How You Can Help Steemit, Inc Make Money (And Why You Should)
tl;dr - Support their advertisers!
We got a rare (and possibly only?) glimpse into the finances at Steemit, Inc with @elipowell's recent post: Steemit, Inc. Financial Update
The most important part of that post was the following:
The only real variable is the advertising revenue. In order to not programmatically sell Steem each month, we need to bring in enough ad dollars to not only cover expenses, but make enough profit to ensure future stability. Obviously the sooner this happens the better so we can slow down the programmatic selling and ultimately stop it altogether.
For those of you who may not know, Steemit, Inc funds their operations by selling an inordinate amount of STEEM on the markets every month, which is likely weighing very very heavily on the price.
If they are able to replace that source of funding with an actual revenue model, it should:
- Do wonders for the market price of STEEM (which is very important for many reasons); and
- Provide a great example of how Steem-based apps can create a profitable and sustainable business model.
Therefore, as holders of STEEM, we should all do whatever we can to help Steemit, Inc's advertising business be as successful as possible.
In traditional businesses, the owners love the advertisers, but the users typically hate them. Of course that's the case because the business owners get all of the money and the users get to be annoyed.
The whole point of the Steem platform is to turn this model on its head. Now the "business" is the Steem platform, and the users - you - are the owners. It doesn't matter that Steemit, Inc, a privately owned business, is the one actually selling the ads and receiving the money from it. All STEEM holders stand to benefit greatly from it for the reasons described above.
Since the Steem users are also the owners, it creates a very unusual situation where the users should welcome and support the advertisers instead of blocking and avoiding them.
This is like the holy grail to advertisers. If the Steem userbase can really understand how they benefit from the advertisers, and if the advertisers start to see that the Steem community LIKES them, I expect we might see a rush of advertising dollars, and REAL VALUE, into the Steem platform like we've never seen before.
What Can We Do?
It's pretty simple really - seek out the ads on steemit.com and click on them. Then to take it one step further actually look into the brand or product being advertised and maybe even buy their product if it looks interesting to you.
Even though I generally prefer to use other Steem interfaces like SteemPeak or Partiko, I make it a point to open up steemit.com on a regular basis to see who is advertising. It's even more difficult because I use the Brave browser and had to turn off the ad blocker for the site.
Why do I do this? I want to see who is spending their money to support the Steem platform! If you saw a news article saying:
"[COMPANY] invests [LOTS OF MONEY] into Steemit Inc so they can stop selling STEEM every month and improve their products and the blockchain"
You would probably be pretty stoked, and want to really support that company...at least I know I would. Well, guess what, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE ADVERTISERS ON STEEMIT.COM ARE DOING!
Sorry for yelling, but it's true.
Right now I'm noticing that an "investment fund" called AMFEIX is being promoted very heavily on Steemit.com, including having the first "sponsored" post that I've seen on the platform. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that they are the primary driver behind the large increase in ad revenues shown on the graph in @elipowell's post linked above.
I wouldn't necessarily advise anyone to invest in their fund as it's very hard to tell if these things are legitimate, but you can at least click on the ad on steemit.com and check it out. If their ad campaign is a success, and it encourages them and/or other companies to put more money into the Steem ecosystem for advertising, then the benefits could be immense for the Steem platform.
It's a bit unfortunate that this particular campaign is for a very risky service that I can't really get behind and promote; however, hopefully in the future there will be many more campaigns in which that is not the case and where we can really showcase the power of the Steem community.
It's Not Only Steemit, Inc
It's important to note that this doesn't only apply to Steemit, Inc. The same thing goes for advertisers or supporters of any Steem-based app/company, be it Steemit, Splinterlands, Steempeak, Partiko, Steem Engine, PALnet, etc. At the end of the day it's all external funds coming into the Steem ecosystem. It means those apps can improve their products and services and not have to sell STEEM to pay their bills.
Steem Monsters / Splinterlands has NEVER sold so much as 1 STEEM in order to pay its bills. Now imagine if every Steem app, including Steemit, could say the same.
All of us, together, have the chance to make that a reality. There have been many articles written about how blockchain can transform the online advertising industry. Well, here it is. Right here, right now. Let's make it happen on Steem.
I have always said Steem is in a unique position to revolutionize online advertising. However, going back to the traditional ways of advertising is not the change I have in mind.
I support Steemit Inc going the advertising route to improve their financial state and become more sustainable. For this reason, most of us would absolutely agree with you and in supporting their ads. However, the truth remains that traditional ways of advertising are not the future. They are intrusive in their nature and are forced content. While it is working out as a great short term solution, it is not changing how advertising is done. I do still believe Steem is in a unique position to change advertising. Make it more welcome, interesting, and beneficial for ad consumers.
Ned had the idea and has said this a while back:
He says the following at 1:09 minutes into the video:
First, fixing Promoted feature would a good start. How often people even visit promoted? Instead of burning the funds spent on promoted content, there can be a different kind of distribution of those funds. For example, 1/3 goes to the app/front-end that is promoting, 1/3 added to the curation pool, and 1/3 burned. This will in return increase the interest of users to consume the ad content, engage with the advertiser, bring revenue for the apps, and at the same time create a flow of burning SBD.
Moreover, users can opt-in for this kind of promoted content to be pushed to their feed. Users will be happy to have ad content on their feed, instead of being forced to have it on their feed and looking for alternative solutions to escape them.
Of course, front-ends can come up with more creative ways of monetizing ads and rewarding their users too. However, blockchain based solution can create a more unified advertising system for all apps to use and Steem can increase its value by pioneering a change in online advertising.
Dear @geekgirl
Talking about advertising revenue ... I've been wondering why Steemit cares about advertisers from "outside Steemit".
What about giving some real opportunities for those on STEEM blockchain to use their tokens and promote their content. Right now I'm seeing some random adds while scrolling my feed and (correct me if I'm wrong) none of those adds has been paid to Steemit with STEEM.
What if I run some business on Steemit and I would also like to promote it. Using my STEEM. Cannot be done. That just doesn't make sense.
PALnet came up with an idea, that promoted posts are being displayed on "trending" page and are highlighted. That's already something.However much more could be done.All those STEEM tokens are being burned (not-recycled), which supports growth of token price. Why to look for ways of earning some $$$ outside Steemit.
Why would you change current burning into re-cycling those tokens? If we would re-use those tokens, then it really wouldn't help much.
Yours
Piotr
There is simply no incentive to consume promoted content. Creating incentives would drive traffic to promoted content. Win for promoters and win for consumers. As it is now, I doubt many visit promoted. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I think you're over thinking it, There is a benefit for frontent to show relevant content and nobody would provably burn token if it wasn't somewhat relevant.
Steemit Inc should (once sustainable) share a pro-rata of their advertsing revenue via upvotes to accounts and content that drives external visitors into Steem to consume content.
This is a fantastic way to attribute the true value of content.
Posted using Partiko Android
They are already sharing a pro-rata of their advertising revenue with us all by paying for and operating the api.steemit.com RPC and all the platform services that they offer for free. When you started blogging on steemit.com, did you have to pay something? No ? Neither did I. Yet offering blogging services costs money. Those were money that Steemit.com has already shared with you (and everybody else, including myself). At some point, money become scarce and now they need you (and everybody else) to reciprocate, to help a bit. Will you ?
yes all agreed BUT steeminc then still has the tokens and will finally sell them all sooner or later.. hence we need a fair sharing of the add revenues via a steem burning mechanism like this:
of every dollar steeminc gets from add revenues 25% 33% or 50% of the monetary value's steem equivalent gets burned of steeminc's steem holding...
And if your work might appeal to outside eyes, share your work around so others can come here and be exposed to the ads (and STEEM) as well.
There! I did my good deed for the day!
I'll start going back into steemit to check it out. I'm not a big fan of clicking ads because unless they are targeted towards my interests because it doesn't help the advertiser and it will dilute the value of advertising on steemit for them, but if I see stuff I want to learn more about I will definitely take a look. Unfortunately in this day and age most consumers are "banner blind" so it would behoove steemit to seek out advertisers that would really resonate with steemians. Advertisers will pay a lot for super targeted personas.
There's a lot of opportunity to use the new sponsored posts as a way to get around ad blockers and "banner blindness", but it needs to be done properly which I don't feel the first one was. I discussed that with @elipowell as she notes here: https://steemit.com/steem/@elipowell/marketing-advertising-and-newsteem-oh-my so hopefully it will get better in the future.
I finally feel like there are some exciting times ahead for sure. I'm glad i spent he bear market toiling away in the steem mines lol. I wish I had time to gather more
With between 10 -20 thousand active users here (probably diminishing) the math presented don't add up to a long term advertising reality, not as far as I can see...
https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-companies-pay-to-post-an-ad-in-a-popular-website
You would be surprised what type of deals a good ad sales team can get, and, like i talk about in the post, if the Steem community can show significantly better than average results for the advertisers then they can charge even more. I think $100k / month should be doable and that will be a huge win for Steem.
It's something I have zero experience in tbh, just looking at initial numbers.
Advertizers won't endure, surely - not if they see user number not growing, or even reducing?
I see no growth of users - even before the hardfork kicks in. I do see many people leaving though post hf.
I just don't see the numbers supporting the revenue income shown in the graph.
Like i say, I don't know jack shit about it.
(Maybe @whatsup might be able to help in knowing how the numbers stack up...?)
i think many users come from google and co and there dont have a steem account. So there search for something and come here
I actually went ahead and tossed some change at amfiex after clicking thru to support ad revenue. Could be a good thing for my specific situation. In general I’m all for checking out the Steemit advertisers to get the company shored up without constantly creating downward price pressure.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Good on you!
And this is what I will do
Posted using Partiko Android
I think they need to do somethinf to integrate with the Brave Browser and its token to let users tip on Steem and Steemit as well. I would not mind given mined BAT to Steemit every month to help pay the bills and other users as well!
Posted using Partiko iOS
We integrated with them a while back... took some effort but wasn't too hard.
What we really need is to advertise the Steem blockchain OUTSIDE the Steem blockchain. Big-ass billboards that say "BRO YOU CAN GET PAID BY SOCIAL MEDIA AND SO MUCH MORE"... If we get zero adoption it doesn't even matter what steemit inc does. If we fall off the top 100 of coinmarketcap, the steem price is gonna go all the way down the shitter and no amount of internal steemit ad revenue will repair that or this blockchain's reputation...