and which meets a set of criteria including site traffic, engagement and social media following. The referrer will then be set as part-benefactor to future rewards earned by the accounts they onboard, as well as passively receiving a share of future payments the user makes to SteemPress once our subscription-based version is launched. We will also launch a competition alongside the new referral program where the best referrers will receive a liquid amount of STEEM.
An effective referral program can play a big role in user onboarding. Especially on a platform where existing users have direct incentives to help the Steem ecosystem grow to increase the value of their token and the sustainability of their STEEM-based revenue. Additionally, with referrers earning benefactor rewards on the new Steem accounts they onboard, they'll have additional incentives to help them succeed once here to increase their earnings.
Making the referral program only for blogs who can verify that they own a blog with decent traffic and social media reach also adds 2 more benefits. First, it eliminates the opportunity to be abused. This is key as it could otherwise result in Steem accounts being wasted on low-value referrals made only in the hope of gaining rewards. Second, it allows us to prioritize growth segments we believe have the most potential coming to Steem. We want our early referrers to help us target potential new users that are large enough to bring value to Steem, yet small enough that the value propositions and still existing hurdles of Steem are worth their time. Furthermore, prioritizing the growth of specific topics one at a time can help increase the likelihood of it being a success.
To start, we will require that the referred account has a proper blog, has produced content for at least a few months already, have a decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform), and ideally also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.
Instant access to engaging with content followed by Steem account creation
SteemPress now allow visitors of any of our user's blogs to engage with the content and leave a comment on the blockchain without a Steem account. This is done through creating a new "guest account", which we introduced in our most recent update. In short, visitors now only have to enter a display name, a password and an email to engage with content like they're used to on any other site. At the same time, we inform them both through email and our UI of the opportunity to "upgrade" to a Steem account to get full ownership over their account, support their favorite authors, and earn rewards.
The biggest challenge to "onboard the masses" for Steem-based apps has been the signup process. This both due to Steem accounts being scarce and costly, as well as the process being tedious and confusing for new users. This leads directly to a low conversion rate to Steem, as any barrier to entry lowers the number who successfully creates an account. Additionally, it also hurts content creators who want high engagement on their content in order to keep visitors coming back to their blogs. Finally, providing Steem accounts for free without any requirements quickly become costly for those who provide the accounts if it gets abused or wasted on users who just want to leave a comment.
By allowing people to engage and interact with content at minimal requirements, and then put them on a pathway to connect a Steem account later, we create a win for the site visitors, the blogs and ourselves. The visitors experience a far more convenient signup process and can engage immediately. They will also experience a smoother learning curve without receiving the information overload that a full Steem account often comes with. The returning site visitors can then instead learn by doing and then claim a Steem account later. This also makes it harder to get by abusers, making it far less costly for the account provider. Finally, it is crucial for all our top bloggers to get as much engagement as possible which results directly into more traffic to their website, and thus also to Steem via their comment section.
A public curation policy built for growth
We are preparing an official document that will contain our curation policy and voting guidelines. The policy will explain the goals of our curation to support our growth strategy. The guidelines will detail how our accounts will curate to achieve those goals. In summary, the pillars of our goals are: To grow our userbase, to support complementary community growth, to maximize the external value of produced content and engagement, and to ensure responsible use and positive outcome for the rest of Steem, whose value we ultimately depend on. With the ultimate objective being to best align how we curate with what creates the most value to us and to Steem.
The planned voting guidelines will include factors that determine which of our users we vote on and by how much. These currently include:
Engagement
- Incoming number of comments on the posts.
- Outgoing comments and replies to site visitors and other SteemPress blogs.
- Number of guest accounts created and guest comments through your website.
- Guest account earnings on your content.
- Outgoing vote diversity (curating different Steem accounts).
Traffic
- Unique page views on the blog.
- Improved Alexa-rating of the website over time.
Quality
- Votes received from curation projects.
- Incoming vote diversity (attracting different users and curators).
Other growth incentives
- Powering up / not powering down (we note who buys STEEM with SBDs and powers up).
- Making overall progress in terms of earnings.
- The number of successful referrals made through SteemPress.
All of these factors will help determine the "rating" that a SteemPress user has, which in turn affects if they'll be receiving upvotes from our account, and if so, how much. This rating will be visible to the user in their new dashboard once it is fully launched.
The other half of SteemPress's curation is still intended to be done through community project trails, of which we currently support 25 different curation initiatives. A different set of guidelines will apply for what makes a curation project able to receive a trail, and the factors above will still have an effect on the size of outgoing votes through trails.
We believe that the resulting transparency of making our policy and guidelines public both to our users and the Steem community, in general, can several benefits. First, it allows community input on the content of our curation policy in general and what other goals it may have or impacts it ought to consider. Second, it anybody to help evaluate the effectiveness of our guidelines in accomplishing the stated goals in the policy. Further, it provides clarity to our users (which will also happen through gamification as we'll see next) on what contributions and behaviors are desired which will result in fair curation.
Rewards are still one of the most important reasons why people are on Steem. So providing a clear understanding of how rewards can be earned, and then follow up with curation that is experienced as fair to the user is key to ensure a better retention rate as well as user growth. On top of this, Steem stakeholders and apps with delegations also have the ability to incentivise positive behaviors that helps grow Steem. By factoring in engagement, traffic, user-onboarding on top of quality, we believe we can use curation more strategically to grow both Steem and SteemPress.
Unfortunately for Steem, users so far have mostly been incentivized to share their content only with other stakeholders who hold Steem Power in order to gain upvotes and thus rewards. This works directly opposite to how any other social network and blogging platform, where users who want to earn needs to attract more site visitors, engagement and clicks on their page.
The goal should be a positive cycle where users are incentivized to help Steem grow for their own benefit, resulting in new users who again wants to help Steem grow, etc. If we can better align incentives with behaviors that help improve exposure, onboarding, retention and external value, we'll be setting ourselves up for success.
Gamification and positive reinforcement
To amplify the effect of good curation guidelines, and help improve user onboarding, retention, and participation, we will be making strategic use of gamification and positively reinforcing design.
Gamification
Users who create a "guest account" through email to engage with blogs will be put on a pathway to earn a free Steem account through engaging with content. A level-up bar will show much their comments have earned them from upvotes, and that reaching 5 Steem Power will allow them to claim a free Steem account. They'll also find a recommended set of activities to help them receive votes in order to progress. They are also encouraged to connect an existing or buy a new Steem account to immediately access anything their guest comments have earned them.
Blog owners will be introduced to the curation guidelines as a set of suggestions for how they can improve their chance of being curated by SteemPress and the many curation projects that we work with. Additionally, it will be educating the user about Steem in the process by introducing Steem communities, how voting and reward mechanisms work, how to access their funds and thus what the different keys are for, etc. All of this will take place directly in our new UI found across SteemPress comment sections in our new user profiles on steempress.io (work in progress), and the upcoming content and community discovery dashboard.
We believe that providing better clarity on how Steem works, the existence of communities, alternative interfaces, and other supportive applications, can all result in improved user retention. A more fun and educating path to understand Steem and receive rewards can also improve user experience. Finally, by providing gamified objectives that correlate with the activities that promote growth, we can direct efforts also into creating a platform that is more engaging and attracts more external value.
Positive reinforcement through design
The rapid growth and user retention of traditional social media has been largely due to addictive design techniques. Here, the most important KPI for all of them has been the average "time-on-site" spent by the userbase on the platform. Thus, all design decisions are made to make it more addictive to spend time on the app.
Steem, although it has done very little yet to capitalize on this, ought to have a competitive advantage here, namely rewards and a sense of co-ownership. Unlike most other social media platforms, time spent by regular users on Steem is worth something. This both through earning new tokens, as well as contributing to those tokens gaining value by growing Steem, a platform that you own. We will make more strategic use of this by providing users with reminders of the value of time spent on Steem through our UI. We'll do this by displaying the rewards earned over the past 7 days directly in the profile UI when logged in across SteemPress interfaces and settings pages. Periodic notifications will also congratulate users on reaching certain milestones to reinforce the idea of time-well-spent. Notifications can also be made of discussions taking place on other SteemPress blogs where commenters are receiving upvotes or where users they have liked in the past are currently engaging. Being on Steem should feel rewarding, and strengthening that feeling for normal users can directly improve user-retention on top of motivating positive engagement that leads to growth.
Community as a platform
Finally, we will provide a dedicated content and community "Discover" platform, as well as a new series of activities for community members to actively contribute. The discover page will serve two functions: 1. to let users find blogs and creators worth following, communities worth joining, as well as curation projects in order to improve user retention and engagement. 2. to give Steem Power holders a place to find curation projects worth supporting through delegations or trails with the option to do so directly on the page. The activities will be a set of competitions and "call for ideas" on topics that directly relate to improving Steem marketing, onboarding, retention and network effect.
Community curation
We believe strongly in the positive impact of user-run curation projects and other community initiatives. That's why half of our curation has been bone through trailing more than 25 different curation projects when they vote on SteemPress content. We find this approach to curation better for a couple of reasons. First, it decentralizes the curation process and produces an outcome that better reflects proof of brain. Second, it allows us to cover a much wider range of topics and languages than we could have achieved with an in-house curation team. Finally, it directly supports curation projects by improving the curation rewards they receive when our vote follows theirs. This we hope can both have tremendous value for community and curation growth in the current Hardfork, but also help make delegating to such projects more attractive for other stakeholders.
We thus want to make it as easy and attractive as possible for stakeholders to find and support the curation projects that contribute to growth. We believe that by combining manual curation judgment on the quality of content with our own guidelines, we can get the best of two worlds. First, a community validation of user-value, followed by a business validation of growth-contribution. So let's create a scenario where:
Steem apps + Communities = True
That's why we've decided that rather than asking for Steemians to delegate to us, we want to encourage delegation to the many community and curation projects that help us work and grow. After all, our own voting power is here not for us to profit from curation rewards, but for us to create the maximum amount of growth that our business can benefit from.
Competitions
We believe that an ideal decentralized app for social applications should be more than decentralized code. It should also be a network for people with different skills and interests with a shared incentive to bring value to the network they own a part in and to help other community members gain traction. We will therefore also start a series of competitions where community members can get involved and earn rewards by contributing not only to our goals but to grow our users and related communities. The clue is to find tasks where we know the community members can do a great job, and where it also benefits both our users and Steem directly. We will then give a share of our reward as a price pool to good entries. We expect to run these on a monthly basis and currently plan on the first ones being:
- Referral program launch competition.
- Best content marketing material.
- Best Steem educational content.
- Best new user and minnow supporters.
We hope that by allowing the community to get more involved, and contribute to the growth that they can benefit from themselves directly, we can multiply our numbers further. After all, we hope that this can provide both a vision and platform that people want to be a part of, taking ownership of, and bring to life for their own sake. To accomplish this we know we must also dare to give the community the chance to participate and reward contributions accordingly, while also putting more SP behind the projects that work hard to realize our shared goals.
Conclusion
We believe we have found the right solutions to our most significant obstacles to growth and prepared a strategy and roadmap that can address them effectively while also setting us and you up for success. This includes a scalable marketing and onboarding resource and strategy that grows with the number of users to improve exposure. Then followed by frictionless access for both new quality creators as well as their audience to Steem to improve conversion. Once here, clear guidelines and gamification to give a pathway from a beginner to a user who adds value to Steem, is part of the community and experiences their time on Steem as time-well-spent in order to improve retention. Lastly, by providing a platform and incentives designed for user and community success, with opportunities to be and own a part, we can allow users to grow Steem while growing themselves, thus naturally creating a network effect.
Our new roadmap thus consists of adding these pieces.
Much of the work to achieve this already been carried out during a crypto-winter that has required us to rethink how we can deliver value to our users and how we can scale fast without requiring any changes to the blockchain.
So dear Steem community, we invite you to join our effort to accelerate user growth, retention and network effect, and to be a part of our vision to create a more open web where anyone can be a part and own a part. We would love to have your suggestions for how we can collectively bring more of the masses to Steem, and co-create the platform we all want to share.
All the best,
@Howo and @Fredrikaa
You can vote for our witness directly using Steemconnect here.
Can I just say you guys just rock. this is all really amazing and I am so happy to see your plan set out like this. Obviously I am a steempress fan, it would be amazing to be the first real steempress success story...damn I better get a move on. Nice work! keep it up.
Thanks a lot Paula! It always means a lot to have this form of support and encouragement!
I heard some rumors that there will be a leaderboard for blogs that get more views and rewards, onboard more guest accounts to become Steemians and minnows, and contributes to other growth targets ;)
Well that's a great rumor to spread...I already have my eye on the number 1 spot of that rumoured leaderboard.
Posted using Partiko Android
There is SO much in this post to be excited about! I joined a WordPress Facebook blogging community about 4 years ago, and while it no longer exists (the owner no longer had time to maintain it), I still interact with a fair number of bloggers on a regular basis. One of my biggest frustrations since joining the Steemit platform has been trying to encourage them to join, especially since it's not a "just click this button" type of thing.
I did want to take a moment though, to mention one thing that gave me pause -
I've been blogging on my self-hosted site for 14 years now. While I produce content on a regular basis, I'm not even close to 5K on any of my social media platforms (and I'm a daily user of FB, IG, and Twitter). I also don't have a clue what my Alexa rating is, as I've never bothered to check.
I just did a quick scan on Twitter of some of the bloggers I'd love to refer to this program, and only one in the dozen had 5K (and just barely). Everyone else was around the 1k mark (I have 1.6K). I completely understand the need to have parameters to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I'd also hate to lose the opportunity to bring these small-but-consistent bloggers into the Steem community.
Small detail in an otherwise exciting strategy! I'll probably comment further after I've reread this a few
thousandmore times. 😊Oh, and I can't wait to connect my WordPress widget with my SteemPress referral link!
Thanks a lot for your feedback traci! It's always super nice and helpful + your GIFs and memes are just the best! :)
The social media following is not an absolute requirement, but one condition that could allow us to validate that a blog is legit. It's also meant as a guideline for our referrers as to what targets we're mostly hoping they'll search for.
One thing I didn't mention is that for trusted referrers who we're sure have no intention to abuse this new system, we may give some direct signup codes. With these, the verification by us would not be needed and those you want to onboard would get their account immediately with no need to wait.
Thanks in return for your amazingly kind words, @fredrikaa! 😊
I'm happy to hear the social media following will be a guideline, not a hard & fast rule, because I can definitely see it being an important part of the overall vetting process.
And needless to say (and yet I'm saying it...lol) the idea of direct signup codes for trusted referrers sounds wicked awesomesauce!
I agree with your concern on this, @traciyork. This is all so awesome! But that metric does seem extreme for vetting people. I'm glad it's a guideline, @fredrikaa, and the trusted referrer method is a great idea. I recommend 1k or 2k as a starting point, though.
It's just a matter of how we will prioritize giving away a free Steem account + delegating Steem Power. As I'm sure you know, those things are not free, so we don't want it to get abused, and also prioritize where it has the most impact. But as I said, it's a guideline and one of the metrics we'll look at.
Anyone who are interested in joining Steem can of course still get hold of an account through other means like on steemit.com and then still use steempress afterwards.
That makes sense, @fredrikaa. Thank you for the additional info. This is all so cool. Great developments!!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thanks for the feedback, @jayna! 😊
Happy to get recommendations by people on who would make wicked awesomesauce-referrers ;). Also, would it be beneficial to have a Discord server, forum, or post dedicated to sharing marketing material, invitation letters, and other tips and tricks for the community to use to be the best referrers they can be? I'm thinking that we all win if Steem grows!
I completely agree that we all win, but I'm gonna say "when" Steem grows, not "if." 😊
I think a new channel in the existing SteemPress Discord server specifically for referrers would be an excellent idea. It could be a closed channel accessible only by people you've promoted to the role of Referrer, so everyone there would be on the same page.
Also, you replied to @amico and said -
I think, when you're ready to do so, this would be a great subject for a Steem post, so everyone in the community can recommend people. I'm sure you'd get a good number of names to start off with. In fact, I already have a few names in mind... 😎
Trusted referrers is an excellent idea! 🤗
I hope so too! Anything to make onboarding of the right people as easy and efficient as possible. And daring to put trust in good community members is a great way (I hope) of doing so! Would love to hear suggestions from the userbase of who they believe could be amazing Steem ambassadors and referrers.
perhaps you could do something in conjunction with Steamtipper.com to defray the cost of onboarding new accounts. Tip the prospect with a little Steem to start if their content is promising but social stats are not quite there yet. One of the advantages of Steem being so low right now is almost anyone can afford to get involved without much risk.
suena que hay algo debajo de la mesa
Es curioso, pensé lo mismo cuando miré tu perfil ...
(Funny, I thought the same thing when I looked at your profile...)
Lol, this is far more impressive than anything I've ever seen from Steemit Inc. or top witnesses.
Very happy that you liked it. And yes, to me this brings so much of what I've seen and thought on Steem, as well as elsewhere, for the past 2 and a half years together. I would love to hear what parts of it you found particularly impressive or worth prioritizing on our end. Or where other users and stakeholders can and should get involved?
It's important to get the fundamentals right, first. Free and instant account creation, an easy-to-use interface are essential. Next comes content discovery, moderation, and curation. Only then can one consider marketing, because without those basics, only a very tiny niche is going to switch/crosspost from WordPress, Medium or Reddit.
Completely agree. Else you're just pouring water into a bathtub with a hole in it.
We now have free and instant accounts for interactions only, with the built-in opportunity for those accounts to earn their way to a Steem account through positive interactions. Still working on better content discovery, although I see it as less vital for us since our bloggers mostly work to promote their content themselves. Moderation is not only a feature but a requirement imo. Our users are 100% in control of what comments are visible on their websites, no idea why this is so controversial to many Steemians when having ownership of one's own blog should include the ability to moderate it... (When I first started on steemit, I put in a tonne of effort into making content relevant to my work in the space sector, but there was no way I would ever share it with my colleagues, friends or other social media following with the comment section turning into spam by flat earthers...).
In any case, I think Steem can add value to a social product without requiring it to be used in its "vanilla version" with stake based content discovery and no moderation.
...it s just Rock’n’Roll what you re doing!!!...my absolute respect!!!...there is so much exciting information and so much spirit and power in your post, thank you so much for this...in my opinion it’s the right way to open steem for the masses...I m sure with such a lot of capable heads (you!!!) behind, it will succeed..I will doing my best to make it a successful story...and I m looking forward to post high level content...one thing I have to say is that there are a lot of things, rules, steemrelated apps and sites that it s a Real djungle for new people, by the way it is still also for me...but slowly I m getting more and more in...love it!...up..resteemed..steem on!...
Thanks for the very positive feedback! Steem, and the value of our tokens, are what we make them to be. So let's work together to improve it!:) I'm curious to hear if there were any particular points that I touched that you believed in, or would be happy to contribute to?
Steem on!
..yes, sure you will hear my feedback as soon as my daily works and todos allows it...meanwhile, thank you very much for your energy and motivation...could be so easy to spend energy in the right things instead of wasting it with kind of things which the world and also nobody needs...so, thx again..we ll surely meet again..(don’t know where, don’t know when..., like Johnny Cash sung)..up..
...of course follow you..steem on!..
I have been playing with guest account options, and it is my belief that this can be done with OAuth, a database and a handfull of 'guest accounts' per project.
Posting the comment can be done by a 'company account' and the post can include author name (name and profile pic from social media login).
I have managed this on a wordpress blog with the Auth0 plugin and a Chron Posting Script. This leads us to a future of guest/lite/full accounts.
Here I have done a post response about how I believe guest accounts can be implemented technically for the most effect.
Hey @fredrikka, this is absolutely kick ass!!! As I was reading I kept thinking that these all sound like fantastic ideas that could work in wrangling in some folks here.
Do you guys plan on singling and seeking out specific “bloggers” at all or just letting it kinda take its course naturally? Sorry if it’s a dumb question. Lol
Hey man! Very glad to hear that you liked it! And yes, this post for me has been years in the making, and ties together so much of what I believe are important pieces of the puzzle to make Steem a success.
Well, the referral program will take its course naturally in the sense that people are free to try to onboard whoever they want. I don't know myself in what content categories we have the most passionate ambassadors for Steem. So will have to see. We ourselves will be targeting specific growth segments that we believe are more likely to want to come onboard and who bring more value. Making the effort more focused can have 2 benefits: 1. It is easier to get familiar with one niche at a time in terms of learning where they are easily reached, what expectations they have, what an affective pitch therefore is, etc. And 2. because growing one topic at a time means those you onboard find other creators relevant to their niche and whose content they may like to consume themselves, rather than being an island amongst others whose interest you don't share and thus don't get a lot of engagement on their content.
In any case, if you yourself or anyone you know would like to get involved in the referral program, then do reach out to me!
Go for it maaaan! So exciting to see independent devs sticking with Steem in the tough times and innovating more than ever.
I'm really sorry that I ever accused you of being a battery. And if you were a battery, you'd be the 100 megawatt battery built by Tesla!
Thanks! Well, I think bear markets are a perfect time to not look at the price and focus on deep work. Happy that we've managed o do just that!
And hahaha, no worries man, that was just hilarious ;). Would be cool to hear if you would like to do some arts or marketing material once we launch our referral program and open up for community contributions to it.
Thank you Martin and Frederik for such comprehensive post, it is easy to feel that there are a lot of thoughts and ideas you put in this project to attract the masses.
I like the idea of creating easy access for content creator to communicate with communities on Steem platform, I remember signing up in 2017 and was waiting for more than couple of months and actually already stopped thinking about but accidentally opened the site and surprisingly found that the account is verified. I do not imagine how many of other people maybe just left off the idea after such a long waiting time.
When I first read about Steempress that encourage me to create my blog, that I have never thought before and being visual Artist that is great to have an opportunity to use the blog like a Gallery.
I like the idea to support and help a communities, because every newcomer will try to find himself in this big ocean and the communities are the units helping them to navigate. From our side we wanted to thank for supporting @Art-venture project and Artistic community on Steemit for almost a year.
We definitely support your ideas and we will spread the word!
@howo and @frederikaa
I have been wanting to get to what I knew would be an exciting post for days, and eventually got to it today, and...here I am. These developments are really exciting. I think I have mentioned that I've consolidated most of my blogging to WordPress where I've blogged for going on six years. I recently moved from one of their packages to a self-hosted site - paid for in Steem and hosted by Steemian @gmuxx. The prospect of being able to offer an easy way for readers to sign up for Steemit is something I welcome. Bearing in mind that not all my readers are interested in Steem or crypto platforms (even though I think they should be...). Which brings me to @traciyork's concern and which is also mine:
I agree with "proper blog" and your qualification. It's the
IMHO unless you buy followers, or blog 24/7, this is not going to happen - I'm pretty active, but not as active as Traci and, for example @jaynie, but I have a really long way to go on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to reach these numbers - and I run multiple accounts.
And, pardon my ignorance, who or what is Alexa? Again, like Traci, I've no clue my rating here...
I look forward to these developments and being able to blog from a single, user-friendly interface.
Finally, thank you for this outline - to which I want to return and absorb, properly - and for Steempress. Steempress has made a phenominal difference to my Steem life - to which I want to devote more time.
Fiona
Thanks for taking the time to read the post and offer such great feedback!
Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough, but the requirements/guidelines set for blogs are only for those that we'll be giving a free Steem account + delegate our own STEEM to through the referral program. Obviously, we cannot afford to do this to an infinite, nor very large, number of blogs without additional support. Thus, those guidelines are there to limit how this could otherwise be abused, or quickly wasted.
For the followers of your blogs, they'll be able to either earn their way to a free Steem account through making comments that authors like yourself and others like, or by getting a Steem account themselves to log in with. Alternatively, if they just want to post comments on your blog then they might not even need a Steem account, but of course we all want them to eventually do so.
In any case, if you're interested in helping bring more creators and bloggers to Steem through our referral program, I'm comfident that we can help bring those that you refer onboard either way. I'll be happy to talk with you directly through DIscord or other channels if so.
Alexa rating is simply a ranking based on how much traffic goes to a website (unique site visitors, clicks, etc).
And finally, I'm very happy to hear that we're making something that you enjoy using! It is of course our first objective :)
@frederikaa
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, and for explaining (probably again) the challenges of delegating steem to new accounts. Of course, that makes sense, and perhaps #justthinkingaloud you and @howo might want to do that in campaigns e.g. for the first 10 to sign up and then again in a second wave, etc., as you build up/maintaing a pot of Steem that can be delegated.
And.
This has really made me excited:
For folk for whom Steem is expensive, this is a great idea. I know that for me, sitting in South Africa where, as at today's rates 1SBD is more than 10 in our currency, it's something that has to be carefully considered. Expecially when one is trying to convert skeptics to crypto. This latter really applies among folk my age and demographic (50+) who blog for a hobby and for whom all of this crypto stuff is mumbo jumbo they'd rather ignore.
Just a few thoughts.
Look forward to the new developments! :)
Finally, and TMI - because life off steemit has been so busy, I've neglected my blog...and haven't posted in a while
Hi @steempress I've been using your extension for a while now and I love it! I was wondering if it would be possible for you guys to duplicate the plugin for Joomla as well? It's something I would really like to use and can't find anything similar for Joomla unfortunately.
@Howo and/or @Fredrikaa I have plans to build out a WP blogsite which is niche and goal is to become a true community. My thoughts are for a community of users that don't need to understand or care about Steem. That is we are bringing in new users purely for our Blogsite and if they end up moving over to Steem for other content that's a bonus. But the site/community itself should be able to stand on it's own without the need of the actual steem community to be it's user base.
Anyways sounds like a lot of what I want to be able to integrate into my site with guests and free accounts is all built into Steempress or on your roadmap. This is great as creating this all from scratch seemed daunting to say the least.
Wondering will you offer the ability of a community to give free accounts at lower levels of "earnings" if they provide the account tokens. That is can you track it and then have it trigger using our tokens at say 1 Steem of earning vs 5.
Next can these triggers be set up for earning of our specific token vs Steem earnings? So if we want the person to earn 5 MYTOKEN instead of 5 STEEM and then we provide the free account along with RC delegation to support the account (assuming this happens) and X amount of MYTOKEN to get them started can this happen on an automated way with what you are building?
This path would truly support communities and the future of SMTs IMO.
If it's easier to chat on discord or telegram I use the same name on both and am #6765 on discord.
The awesome announcement, I tried your plugin once when it was just started, but never looked back again because I didn't like some part of it at that time, now I think I'll be joining again. We need more project with a clear vision and plan like this if we really want to onboard the general public away from crypto. I used to have a good influence on social media once, but I stopped everything in the middle. Still, I have a decent amount of followers(not much engagement as I stopped engaging myself). I am looking forward to your referral program to see if I could do anything nice.
Sounds great! I'm always easy to reach on Discord, or in comments here on Steem, if you have any suggestions for what more you would like to see from steempress for you to want to use it with your own website. Or just generally how it could improve.
And awesome if you would like to try out the referral program! Again, I'm all ears for any suggestions to how we can make it work as well as possible.
"Since the beginning, one of our goals has been to onboard many of the WordPress blogs and websites out there, which currently makes up 30% of the internet."
If you want to achieve this, wouldn't it make sense to allow bloggers a way to somehow claim ad revenue on the platform? I mean, I know that there is a revenue model built into the Steem blockchain already through the voting system, but as we've seen, it may not exactly pay the bills for people who might want to make the switch. If Steemit itself were to build something into their UI that would allow for this type of monetization, a la YouTube, it may increase the incentives for established writers to switch over.
You're already advertising to pay your own bills, so it doesn't seem like it would be much of a stretch to add this feature. I'm thinking of YouTube again here, where they have their own ads to the side that are for the platform only, and in-video ads that are shared with the content creators. Content creators could then opt-in and you could even have it set up that the ad revenue would be paid to users via Steem, generating an additional incentive to have Steem purchased by interested parties and stabilize the price, and also increase the value of Steemit, Inc's Steem holdings. Keeping the ad monetization process decentralized would be huge as well. This is one of the big problems with YouTube and other platforms like it, that there are gatekeepers who can arbitrarily demonetize your content. It's not necessarily their revenue model that's problematic, just that one nameless corporate cog with a bias against your brand has the ability to completely destroy your livelihood without due process or recourse.
To start, we will require that the referred account has a proper blog, has produced content for at least a few months already, have a decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform), and ideally also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.I hope this action may bring a lot of good writers who already have audience.
I like this kind of ads. The link to your new website should appear in every steempress website. This will bring more traffic to your website. I would like to suggest to add a referral link of the website owner on the ads of your new website. I think this is not very difficult. If you can make a banner and referral link we can add it on our own.
We can for sure provide default widget samples with your referral link as the link in the picture that you can add to your blog. Would be cool indeed!
I think steemit is now accepting the ads on his own. What about running ads on the website that used steempress. If there is no ads to display the can display ads about steem or steemit.
That is a good idea, and something we intend to do later. The question is how extensively we want to connect it to the blockchain or not. Short term, I think it will be there for people hoping to refer more users to Steem and who know they can earn benefactor rewards and other referral benefits if they refer people through SteemPress.
Excellent overview and an exciting direction ahead! I’ve played around with SteemPress since the beginning, but I’ve been very lax at updating and building my own sites recently. This kind of stuff is inspiration to get back to it!
I love the email marketing aspect you’re bringing to it through the guest account signups. That could be a huge success in recruiting and retaining.
Users who create a "guest account" through email to engage with blogs will be put on a pathway to earn a free Steem account through engaging with content. A level-up bar will show much their comments have earned them from upvotes, and that reaching 5 Steem Power will allow them to claim a free Steem account. They'll also find a recommended set of activities to help them receive votes in order to progress. They are also encouraged to connect an existing or buy a new Steem account to immediately access anything their guest comments have earned them
Sounds great.. I need to get my wordpress up and running again methinks...
Anyone have quick links to how to's on setting up the plugin?
You absolutely should! ;). I believe it's quite easy once you've found and installed steempress in the plugin store inside your own wordpress dashboard, but feel free to come to our Discord server if you have any questions after that: https://discord.gg/2XsgnEr
Excellent updates! The changes to curation policy and content discovery will encourage users to continue growing their WordPress blogs, instead of just dumping generic contents for the sake of cross posting to Steem.
Thanks! Yes, we need to align incentives better so that helping bring more exposure to Steem content, onboarding more users, and increasing the value of the network is what gets rewarded. It's pretty much a problem across all of Steem when all you need to get rewards is to end up on some whale's auto-voter... But beyond this, I think there is so much potential in using community as a platform to leverage the many creators, communities and Steem as a whole. Curious if there are any area here where you, or others on Steem that you know, would like to contribute to?
I do. I think one of the easier method to promote Steem/Steempress to the millions of Wordpress owners out there, is to partner with Wordpress themes/plugins sellers, like Themeforest.
I had been using mythemeshop.com and in contact with the owner. If Steempress can advertise on the site, or be added to the list of Premium plugins offered by them, it will automatically be available to their 600k users, with many of them on the Premium subscription.
Of course, I believe there will be some fees involved. This is where SPS might come handy to provide the funds.
Not sure if you are already doing this, but I think this is a good idea to promote Steem and Steempress.
It's great to see Steempress getting on board with concrete actions to the new philosophy and practices that promote the recent hardforks. I find the referral program and the curation policies as big steps in the consolidation of Steempress as a community itself and for the growth of Steem in general. Also, you are in the right time when your platform needs an attractive frontend with all the requirements for blogging and steeming with your great plugin. I hope your projects have great success because it's for sure you will share with everyone.
Only the best vibes!!
Thanks a lot! I also think clear guidelines + a concrete public growth plan with opportunities for people to contribute (like the referral program) are keys to success. Please let me know if you would want to try being a referrer, or otherwise participate in reaching some of these goals in any ways that I haven't thought of.
I do not know so many people on wordpress but I would like to try to invite some, I had contact with some people in an old theater blog, so I could give the wordpress blog a little more movement and try to reach them again.
I would think that just as some youtubers who already have a good audience take the opportunity to share their content also through Steemit, there must be some celebrities/influencers to contact who also use wordpress as a communication tool, (I think some PR is needed) the steemit platform could be included in the same package for them, simply by using the steempress plugin.
I'll be attending all your developments!!
My best wishes for this great project!!
Masses are waiting for the right and empowering technology and platform. So let's welcome them to #Steem Blockchain where future seeds are sowing for most empowering Social Networking world.
I love this. The past month has shown great initiatives from certain apps to bring in more users and improve their experience with steem. There is so much to like about what you are lanning to do here and with so many WordPress blogs it could be a huge success to even get a percentage of them active on the blockchain. Great work guys.
Posted using Partiko Android
I don't use WordPress, but obviously many people do. If we can get even a fraction on Steem it could make a big difference. I see a few people mashing use of Steempress. If we can reach a critical mass it could create a tipping point for this platform. Getting hundreds of thousands or millions on here will change the nature of Steem, but it needs to do this to survive. God luck with your plans.
Thanks for the encouragement! I think it is important to point out that a majority of these plans involve much more than just steempress and wordpress users. It should be an opportunity for all community members, curators and creators to contribute. Whether it is with the new referral system, content marketing, or our new community support curation system that I believe will provide the best return on delegation in terms of curation rewards to stakeholders while also providing measurable impact of that stake being used to attract views to Steem content, create new accounts and, power up new minnows.
We do need growth in all areas and readers as well as creators. I was chatting to a photographer who has thousands of followers on Instagram, but got hit when he bought big votes on Steem. We need people like that and have to make it welcoming to them as they can bring over their fans.
Absolutely, but to retain such users we need to provide a clear, fair and encouraging curation system where rewards correlate with effort made not only to create innate quality but also external value that can be brought to Steem.
I believe we have a solution for this now. And I want to see everyone get invovled.
Sounds almost too good to be true. Cheers.
Well i think its not just about gaining new steemians ,i think its about proper culturing on the duties of a steemian ... Educating them on places their content will reach the desired audiences and in turn give back income as well..... So i think uplink or referral guidance will easily stop the trend of new steemians leaving, because they feel the steem community is so vast they dont understand most aspects of it, like earning, spreading content etc.... word press Blogs can be used as a platform for this ,becoming an introductory tool on everything about steem and benefits of being a steemian, as well as advertising the steem community .... Thank you
Thank you for your comment! And I absolutely agree that good user education is vital to ensure better user retention, participation and value contribution. Hence why clear guidelines, strategic use of gamification and informative design is a key component to our growth strategy.
Yah its a very essential component for the benefit of the steem community .. I hope it is well implemented and performed
You guys are really amazing your work is really good . Thanks for giving us a wonderful plug in.
Posted using Partiko Android
Shout out to your work,it's nice.
Lets see a response to EOS and their Word Proof, which block.one is claiming is what is bringing blockchain to wordpress, no mention about steempress
https://twitter.com/wordproofio
Did you read the whole post? Curious what you think are the key factors, or where you and other Steemians you know want to contribute.
To be straight, I have not been on the platform in over a year. Over the past 2 weeks I have heard steem mentioned at least 10 times. So I said I better log in and see whats going on. I will be honest the 5 keys are a bit much and still boggles my mind, but that aside there is no doubt that there is a momentum shift going on and Steem is poised to do great things.
Look dude, please be honest, I am still waiting for my Other STEEM account.
Posted using Partiko Android
Reference the quality - referral progmme, a steemit referral system popped up in my Facebook wall today. ...and pronto! I referred eight friends to steemit.
I believe some of these would sign up to steemit.com.
But will they abide??
Quality rewards system availed them in the community is the only determinant! Or what do you think ??
Es un proyecto interesante con buenas opciones, es bueno seguir avanzando y realizar innovaciones y con personas muy emprendedoras centradas en lo que quieren y desean de verdad que me ha gustado su innovación. Éxitos a este gran equipo
Big congrats on the work achieved so far. I use SteemPress everyday through a shared WordPress account for Chinese steemers and have found it incredibly easy to use. I would like to have my own WordPress blog using the SteemPress plugin but unfortunately I can't afford a paid plan on WordPress.
👍👍👍
Keep up the great work and I'll continue to use SteemPress for all my blogs!!!
Posted using Partiko Android
I think this idea would be a game changer in all aspect of blogging. This will give bloggers an additional excitement. Also encouraging them to create a good and promising content. Looking forward on this. Kudos!
Congratulations @steempress! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPVote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
👍👍👍
~Smartsteem Curation Team
I think this idea of including a larger mass of steem users is very good
My on-boarding was quite smooth a year ago, even if it wasn't instant. However, anything that can help remove the barriers to entry, while still keeping a legitimate community together is welcome! This is a very exciting post indeed.
great
.
This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.
Nice platform help me for growing
Posted using Partiko Android
Pienso que esto es una posibilidad de crecimiento y buena incentivo, algo bueno se viene y cada vez seremos mas, me encanta,, bien por ustedes bien por todos. simplemente maravilloso.
Mass SteemBoarding
Please I want to know how exactly I can operate @steempress on my phone, or better still my desktop. How can I begin as a newbies. ? I need step by step. Thanks.
Posted using Partiko Android
Action (still) speaks louder than words.
Good luck!
An excellent proposal! Very good
Hi
I wish you much success in this new route of massification of your platform.
As recently-known stemians, I'm not sure how to start with a few followers on my blog and if that automatically excludes me.
Let's see it
Posted using Partiko Android
This all sounds great. But as usual...where there are strict rules involved, most people find a way around them. People do not like rules. We will see how this system plays out
I think people love rules. All creators I've talked to here would rather have clear rules for how they earn, and then make a plan for how they can make the best content, bring the most attention, and otherwise improve, to earn based on those rules, than face uncertainty.
Than maybe I'm staying with open minded people who like to contribute to the society, add some of their own ideas to it. If they (we) are living in society where we are always told what to do, we feel like 7 year old boys again, and feel the need to change that. I'm just saying.... In fact, I don't give a f :) but just so you know how your work looks like.
Yeah I get that some people, especially tho attracted to crypto, often feel like that. I'm just saying that I believe most people do want rules or at least guidelines by those with Steem Power as for what types of contributions they'll look to reward. If you think I'm wrong in thinking that most people want it, then I'm all ears.
Also, this plan doesn't impose rules, it only offers suggestions for what stakeholders considers as positive contributions that they look to reward. A clarity that is sorely missing atm, and a reason why so many leave frustarted.
I know what your goal is. But you are missing a point. We are still having autovotes - how will you scale added value on steem, improved retention, or time well spent? Sometimes not one person reads a blog, worth over $100. It's all based on details, words, seconds,... If you want owners of SP to change their mind, you got to be better than...let's say SPI ( SteemPower Investments) with around 46% per year
Votes should correlate better with value added. We can provide stakeholders with access to see both what curation projects bring the most return on delegation through curation rewards, as well as other KPIs like how many new Steem accounts are created through the blgos and websites they curate.
For STEEM investors who want to see their ROI in the 3000% range. Contributing to making STEEM a 10$token beats any closed voting circle. That's the only goal worth pursuing. People have to stop thinking of just their internal return from the inflation pool, as it means nothing versus the benefits of making STEEM/SP a more attractive asset to own.
Sorry, I didn't look at the comments. Sure. Idea is pretty good. I mean...we have put so many ideas out, and almost none of those were realised. I like to look at the history and what actually worked and was used at massive scale. Do you remember e-gold? e-gold was a grandpa of torrent system, and torrent system was father of bitcoin. I like stable price. Not falling price like steem, from $6 to $0.16 Us dollar is going to fall sharply in 2022. Not sure if having it in steem system is good idea. In fact, all fiat are falling daily.
To see steem at $10,steem would have to rise for like... at least 5% daily to get there. If you don't want to get grey hair until that time. I would love to stop thinking out of the box, believe me. I was thinking like that for long time. But every time I saw my word, my advice was worth nothing. I saw Steem is too centralised. Why do you think I am not writing blogs here any more? (maybe I will in future) Because I cherish my time way more than falling steem currency, where paid member is telling me what i can write and what I can not write with my second account... First you should fix that errors. You want to be decentralised? Than you may listen to Paul Rosenberg (or any cypherpunk member) or Andreas M. Antonopoulos....to learn what decentralisation means
.