So I realized that my last post did not really explain the business-logic behind my proposal, so let me do atonement by writing a specific post about why charging new people for accounts is good for everybody.
We are currently 100,000+ accounts, if we start charging $15 from now we will make:
- $1,5 million real dollarsfor the next 100,000 accounts
- $15 million real dollars for the next 1 million accounts
And these real dollars will of course go to purchase real steem from the market, creating real demand for steem to power up new accounts. Once that is implemented, Steemit becomes an income generator, an asset!
People have suggested lower and higher account-creation fees. @noganoo says $5 should be enough, while @inertia thinks $99 for a "lifetime membership on steemit" would be attractive.
I'd opt for a kind of package-deal: the account creator can choose from $5, $10 or $25 and gets double that value in Steem on his account.
This way a gift element remains to get new users, but they are also motivated to invest some real money. That will make them value their account more.
I like it :)
sounds good, but then risks crashing the price on exchanges as you can effectively buy half price Steem by registering.
If the gift goes straight to steem power it can't crash the price.
Right now, you get 100% free Steem by registering. About $5 worth of Steem.
I got bored and bought $65 worth of extra steem power. Not sure what for though... ;)
yes infact I wrote in another post that the free giveaway should end.
Let the market decide how much a new account is worth.
@neoxian I can support that. Absolutely. As long as FREE is not an option of course :)
free would already be an improvement on the current system where people actually get paid 5$ (worth of Steem) to open a new account, and it's beeen abused by bot nets and sweat shops. I think we can all agree that has to stop.
That's already how it works.
this is interesting.
steemit inside out.
this would change steemits entering mechanisms recognizable.
on the one side this maybe could have some positive effects for refunding future content. and i can imagine it could had an effect for content quality managment.
(motivation throughout payment - spam gets expensive but maybe more serious, etc.)
But.
on the other side this would mean changing parts of steemits ideological backrounds.
the community could lose some content because of a more exclusive access.
and steemit wouldnt be finance barrier free anymore.
Free registration is one of the most notable facts about steemit.
This is would be a fascinating scenario.
I guess this could have effects in both directions but its hard to estimate the actual outcome.
If I had been charged $15 (or anything) I would never have given it a second glance. I suspect than no one else would either.
Yet here you are - and I can see you have made a lot more then $15 on your posts, so it would have been worth it for you. Free is just bad for business imo. Why don´t facebook give away free FB shares to their users for example?
Yet here I are. I'm going to 'power up' another $50 tonight which will bring my SP to over $600. It didn't cost me a dime (I didn't HAVE a discretionary dime)...all it took was a lot of work.
IF I'd had to pay $15 then, I wouldn't have the $275 (guesstimated account value) that I have now.
Here I are.
I expect the value of steem to increase to what it was ($4), In fact, with the coming economic crash, I expect all crypto currencies to increase in value.
So here I are.
From the inside that sounds totally reasonable. From the outside, it's enough of a 'Ponzi' red flag that we won't hit 200k until 2030.
Put me down as against it.
I get that we need the demand for steem, but to put this out of reach of someone just because they don't have the wherewithal to get it paid doesn't seem right.
If I had to pay anything I couldn't be here as I am unbanked.
yeah, there should always be a way to earn your way in without paying... maybe a special type of account that can showcase demo work without the ability to be paid until someone sponsors their membership cost?
The ability to invite people would be nice.
Most of my friends willing to take a chance are internet friends.
My rl friends are skeptical, they think i'm on the fringe, anyways.
If the place doesn't float on it's own merits we need to adjust something in the design.
Not attack our potential contributors with fees.
Just getting to screw the credit card folks out of their processing fees should excite a large percentage of the population, perhaps we should highlight our positives?
You have to be joking. Another obstacle to an active member? How to kill a community...in 1, 2, 3...
The average person doesn't now about steemit yet. We don't even have what is known as a critical mass awakening yet, which is 5% of the public or 15,945,000 people. I think you would be killing the momentum we are building. I am still trying to get my friends who are not computer savvy to try this out, and if they have to pay to join they are absolutely 100% not going to do so. I think this is a good idea but save it for a much much later time. This is still the "Beta" version. Once this is in it's final form and their is millions of users then we should start talking about this idea. Peace bro.
With the new account rate and active user rate as it is (and even worse when taking into account fake accounts) I don't yet think this is the right move.
If they had this from the start though, things would have been a lot different.
@fyrstikken, I like the market deciding. You have great ideas!
I don't think it will happen even though there is an actual cost to account creation. I think the worry would be it would scare people away and it would give the anti Steemit "ponzi" people ammunition.
That said I think it would be fair if not popular.
Another alternative would be to make it so that new accounts need to buy $15 worth of Steem and power it up.
That would both create demand for Steem and increase the amount being powered up - hence reduce the the liquid Steem on the market.
but when it is "FREE" people say "It is too good to be true" :D
Each account actually cost something - it is just being paid for by someone else - sponsored accounts from the faucet, did you know that?
It does cost people "something". They have to authenticate with their Facebook or Reddit account, solve captchas, etc. I do think paying for an account instead with Bitcoin/altcoins should be an option though - many cryptocurrency enthusiasts would prefer this over authenticating with their social accounts (which they may not even have). One member of the local Blockchain Meetup group got irate when he found out you have to use Facebook or Reddit to get an account and swore he'd never use Steemit for this reason. I know ANONSTEEM exists and is great but new users won't figure that out.
Anyway, regarding the cost of a new account from the faucet - is this the @steemit account with the four million steem burning a hole in its pocket? http://steemwhales.com/
I you could elaborate on that faucet aspect a bit more I think it would help us new to Steemit to better understand the account creation cost in the first place..
I did understand there was a cost, but I thought it more of a mining resource type cost, I know my friend got her account from a well known Steemit member who haad offered to creat accounts on youtube, but I think it only had 4 steem power in it...
Now I see anonasteem and a Russian selling accounts, it's very confusing for us newbies...
Thanks.
Of course. It costs 3 steem each. I know that. I'm not personally against it but you know what certain quarters of the crypto community are like - they cry scam at the slightest thing - even when they know there is a reason for it.
New accounts get 10 Steem these days. The ones created through the site with Facebook or Reddit verification, that is.
OK I didn't know that. Thanks. Why has it gone up BTW? Is it linked to the price?
Not sure why it went up. My guess is the same as yours, because of the price (of Steem).
that sounds like a much better idea, but then we need to show them that there is a difference of their 15$ account to an 0$ account.
Well you could make it so that they need to pay $15 before they can post. Otherwise they can just comment and upvote.
Bad idea. Users are valuable. 1m users is more valuable than 15m. If you charge 15$ you won't get those users.
There ar better ways to create value. I have propos d a bounty system that would make the platform much more valuable.
one step at a time.
I'd first stop giving away free Steem on registering, most of which goes to bots anyway.
then use the giveaway money to buy steemdollars (which backs steem) or to lock it in a develoment fund or even better reduce the inflation which in the first year seems way too high (200%!).
paying to register seems a step too far right now, a user signup slump would be risky, and the current low payouts are not inviting enough for people to actually "pay to play".
Having been the victim of chargebacks I can see this as a problem. Once an account is created and steem accredited to it.. How would you deal with chargebacks ?
Well there is definitely a caveat here... If we were to charge $15... there is no guarantee that there will ever be 100k more accounts. I agree with your logic and the math makes sense but I know people love free things, that is why fb, twitter, and snapchat all work. If any of them were to charge their business would crater. I realize Steemit is different because you can earn money from it, so what is the right price point? I am not sure... my personal opinion would be to stay free though. We desperately need more people...
I think that sentence alone sounds very misinforming considering its decentralized accounts we are talking about.
But were you thinking of some sort of multisig account creation and then users asked to re-generate their passwords after their "trial" accounts have run out of x amount of time?
I understand that there are issues with how weak the current sign up system is to abuse and was going to make a post about it tonight actually, but I'm not sure that charging users to have a steemit account is the right approach. Not yet, at least.
Maybe give them trial account, depending on their reputation change during that time, they are granted a lifetime account for now. With a bigger adoption rate, payment for accounts would be much more plausible in my opinion.
One day people will pay for steemit account when we polished the system.
Today steemit has millions of users just because of free account. And what steemit is today, just because of their users. I think they should not charge for new account until steemit truely needs money to survive. If steemit now wants to prevent more users to join here, they can implement the idea.
Let's first worry about the product before talking about the market. The users in numbers asset is as, if not more of an important part to the product than the platform and the genious idea behind it to attach a cryptocurrency to a social network. Are people running toward creating Steemit accounts right now? No, so what makes some Steemians believe an entering fee will turn that around other than a ''free looks like cheap'' argument? Even the video game industry knows better and now more and more lets people try the product before making money on players that really want to get more involve in the game. I thought the plan was long term accounts network development not short to medium term boosting Steem value. You can't offer an additional value to newcomers based on the fee you are asking of them, it's kind of a circular nonsense. Who would pay 15$ in exchange for the promise that more can be made without first knowing what they are getting themselves into?
This, and your post yesterday, remind me that I posted (a month or so ago on the price of Steem falling) that Steemit would survive and thrive despite the recent price crash. One reason was that the product of a free blog site would eventually become something they'd easily be able charge for (even $1 mo, $10 yr, or $49-99 for a business page). However, I still think we're a lonnnnnng way off from that point. I did start a new post today that will incorporate that idea however, which I hope to have out tomorrow.
Best, Guy
The mainstream audience is cheap. They have built up an entitlement of free internet, and it won't change. Look at Reddit Gold - there are 250+ million Redditors and less than 100k Gold subscribers. That's an almost inconsequential 0.04%. I mean, there are already more Steemit users already than Reddit Gold subscribers.
So I feel Steemit, Inc. should continue to offer free accounts, however, I totally agree users would need to power up to gain access to a lot of features. There's already restrictions for low-SP accounts, so it's on the right track. Just need better communication, reasons and motivating for powering up. Right now, a new user won't know to Power Up. There's not even a simple list for why one should Power Up anywhere on the site. I'm not saying turn it into nagware, but when a user registers, there must be a page which gets them up to speed with the benefits of Steem Power.
And of course, tie into PayPal and Fiat credit cards, bank accounts etc. That'll make a huge difference.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
Learn more about linkback bot v0.4. Upvote if you want the bot to continue posting linkbacks for your posts. Flag if otherwise.
Built by @ontofractal