Onboarding the masses - SteemPress updated roadmap and growth strategysteemCreated with Sketch.

in #steempress5 years ago (edited)

Today we are both proud and excited to share what we believe is truly a plan to onboard the masses to Steem and to realize our vision of

an open web where anyone can be a part and own a part.

Since the beginning, one of our goals has been to onboard many of the WordPress blogs and websites out there, which currently makes up 30% of the internet. To achieve this, it has been vital to not only provide a unique and compelling product, but also an onboarding process that is easy and effortless for the new users and their audiences, while also efficient and scalable for us. Next for growth to truly take off, is ensuring that more active users create a network effect that brings in more users at an exponential rate.

Accomplishing this has perhaps been the biggest challenges for all Steem apps. It is therefore what we have spent most of the last year trying to solve. We now finally believe that we have come up with our own workable solutions, and perhaps more importantly, brought them together as a complete product and growth strategy that makes sense both technically, financially and in terms of user experience.

In short, user growth on 4 key factors namely exposure, conversion, retention and network effect. In other words the number of new people introduced to Steem through various channels (exposure), times the rate that create a Steem account (conversion), times the rate that stays active (retention), and finally the number of new people they help introduce to Steem through content and other outreach (network effect). Unfortunately, these are all four areas where Steem and several Steem-apps (including SteemPress) have much to improve. We believe, especially with regards to:

  • marketing
  • user onboarding
  • user experience and retention
  • network effect and external reach

To which our new solutions, which are also the steps in our new roadmap, are:

  • A quality-focused referral program targeting specific growth segments.
  • Instant sign up to engage with content for new visitors.
  • A curation policy and voting guidelines built to encourage and support user and community growth.
  • Gamification and positive reinforcement through design.
  • Connect users to community projects, support their growth, and offer chances to contribute to shared goals.

To better see how these issues and solutions are related to growing Steem and SteemPress as well as onboarding the masses, we've summarized it in the following infographic:

SteemPress_growth_plan_infographic.png

We hope you'll be as excited as we are these days after reading our plan. Below we will elaborate on why we believe they are key to solving the problems, how we will implement them and what we will be delivering and allowing the community to contribute to.

A quality-focused referral program targeting specific growth segments

Next week we will launch our new referral program together with the early version of our new website. Here, Steemians can access their referral link which will direct a visitor to our new sign up page for blogs looking to connect their WordPress website to Steem. We will then provide free accounts to blogs that can verify their website through their own WordPress dashboard and which meets a set of criteria including site traffic, engagement and social media following. The referrer will then be set as part-benefactor to future rewards earned by the accounts they onboard, as well as passively receiving a share of future payments the user makes to SteemPress once our subscription-based version is launched. We will also launch a competition alongside the new referral program where the best referrers will receive a liquid amount of STEEM.

An effective referral program can play a big role in user onboarding. Especially on a platform where existing users have direct incentives to help the Steem ecosystem grow to increase the value of their token and the sustainability of their STEEM-based revenue. Additionally, with referrers earning benefactor rewards on the new Steem accounts they onboard, they'll have additional incentives to help them succeed once here to increase their earnings.

Making the referral program only for blogs who can verify that they own a blog with decent traffic and social media reach also adds 2 more benefits. First, it eliminates the opportunity to be abused. This is key as it could otherwise result in Steem accounts being wasted on low-value referrals made only in the hope of gaining rewards. Second, it allows us to prioritize growth segments we believe have the most potential coming to Steem. We want our early referrers to help us target potential new users that are large enough to bring value to Steem, yet small enough that the value propositions and still existing hurdles of Steem are worth their time. Furthermore, prioritizing the growth of specific topics one at a time can help increase the likelihood of it being a success.

To start, we will require that the referred account has a proper blog, has produced content for at least a few months already, have a decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform), and ideally also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.

Instant access to engaging with content followed by Steem account creation

SteemPress now allow visitors of any of our user's blogs to engage with the content and leave a comment on the blockchain without a Steem account. This is done through creating a new "guest account", which we introduced in our most recent update. In short, visitors now only have to enter a display name, a password and an email to engage with content like they're used to on any other site. At the same time, we inform them both through email and our UI of the opportunity to "upgrade" to a Steem account to get full ownership over their account, support their favorite authors, and earn rewards.

The biggest challenge to "onboard the masses" for Steem-based apps has been the signup process. This both due to Steem accounts being scarce and costly, as well as the process being tedious and confusing for new users. This leads directly to a low conversion rate to Steem, as any barrier to entry lowers the number who successfully creates an account. Additionally, it also hurts content creators who want high engagement on their content in order to keep visitors coming back to their blogs. Finally, providing Steem accounts for free without any requirements quickly become costly for those who provide the accounts if it gets abused or wasted on users who just want to leave a comment.

By allowing people to engage and interact with content at minimal requirements, and then put them on a pathway to connect a Steem account later, we create a win for the site visitors, the blogs and ourselves. The visitors experience a far more convenient signup process and can engage immediately. They will also experience a smoother learning curve without receiving the information overload that a full Steem account often comes with. The returning site visitors can then instead learn by doing and then claim a Steem account later. This also makes it harder to get by abusers, making it far less costly for the account provider. Finally, it is crucial for all our top bloggers to get as much engagement as possible which results directly into more traffic to their website, and thus also to Steem via their comment section.

A public curation policy built for growth

We are preparing an official document that will contain our curation policy and voting guidelines. The policy will explain the goals of our curation to support our growth strategy. The guidelines will detail how our accounts will curate to achieve those goals. In summary, the pillars of our goals are: To grow our userbase, to support complementary community growth, to maximize the external value of produced content and engagement, and to ensure responsible use and positive outcome for the rest of Steem, whose value we ultimately depend on. With the ultimate objective being to best align how we curate with what creates the most value to us and to Steem.

The planned voting guidelines will include factors that determine which of our users we vote on and by how much. These currently include:

Engagement

  • Incoming number of comments on the posts.
  • Outgoing comments and replies to site visitors and other SteemPress blogs.
  • Number of guest accounts created and guest comments through your website.
  • Guest account earnings on your content.
  • Outgoing vote diversity (curating different Steem accounts).

Traffic

  • Unique page views on the blog.
  • Improved Alexa-rating of the website over time.

Quality

  • Votes received from curation projects.
  • Incoming vote diversity (attracting different users and curators).

Other growth incentives

  • Powering up / not powering down (we note who buys STEEM with SBDs and powers up).
  • Making overall progress in terms of earnings.
  • The number of successful referrals made through SteemPress.

All of these factors will help determine the "rating" that a SteemPress user has, which in turn affects if they'll be receiving upvotes from our account, and if so, how much. This rating will be visible to the user in their new dashboard once it is fully launched.

The other half of SteemPress's curation is still intended to be done through community project trails, of which we currently support 25 different curation initiatives. A different set of guidelines will apply for what makes a curation project able to receive a trail, and the factors above will still have an effect on the size of outgoing votes through trails.


We believe that the resulting transparency of making our policy and guidelines public both to our users and the Steem community, in general, can several benefits. First, it allows community input on the content of our curation policy in general and what other goals it may have or impacts it ought to consider. Second, it anybody to help evaluate the effectiveness of our guidelines in accomplishing the stated goals in the policy. Further, it provides clarity to our users (which will also happen through gamification as we'll see next) on what contributions and behaviors are desired which will result in fair curation.

Rewards are still one of the most important reasons why people are on Steem. So providing a clear understanding of how rewards can be earned, and then follow up with curation that is experienced as fair to the user is key to ensure a better retention rate as well as user growth. On top of this, Steem stakeholders and apps with delegations also have the ability to incentivise positive behaviors that helps grow Steem. By factoring in engagement, traffic, user-onboarding on top of quality, we believe we can use curation more strategically to grow both Steem and SteemPress.

Unfortunately for Steem, users so far have mostly been incentivized to share their content only with other stakeholders who hold Steem Power in order to gain upvotes and thus rewards. This works directly opposite to how any other social network and blogging platform, where users who want to earn needs to attract more site visitors, engagement and clicks on their page.

The goal should be a positive cycle where users are incentivized to help Steem grow for their own benefit, resulting in new users who again wants to help Steem grow, etc. If we can better align incentives with behaviors that help improve exposure, onboarding, retention and external value, we'll be setting ourselves up for success.

Gamification and positive reinforcement

To amplify the effect of good curation guidelines, and help improve user onboarding, retention, and participation, we will be making strategic use of gamification and positively reinforcing design.

Gamification

Users who create a "guest account" through email to engage with blogs will be put on a pathway to earn a free Steem account through engaging with content. A level-up bar will show much their comments have earned them from upvotes, and that reaching 5 Steem Power will allow them to claim a free Steem account. They'll also find a recommended set of activities to help them receive votes in order to progress. They are also encouraged to connect an existing or buy a new Steem account to immediately access anything their guest comments have earned them.

Blog owners will be introduced to the curation guidelines as a set of suggestions for how they can improve their chance of being curated by SteemPress and the many curation projects that we work with. Additionally, it will be educating the user about Steem in the process by introducing Steem communities, how voting and reward mechanisms work, how to access their funds and thus what the different keys are for, etc. All of this will take place directly in our new UI found across SteemPress comment sections in our new user profiles on steempress.io (work in progress), and the upcoming content and community discovery dashboard.

We believe that providing better clarity on how Steem works, the existence of communities, alternative interfaces, and other supportive applications, can all result in improved user retention. A more fun and educating path to understand Steem and receive rewards can also improve user experience. Finally, by providing gamified objectives that correlate with the activities that promote growth, we can direct efforts also into creating a platform that is more engaging and attracts more external value.

Positive reinforcement through design

The rapid growth and user retention of traditional social media has been largely due to addictive design techniques. Here, the most important KPI for all of them has been the average "time-on-site" spent by the userbase on the platform. Thus, all design decisions are made to make it more addictive to spend time on the app.

Steem, although it has done very little yet to capitalize on this, ought to have a competitive advantage here, namely rewards and a sense of co-ownership. Unlike most other social media platforms, time spent by regular users on Steem is worth something. This both through earning new tokens, as well as contributing to those tokens gaining value by growing Steem, a platform that you own. We will make more strategic use of this by providing users with reminders of the value of time spent on Steem through our UI. We'll do this by displaying the rewards earned over the past 7 days directly in the profile UI when logged in across SteemPress interfaces and settings pages. Periodic notifications will also congratulate users on reaching certain milestones to reinforce the idea of time-well-spent. Notifications can also be made of discussions taking place on other SteemPress blogs where commenters are receiving upvotes or where users they have liked in the past are currently engaging. Being on Steem should feel rewarding, and strengthening that feeling for normal users can directly improve user-retention on top of motivating positive engagement that leads to growth.

Community as a platform

Finally, we will provide a dedicated content and community "Discover" platform, as well as a new series of activities for community members to actively contribute. The discover page will serve two functions: 1. to let users find blogs and creators worth following, communities worth joining, as well as curation projects in order to improve user retention and engagement. 2. to give Steem Power holders a place to find curation projects worth supporting through delegations or trails with the option to do so directly on the page. The activities will be a set of competitions and "call for ideas" on topics that directly relate to improving Steem marketing, onboarding, retention and network effect.

Community curation

We believe strongly in the positive impact of user-run curation projects and other community initiatives. That's why half of our curation has been bone through trailing more than 25 different curation projects when they vote on SteemPress content. We find this approach to curation better for a couple of reasons. First, it decentralizes the curation process and produces an outcome that better reflects proof of brain. Second, it allows us to cover a much wider range of topics and languages than we could have achieved with an in-house curation team. Finally, it directly supports curation projects by improving the curation rewards they receive when our vote follows theirs. This we hope can both have tremendous value for community and curation growth in the current Hardfork, but also help make delegating to such projects more attractive for other stakeholders.

We thus want to make it as easy and attractive as possible for stakeholders to find and support the curation projects that contribute to growth. We believe that by combining manual curation judgment on the quality of content with our own guidelines, we can get the best of two worlds. First, a community validation of user-value, followed by a business validation of growth-contribution. So let's create a scenario where:

Steem apps + Communities = True

That's why we've decided that rather than asking for Steemians to delegate to us, we want to encourage delegation to the many community and curation projects that help us work and grow. After all, our own voting power is here not for us to profit from curation rewards, but for us to create the maximum amount of growth that our business can benefit from.

Competitions

We believe that an ideal decentralized app for social applications should be more than decentralized code. It should also be a network for people with different skills and interests with a shared incentive to bring value to the network they own a part in and to help other community members gain traction. We will therefore also start a series of competitions where community members can get involved and earn rewards by contributing not only to our goals but to grow our users and related communities. The clue is to find tasks where we know the community members can do a great job, and where it also benefits both our users and Steem directly. We will then give a share of our reward as a price pool to good entries. We expect to run these on a monthly basis and currently plan on the first ones being:

  • Referral program launch competition.
  • Best content marketing material.
  • Best Steem educational content.
  • Best new user and minnow supporters.

We hope that by allowing the community to get more involved, and contribute to the growth that they can benefit from themselves directly, we can multiply our numbers further. After all, we hope that this can provide both a vision and platform that people want to be a part of, taking ownership of, and bring to life for their own sake. To accomplish this we know we must also dare to give the community the chance to participate and reward contributions accordingly, while also putting more SP behind the projects that work hard to realize our shared goals.

Conclusion

We believe we have found the right solutions to our most significant obstacles to growth and prepared a strategy and roadmap that can address them effectively while also setting us and you up for success. This includes a scalable marketing and onboarding resource and strategy that grows with the number of users to improve exposure. Then followed by frictionless access for both new quality creators as well as their audience to Steem to improve conversion. Once here, clear guidelines and gamification to give a pathway from a beginner to a user who adds value to Steem, is part of the community and experiences their time on Steem as time-well-spent in order to improve retention. Lastly, by providing a platform and incentives designed for user and community success, with opportunities to be and own a part, we can allow users to grow Steem while growing themselves, thus naturally creating a network effect.

Our new roadmap thus consists of adding these pieces.

Steempress_roadmap2019.png

Much of the work to achieve this already been carried out during a crypto-winter that has required us to rethink how we can deliver value to our users and how we can scale fast without requiring any changes to the blockchain.

So dear Steem community, we invite you to join our effort to accelerate user growth, retention and network effect, and to be a part of our vision to create a more open web where anyone can be a part and own a part. We would love to have your suggestions for how we can collectively bring more of the masses to Steem, and co-create the platform we all want to share.

All the best,

@Howo and @Fredrikaa


You can vote for our witness directly using Steemconnect here.

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Can I just say you guys just rock. this is all really amazing and I am so happy to see your plan set out like this. Obviously I am a steempress fan, it would be amazing to be the first real steempress success story...damn I better get a move on. Nice work! keep it up.

Thanks a lot Paula! It always means a lot to have this form of support and encouragement!

it would be amazing to be the first real steempress success story...damn I better get a move on. Nice work! keep it up.

I heard some rumors that there will be a leaderboard for blogs that get more views and rewards, onboard more guest accounts to become Steemians and minnows, and contributes to other growth targets ;)

Well that's a great rumor to spread...I already have my eye on the number 1 spot of that rumoured leaderboard.

Posted using Partiko Android

There is SO much in this post to be excited about! I joined a WordPress Facebook blogging community about 4 years ago, and while it no longer exists (the owner no longer had time to maintain it), I still interact with a fair number of bloggers on a regular basis. One of my biggest frustrations since joining the Steemit platform has been trying to encourage them to join, especially since it's not a "just click this button" type of thing.

I did want to take a moment though, to mention one thing that gave me pause -

To start, we will require that the referred account has a proper blog, has produced content for at least a few months already, have a decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform), and ideally also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.

I've been blogging on my self-hosted site for 14 years now. While I produce content on a regular basis, I'm not even close to 5K on any of my social media platforms (and I'm a daily user of FB, IG, and Twitter). I also don't have a clue what my Alexa rating is, as I've never bothered to check.

I just did a quick scan on Twitter of some of the bloggers I'd love to refer to this program, and only one in the dozen had 5K (and just barely). Everyone else was around the 1k mark (I have 1.6K). I completely understand the need to have parameters to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I'd also hate to lose the opportunity to bring these small-but-consistent bloggers into the Steem community.

Small detail in an otherwise exciting strategy! I'll probably comment further after I've reread this a few thousand more times. 😊

Oh, and I can't wait to connect my WordPress widget with my SteemPress referral link!

SteemPress makes sense.gif

Thanks a lot for your feedback traci! It's always super nice and helpful + your GIFs and memes are just the best! :)

The social media following is not an absolute requirement, but one condition that could allow us to validate that a blog is legit. It's also meant as a guideline for our referrers as to what targets we're mostly hoping they'll search for.

One thing I didn't mention is that for trusted referrers who we're sure have no intention to abuse this new system, we may give some direct signup codes. With these, the verification by us would not be needed and those you want to onboard would get their account immediately with no need to wait.

Thanks in return for your amazingly kind words, @fredrikaa! 😊

I'm happy to hear the social media following will be a guideline, not a hard & fast rule, because I can definitely see it being an important part of the overall vetting process.

And needless to say (and yet I'm saying it...lol) the idea of direct signup codes for trusted referrers sounds wicked awesomesauce!

I agree with your concern on this, @traciyork. This is all so awesome! But that metric does seem extreme for vetting people. I'm glad it's a guideline, @fredrikaa, and the trusted referrer method is a great idea. I recommend 1k or 2k as a starting point, though.

It's just a matter of how we will prioritize giving away a free Steem account + delegating Steem Power. As I'm sure you know, those things are not free, so we don't want it to get abused, and also prioritize where it has the most impact. But as I said, it's a guideline and one of the metrics we'll look at.

Anyone who are interested in joining Steem can of course still get hold of an account through other means like on steemit.com and then still use steempress afterwards.

That makes sense, @fredrikaa. Thank you for the additional info. This is all so cool. Great developments!!

Posted using Partiko iOS

Thanks for the feedback, @jayna! 😊

Happy to get recommendations by people on who would make wicked awesomesauce-referrers ;). Also, would it be beneficial to have a Discord server, forum, or post dedicated to sharing marketing material, invitation letters, and other tips and tricks for the community to use to be the best referrers they can be? I'm thinking that we all win if Steem grows!

I completely agree that we all win, but I'm gonna say "when" Steem grows, not "if." 😊

I think a new channel in the existing SteemPress Discord server specifically for referrers would be an excellent idea. It could be a closed channel accessible only by people you've promoted to the role of Referrer, so everyone there would be on the same page.

Also, you replied to @amico and said -

Would love to hear suggestions from the userbase of who they believe could be amazing Steem ambassadors and referrers.

I think, when you're ready to do so, this would be a great subject for a Steem post, so everyone in the community can recommend people. I'm sure you'd get a good number of names to start off with. In fact, I already have a few names in mind... 😎

Trusted referrers is an excellent idea! 🤗

I hope so too! Anything to make onboarding of the right people as easy and efficient as possible. And daring to put trust in good community members is a great way (I hope) of doing so! Would love to hear suggestions from the userbase of who they believe could be amazing Steem ambassadors and referrers.

perhaps you could do something in conjunction with Steamtipper.com to defray the cost of onboarding new accounts. Tip the prospect with a little Steem to start if their content is promising but social stats are not quite there yet. One of the advantages of Steem being so low right now is almost anyone can afford to get involved without much risk.

suena que hay algo debajo de la mesa

Es curioso, pensé lo mismo cuando miré tu perfil ...

(Funny, I thought the same thing when I looked at your profile...)

Lol, this is far more impressive than anything I've ever seen from Steemit Inc. or top witnesses.

Very happy that you liked it. And yes, to me this brings so much of what I've seen and thought on Steem, as well as elsewhere, for the past 2 and a half years together. I would love to hear what parts of it you found particularly impressive or worth prioritizing on our end. Or where other users and stakeholders can and should get involved?

It's important to get the fundamentals right, first. Free and instant account creation, an easy-to-use interface are essential. Next comes content discovery, moderation, and curation. Only then can one consider marketing, because without those basics, only a very tiny niche is going to switch/crosspost from WordPress, Medium or Reddit.

Completely agree. Else you're just pouring water into a bathtub with a hole in it.

We now have free and instant accounts for interactions only, with the built-in opportunity for those accounts to earn their way to a Steem account through positive interactions. Still working on better content discovery, although I see it as less vital for us since our bloggers mostly work to promote their content themselves. Moderation is not only a feature but a requirement imo. Our users are 100% in control of what comments are visible on their websites, no idea why this is so controversial to many Steemians when having ownership of one's own blog should include the ability to moderate it... (When I first started on steemit, I put in a tonne of effort into making content relevant to my work in the space sector, but there was no way I would ever share it with my colleagues, friends or other social media following with the comment section turning into spam by flat earthers...).

In any case, I think Steem can add value to a social product without requiring it to be used in its "vanilla version" with stake based content discovery and no moderation.

...it s just Rock’n’Roll what you re doing!!!...my absolute respect!!!...there is so much exciting information and so much spirit and power in your post, thank you so much for this...in my opinion it’s the right way to open steem for the masses...I m sure with such a lot of capable heads (you!!!) behind, it will succeed..I will doing my best to make it a successful story...and I m looking forward to post high level content...one thing I have to say is that there are a lot of things, rules, steemrelated apps and sites that it s a Real djungle for new people, by the way it is still also for me...but slowly I m getting more and more in...love it!...up..resteemed..steem on!...

Thanks for the very positive feedback! Steem, and the value of our tokens, are what we make them to be. So let's work together to improve it!:) I'm curious to hear if there were any particular points that I touched that you believed in, or would be happy to contribute to?
Steem on!

..yes, sure you will hear my feedback as soon as my daily works and todos allows it...meanwhile, thank you very much for your energy and motivation...could be so easy to spend energy in the right things instead of wasting it with kind of things which the world and also nobody needs...so, thx again..we ll surely meet again..(don’t know where, don’t know when..., like Johnny Cash sung)..up..

...of course follow you..steem on!..

I have been playing with guest account options, and it is my belief that this can be done with OAuth, a database and a handfull of 'guest accounts' per project.

Posting the comment can be done by a 'company account' and the post can include author name (name and profile pic from social media login).

I have managed this on a wordpress blog with the Auth0 plugin and a Chron Posting Script. This leads us to a future of guest/lite/full accounts.

Here I have done a post response about how I believe guest accounts can be implemented technically for the most effect.

Hey @fredrikka, this is absolutely kick ass!!! As I was reading I kept thinking that these all sound like fantastic ideas that could work in wrangling in some folks here.

Do you guys plan on singling and seeking out specific “bloggers” at all or just letting it kinda take its course naturally? Sorry if it’s a dumb question. Lol

Hey man! Very glad to hear that you liked it! And yes, this post for me has been years in the making, and ties together so much of what I believe are important pieces of the puzzle to make Steem a success.

Well, the referral program will take its course naturally in the sense that people are free to try to onboard whoever they want. I don't know myself in what content categories we have the most passionate ambassadors for Steem. So will have to see. We ourselves will be targeting specific growth segments that we believe are more likely to want to come onboard and who bring more value. Making the effort more focused can have 2 benefits: 1. It is easier to get familiar with one niche at a time in terms of learning where they are easily reached, what expectations they have, what an affective pitch therefore is, etc. And 2. because growing one topic at a time means those you onboard find other creators relevant to their niche and whose content they may like to consume themselves, rather than being an island amongst others whose interest you don't share and thus don't get a lot of engagement on their content.

In any case, if you yourself or anyone you know would like to get involved in the referral program, then do reach out to me!

Go for it maaaan! So exciting to see independent devs sticking with Steem in the tough times and innovating more than ever.

I'm really sorry that I ever accused you of being a battery. And if you were a battery, you'd be the 100 megawatt battery built by Tesla!

Thanks! Well, I think bear markets are a perfect time to not look at the price and focus on deep work. Happy that we've managed o do just that!

And hahaha, no worries man, that was just hilarious ;). Would be cool to hear if you would like to do some arts or marketing material once we launch our referral program and open up for community contributions to it.

Thank you Martin and Frederik for such comprehensive post, it is easy to feel that there are a lot of thoughts and ideas you put in this project to attract the masses.

I like the idea of creating easy access for content creator to communicate with communities on Steem platform, I remember signing up in 2017 and was waiting for more than couple of months and actually already stopped thinking about but accidentally opened the site and surprisingly found that the account is verified. I do not imagine how many of other people maybe just left off the idea after such a long waiting time.

When I first read about Steempress that encourage me to create my blog, that I have never thought before and being visual Artist that is great to have an opportunity to use the blog like a Gallery.

I like the idea to support and help a communities, because every newcomer will try to find himself in this big ocean and the communities are the units helping them to navigate. From our side we wanted to thank for supporting @Art-venture project and Artistic community on Steemit for almost a year.

We definitely support your ideas and we will spread the word!

@howo and @frederikaa

I have been wanting to get to what I knew would be an exciting post for days, and eventually got to it today, and...here I am. These developments are really exciting. I think I have mentioned that I've consolidated most of my blogging to WordPress where I've blogged for going on six years. I recently moved from one of their packages to a self-hosted site - paid for in Steem and hosted by Steemian @gmuxx. The prospect of being able to offer an easy way for readers to sign up for Steemit is something I welcome. Bearing in mind that not all my readers are interested in Steem or crypto platforms (even though I think they should be...). Which brings me to @traciyork's concern and which is also mine:

To start, we will require that the referred account has a proper blog, has produced content for at least a few months already, have a decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform), and ideally also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.

I agree with "proper blog" and your qualification. It's the

decent following on social media (5k+ on at least one platform)

IMHO unless you buy followers, or blog 24/7, this is not going to happen - I'm pretty active, but not as active as Traci and, for example @jaynie, but I have a really long way to go on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to reach these numbers - and I run multiple accounts.

also reached an Alexa rating in the top 1 million.

And, pardon my ignorance, who or what is Alexa? Again, like Traci, I've no clue my rating here...

I look forward to these developments and being able to blog from a single, user-friendly interface.

Finally, thank you for this outline - to which I want to return and absorb, properly - and for Steempress. Steempress has made a phenominal difference to my Steem life - to which I want to devote more time.

Fiona

Thanks for taking the time to read the post and offer such great feedback!

Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough, but the requirements/guidelines set for blogs are only for those that we'll be giving a free Steem account + delegate our own STEEM to through the referral program. Obviously, we cannot afford to do this to an infinite, nor very large, number of blogs without additional support. Thus, those guidelines are there to limit how this could otherwise be abused, or quickly wasted.

For the followers of your blogs, they'll be able to either earn their way to a free Steem account through making comments that authors like yourself and others like, or by getting a Steem account themselves to log in with. Alternatively, if they just want to post comments on your blog then they might not even need a Steem account, but of course we all want them to eventually do so.

In any case, if you're interested in helping bring more creators and bloggers to Steem through our referral program, I'm comfident that we can help bring those that you refer onboard either way. I'll be happy to talk with you directly through DIscord or other channels if so.

Alexa rating is simply a ranking based on how much traffic goes to a website (unique site visitors, clicks, etc).

And finally, I'm very happy to hear that we're making something that you enjoy using! It is of course our first objective :)

@frederikaa

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, and for explaining (probably again) the challenges of delegating steem to new accounts. Of course, that makes sense, and perhaps #justthinkingaloud you and @howo might want to do that in campaigns e.g. for the first 10 to sign up and then again in a second wave, etc., as you build up/maintaing a pot of Steem that can be delegated.

And.

This has really made me excited:

For the followers of your blogs, they'll be able to either earn their way to a free Steem account

For folk for whom Steem is expensive, this is a great idea. I know that for me, sitting in South Africa where, as at today's rates 1SBD is more than 10 in our currency, it's something that has to be carefully considered. Expecially when one is trying to convert skeptics to crypto. This latter really applies among folk my age and demographic (50+) who blog for a hobby and for whom all of this crypto stuff is mumbo jumbo they'd rather ignore.

Just a few thoughts.

Look forward to the new developments! :)

Finally, and TMI - because life off steemit has been so busy, I've neglected my blog...and haven't posted in a while

Hi @steempress I've been using your extension for a while now and I love it! I was wondering if it would be possible for you guys to duplicate the plugin for Joomla as well? It's something I would really like to use and can't find anything similar for Joomla unfortunately.

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