I couldn't agree more with you on this! Telling people they they can get rewarded instead of that they can make money is a great way to circumvent some of their suspicions but it is a better way of attracting the kind of people that will actually add value over the long term to the platform instead of seeking solely to make quick financial gains out of it. I am new to this (joined a week ago) and can already guess that if too many users look at it as a money making tool or speculative opportunity, this is going to sink eventually without the help of the users that actually add value by creating original content.
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A little experimentation has shown me that the word "money" puts an uneasy frame of reference around what we do here. People immediate start thinking about "scams" and "cheating" and negative stuff. Saying "reward"-- because it's a very open-ended idea-- leaves things very open. 10+ years ago, a lot of us were blogging on Xanga and other places... it was "social blogging" like this, and we were "rewarded" with something called "e-props" which were essentially useless tokens, except in the web site's own store. But because they weren't "money," nobody ever even considered the word "scam;" it was cool to get rewarded, even if it translated to nothing at all.
Your assessment is precisely correct. And it has little to do with finances... and more to do with the content's ability to drive growth. Just like you probably wouldn't keep shopping at a grocery that had half rotten fruit and broken boxes of cereal, new creators of authentic content won't sign up to be part of a venue that's an ocean of spam and crap... so the site would slowly atrophy and die.
That's exactly it! Very well said! I can see how big the difference between "money" and "rewards" is and how much of a role it could play in shaping someone's initial perception of an idea that is being "pitched" to them...
Spam, scam advertisements and other crap are probably one of the biggest threats to this platform.