The greatest reward is knowing that what you're doing is changing the world.
I've been tracking with great interest the amount of payouts on the platform of the #Promo-Steem tag over the last couple of weeks. What has become abundantly clear is that it's growing faster than pretty much any other tag, especially when you consider that this tag is really only a couple of months old.
123,000SBD paid out in less than 3 months!
At the beginning of the 2018, less than 50,000SBD had been paid out in rewards which featured the #promo-steem tag. Which was still pretty good to say it was only about 6 or 7 weeks old at the time.
Now, at not quite the end of January, it's more than doubled, and is currently sitting at over 123,000SBD.
As a comparison, the #promo-steem tag is now bigger than Religion. It's bigger than cooking, it's paid out more than sport, cannabis, gold, cats, sex and flowers. It's in fact FIVE TIMES bigger than trending, amazing, beautiful and dog!
How #promo-steem is changing lives
A great deal of the payouts on the #promo-steem tag have been going to promoters in places in Africa, where there is a great deal of poverty, mostly thanks to centuries of colonisation, slavery and the ponzi economic system. What we are now seeing is teams of voluntaryists getting together, promoting in their communities, and earning fantastic rewards for doing so. When you live in a place where the average earning is less than $1 a day, a post which is rewarded to the tune of $10, $20 or even more (and we aren't even taking into account the growing SBD price here), this is lifechanging for some people. Who wouldn't want to be involved in something where you have fun, make money, and change the fortunes of people around the world? This is good work, it's necessary work, and it's altering the paradigm of how people think.
I've just had a conversation with a friend of mine who has worked for the British Foreign Aid and Overseas Development Office for years. He is utterly blown away by what we are doing, and likens it to the work of a decentralised NGO, but one which isn't begging for charity money. He told me that we are becoming more effective than the British government in being able to help people change their lives overseas. Now THAT is something to be proud of!
I personally spend a lot of my time and energy going through #promo-steem posts and making sure the vast majority of my voting power is spent on these guys, especially in places like Ghana, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines, who are tireless promoters. We are in the process of building a promo-steem system that will reward great promoters from around the world, and we are looking for new ways to generate publicity for the STEEM blockchain.
Where is it going to go next
Over this last week, I have been having conversations with some of the greatest Steem promoters I can find, and the news is extraordinary.
Watch out for a UK TOUR of disruption events with the incredible @dannyshine. Get ready for the STEEM promotional cars, and the pop-up city centre STEEMSTALL. We are actively approaching, and being approached by, some huge vloggers and podcasters across the world to give interviews, and we are looking at formats where we can get STEEM into mainstream view.
If you're in the UK, especially watch out for what we get up to on budget day March 13th in London at the gates of Downing Street!
We are doing all of this because we want to have a lot of fun, and show everyone how you don't need a lot of technology or resources to promote STEEM and Steemit. Our goal is to get people talking about it, create a big noise, and make sure that people we meet enjoy our activities, and get into it.
So, for the UK based Steemers, if you want to be involved, please comment below. We are going to take this all around the country, and do a promotional tour like you've never seen! Details will be coming out very soon, but let us know if you're interested in getting involved. If it's the first time you've done any promoting, we promise you will love it.