Yup, despite the rainy day, the turnout was amazing. Mix of trainers, coaches, content creators, traders, consultants, and frankly, anyone!
I thought I would share with you some of the slides we used, and do share feedback on how to improve it.
Context: This is a 101 to Steemit, an intro to the platform. Most of the participants are already on one form of social media (mostly Facebook), and some are blogging sparingly.
Intro slide: Thought we say it's an edition for trainers, speakers and coaches, the examples we use mainly revolve around repurposing their existing training contents into Steemit posts.
The brutal truth: We are all engaging on other people's platforms, creating contents on them, only for it to be monetised! Simple example: You write a post on Facebook, you get lots of likes and shares, and it attracts the engagement and attention of other users. Facebook serve those users ads, and they get paid by advertisers. What do you get? Likes, shares, comments, some form of popularity. :)
Blog stats: Yes, there are loads of blogs in the world. The 440 million blogs? That's just on 3 platforms - Tumblr, Wordpress and Squarespace! We're not even looking at Medium, LinkedIn Facebook Post, Blogger etc!
So if there are demands of contents, and bloggers and portals are making real money, why are you blogging?
The Honest Truth: You are not well-incentized to blog. i.e. you're not making enough money off your contents!
Enter STEEMIT! The only platform where your engagement can turn into real money.
- Steemit is easy to use, and users are already familiar with the base concept by interacting with other social media sites.
- Steemit is relatively new, not just in Malaysia. Well, you can buy Bitcoin today at $7200+, or buy early January 2017 at ~$1700. Steemit is like Bitcoin in the early days, and we're all keeping our fingers crossed that it will grow multi-fold over the next few months/years!
- With the existing exchanges around (Luno.com, for example) you can trade your Steem Dollars into Malaysia Ringgit, or any currency of your choosing!
The Mechanics: When you post any content on Steemit, as the creator, you get 75% of the pool, and the curators (upvoters, commenters, resteemers) share from the 25% pool. Obviously you make more when you create contents, but it's also harder than merely engaging with other people's contents.
The Payout Pie: Taking an example of $10, curators get $2.50, and the balance of $7.50 is split into two - Steem Dollars and Steem Power. Steem Dollars are the platform currency that you can transfer and withdraw. Steem Power is the "weight" of your upvotes. The higher Steem Power you have, the more Steem Dollars you'll generate when you upvote someone.
A simple glossary/definition of the terms within Steemit.
Lots of people still ask: Where the money comes from. And I realised one of the easiest way to explain is using popular MMORPG like World of Warcraft. So in the game, you engage with the environment - kill monsters, go on quests, solve puzzles - and you earn the game's currency, say gold, for this instance. Let's say you found a special relic of a weapon, the Staff of Triton, and there are only 10 of it in the entire game. Usually, to the outside world, the Staff means nothing, but if John knows you had the Staff and he really wanted it, so much so that he is willing to pay you real money (say $1000) for it, that's where the value comes in.
Steem Dollars has value (~USD1) because the exchanges are willing to accept it and trade it with real money.
Another example that I used was a time when I went to Thailand and some money changers were not willing to accept Malaysia Ringgit. Now, in Malaysia, my MYR can be used to buy food, engage services etc, but at that time in Thailand, it was worth nothing because the exchanges were not willing to except it.
In summary, I put down all the points why I felt Steemit is a fair platform, and encourage the participants to take part in it.
Definately looking forward to refine my presentation and along with 
Wait, why's Mav posting on Steemit nowadays?
Well, unlike other blogging and social media platform, Steemit is the only platform that allows me to earn cryptocurrency when I engage with it. Yup, one Steem is about USD1, and you, too, can earn Steem Dollars every time you:
- Create content (articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, photos)
- Upvote (like) other people contents
- Comment on other people's posts
- Have discussions, share opinions etc!
Yup, basically it's the very same thing you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all along!
The only difference? For once you can earn a nice income on the side!
Sign up for a free Steemit account, and you can thank me by coming back and upvoting this article. And guess what, you will earn Steem too for doing that! #awesome