I received an email from an acquaintance congratulating me on my birthday. No this is not an appeal for a greeting ... it is just another day in my journey into the black abyss. However it did give me an opportunity to explain my latest project - he owns a company which designs websites for multinational companies. I have talked to him in the past about Bitcoin and Steem but he didn't get it. However, the way that SteemHost works is something that he can understand ... generating revenue using banner ads. Perhaps those of you who want to explain one of the ways to answer people on the some of the ways that you can earn via steem can borrow some of the thoughts in this message.
My email to Gary:
Since it is my birthday where is my gift?
If you really want to give me a gift, click on this page: http://www.steemhost.com/@dwarrilow2002
As you know I have been working with a cryptocurrency called steem. It has some unusual properties.
- You can author content and if people like it you are rewarded
- You can curate (vote for good content) and if you are good at it you get rewarded
- You can delegate it (similar to letting your neighbour plugging his cord into your solar panel) and receive a return (I tried it for a couple weeks with 18 percent annual return)
I got thinking that if you create something you get paid, if you like something you get paid, if you let someone else do the work you get paid ... there must be another way of getting paid. Up to this point, there have been no advertisements on any of the websites that show steem content ... largely because it is self funding. Consider that Facebook which is a type of competitor to steemit.com (or busy.org) receives around 0.25 USD for every click.
If you clicked on the link above, I got paid for the view. If you clicked on the advertisement I got paid. Hi ... I am the new Mark Zuckerberg. No big deal.
Click on this link: http://www.steemhost.com/@raha
You will see content for Raha. Hello ... I got paid (Mark Zuckerberg again) but guess what is different ... Raha got paid as well. The revenue earned by the advertisement is shared by both Raha and me. That is because Steem does not have a transaction charge. This is perfect for micro-payments.
I apologize but this is starting to sound like an infomercial.
Micro-payments are transactions that are processed and the recipients receive less than a dollar ... since there is no transaction charge who cares it can be less than a cent. But this leads to another consideration. In the upper right hand corner is an option that allows people in the steem community to log in!!!
Hello!!! If the visitor is identified as having a steem id, the revenue earned by the advertisement is shared by the "Visitor", Raha and me. Compare most websites with banner ads with steemhost. I described to Robert the difference. Mark Zuckerberg will take people to the door, I pay people to walk through the door. Justin Driskill the editor of the online advertising guide reports: "The average CTR across all Display campaigns (banner ads) is around 0.2%. It fluctuates quite wildly from month to month however (but 0.2% is a reasonable long term average)". How much would an advertiser be willing to pay knowing that views will also translate to a higher click rate. On the first 100 views, there were 13 clicks and that is by people not understanding everything going on.
There is actually one extra kicker to this. Remember how I described delegation? That is the way people are rewarded. I am not sure if you have ever heard about the difference between giving a person a fish and teaching a person to fish. Instead of handing a person a few pennies, I am transfering to them the ability to earn more which will hopefully result in them creating better content. The side benefit of using delegation instead of a payout of "steem" or "steem dollars" is that this increases the demand for steem causing upward pressure on its price relative to other currencies.
So I hope that this email will inspire you to consider contacting companies that are currently doing banner ads. So far we are seeing a click rate over 10 percent while the average is only 0.2 percent. If you know a person who does banner ads, I would be interested in finding out what their opinion would be.
Please resteem this post but possibly if you could go to your local webpage designer or computer guy and ask them how valuable would placing advertisements on a website with high click through values. Additionally ask yourself why you are not visiting some of the hosts and accessing some additional steem power. As a warning many of the early advertisements have a zero reward ... until we get more people involved.