"Ever wondered how to make money by sitting at home at the computer? Here is how!"
After posting a few articles and gaining what I would consider a decent amount of Steem Power, I could not help but tell my friends! Upon learning about steem earlier this month and signing up to keep up to date with news on Ethereum and Bitcoin, I have been pretty addicted.
I found it difficult to explain steem to my friends, especially because they are not invested in crypto tech (or even have the slightest idea of what block chain was). Knowing a new and honestly quite plain looking social media sight would not be extremely incising, I chose to focus on the currency aspect of Steem...
Mistake Number One
Make sure that you do not open with the following...
"I just made 120$ on this new social media site called Steemit! You can earn money by writing posts and liking other peoples content!"
Not realizing I sounded like some sort of lame pyramid scam to get people to sign up for steemit, I sent something along these lines to friends of mine. Needless to say, they were overjoyed to hear the news! I got such fantastic and enthusiastic replies such as "cool", "that's nice dude, anyway are you gunna be around to game soon?", and of course I am still waiting to hear back from a few...
They are probably just too overjoyed that I made that much money and are still thinking about what to write! Ya... that must be it!
I suggest a different approach if you are planning on telling your friends about steem...
Mistake Number Two
Not everyone cares about block-chain or cryptocurrencies. (Even though they REALLY SHOULD)
Oh boy... doesn't that look exciting
Try to keep the technobabble to a minimum. The few people that were interested in my phishing scam did not respond well to a detailed explanation to the question "What is block-chain and how does this company make money if there aren't any ads".
I am just about as good at explaining block-chain and crypto-currencies as I am at predicting the next winning lottery number.
I found it difficult to describe the workings behind steem and honestly just found myself parroting phrases I have heard or showing them the fruits of the block chains coding.
The bottom line is, do your research before you try to explain steemit to your friends. I most likely turned a few people off to the idea, even though I was able to hack my way through a few explanations enough to recruit a few (most likely for the prospect of cash). I found it pretty funny sending these texts saying I made money fast by posting on social media and I felt just like a scammer.
My advice is to put some thought and effort into bringing your buddies to steem. Don't make the same mistakes I did, albeit it ended up being pretty funny in retrospect.
Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoyed the story. I am not super acquainted with blockchain as you can tell and if you have any tips or tricks on how to explain it to others I would love to hear it in the comment below.
Until then, I will stick to science and if you would like to learn and laugh about the world around us follow me 