Hello Steemit!

Currency background - helping build potentially the most successful local currency in the US:

I'm Nathan Mackenzie Brown, the chief architect of the ELM System at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

"...as of May 5th 2016, the ELM System had $101,781.15 worth of currency in circulation with $975,603.85 worth of transaction volume over the last year. This is a significant accomplishment for an alternative currency that is used by approximately 60 individuals and 30 businesses, nonprofits, co-ops, and community groups in rural northeast Missouri."

I've talked with a number of local currency experts including Michael Linton, who created the Local Employment and Trading System currency model, and Stephen Belgin, who co-authored New Money for A New World with Bernard Lietar . Bernarnd is probably the greatest money systems thinker the humanity has ever seen. He ran the most profitable hedge fund in the world for a number of years, created the system to merge the different European currency into the Euro and he's now become a big supporter of ecovillages and alternative currencies.

In talking with both Michael Lenton and Stephen Belgin, neither of them knew of any other local currency in the united states that has come close to achieving the trade volume of the ELM System on a per capita basis. Furthermore, the ELM System comes close to rivaling the most successful local currencies in the US on a volume basis without adjusting for our size.

Professional background - selling to make the world a better place:

The work I've done with the ELM system has been something I've done on a volunteer basis. Professionally I work as an online marketer with a primary focus on email marketing and conversion optimization. That said, I'm not your typical marketer in that I'm dedicated to using marketing science to solve societies greatest problems.

For example, about 4.5 months ago I founded Really American, a Facebook page dedicated to defending truth, democracy, social justice and the environment. Over the last 4.5 months I've built an email list of over 50,000 email subscribers and almost 600 donors, the vast majority of whom are Bernie Sanders supporters (as am I). I did this through Facebook advertising while also generating almost $3k in profit, which is almost unheard of in the industry. Most organization expect to lose money in order to initially acquire email subscribers and donors with paid advertising and they make their money over time by cultivating these subscribers and donors on an ongoing basis. So, making money right away while building an email list and picking up new donors is a big deal.

The results I produced were so impressive that I quickly picked up a consulting gig with SchwartzForMayor.com and I'm running some tests right now for CalBike.org that may result in a gig for them as well. In both cases I'm helping them to acquire email subscribers and donors with Facebook ads, using very similar strategies to how I built my Really American email list.

So, what does all this marketing have to do with Steemit.com? Well...

Promoting Steemit.com to my 50,000+ email subscribers:

I'd love to email my Really American subscribers regularly with content that you all produce that would appeal to their interests and encourage them to join this platform. One of the biggest weaknesses I see with this platform currently is that so many of the people are here only wanting to make money and when they don't they leave. Sadly, 95% of users or more will never be able to earn any significant income because of the basic mathematics of how the rewards are allocated and having this constant churn of people joining and dropping out is hurting the growth of the platform.

In the long run the majority of people need to use this platform because they like the content on it, they like the discussions and social interaction, and/or they like supporting the content producers and causes that post content here. I think Bernie Sanders supporters and other similarly driven activists have the potential to drive a lot of value for this platform as they could be very happy just up voting content that supports the issues they care about without much concern for the income they can earn themselves.

In addition to helping this platform growth through promotion I also want to help reduce the need to turn SMD into USD to get economic value from this platform...

How you can spend your SMD with me to make more money:

You whales could make a lot more money if you used the exposure from your content to build an email subscriber base of Steemit.com followers instead of just depending on them to follow you on this platform. If you built yourself a solid email list of Steemit.com users, then right when your content was about to hit the magic 30 minute mark you could email all your subscribers, greatly increasing the chances you'd get lots of up votes. I'm happy to help you develop and refine your email acquisition and marketing strategy while taking my pay in SMD.

Those of you who are not whales, if you have a need for email marketing or conversion optimization services off this platform, I'm still happy to do work for you and get paid in SMD.

Let's work together to make Steemit.com grow and prosper:

Well, that's enough about me, tell me more about you and how you think we could work together to make Steemit.com strong and healthy in the comments below.