A marketing idea? Whitepaper? Strategy? request? Either way I think its is gold.

[mdj]

This referal program would make it so easy to earn money in a way so different from the original idea of BitShares, that its ponziness would defeat BitShares' original purpose. Yes, it would probably bring many new people to the system. But what kind of people? People, who will suddenly realize how good BitShares are, or people who just want to get rich on the referal program?

From wikipedia:

Ponzi schemes occasionally begin as legitimate businesses, until the business fails to achieve the returns expected. The business becomes a Ponzi scheme if it then continues under fraudulent terms. Whatever the initial situation, the perpetuation of the high returns requires an ever-increasing flow of money from new investors to sustain the scheme.

I would prefer to stick to the original values we wanted to promote, not the "get rich fast" values. Once the original ideas get implemented, we will earn profit from the right thing instead of this obscure mechanism.

 

I agree.  I was hoping people would come to BitShares because their own search for integrity led them here.  The principals on which BitShares has been built is of vital importance.   Then the other reason would be the incredible utility of BitShares which simply makes it the market choice....this point doesn't feel so far away.

[jaran]

Please no MLM stuff.  Only a one time referral reward should be acceptable.


 

[Ander]

Look do we believe in BitShares or not?  Do we have patience or not?  Please can we allow some organic growth to arrive from all the hard work that is going on.......

Indeed.  What we need is organic growth of actual users, trading bitassets on the decentralized exchange.
And not a pyramid scheme of MLM marketers trying to convince people to spend $20 to sign up, so that they can get a cut of it.


1 level referral plan sounds great to me, with no large signup fee, simply giving a referral bonus of some portion of fees generated (from actual trading use of bitshares!) by the referrer.  Go beyond that and we look like a bunch of people who are really desperate to make a buck off people in whatever way we can.

[Ben Mason]

As long as we stay away from MLM "downlines" and just do one-off rewards, ref= links and qr codes, that should be sufficient.

I agree with this.  Referral systems and giving a reward for getting a referral (a percentage of fees of your referee, and maybe a bonus), is great.  We have all read the story of how Paypal went into massive growth with its referral program.

Making it multi-level and rewarding for referrals of your referrals screams 'scam' and 'stay away' to EVERYONE. 

Please do not all hastily rush to turn Bitshares into an MLM scheme, lose the following of most of our remaining die hards, and cause yet another 75% price drop.  Just because some initial posts on the forum go "yay, this is great!   Bitshares will go up and I will make money!".  We made this mistake already in november, and it lost us most of the support of the chinese community.

You really need to realize that if Bitshares goes MLM, there are going to be 1 million people screaming in every thread in bitcointalk that it is a scam, and every single person is going to see the MLM scheme, and pattern match it to other scams, and think "yep, Bitshares is now confirmed to be a scam".

In fact, I am surprised that NewMine and DecentralizedEconomics havent ALREADY made posts saying this, even though it is just people talking about it.


Please consider just doing a referral plan and rewarding people for referring their plans, and not going full pyramid scheme and turning Bitshares from a wonderful idea into the spawn of evil.

this 

Look do we believe in BitShares or not?  Do we have patience or not?  Please can we allow some organic growth to arrive from all the hard work that is going on.......

[Ander]

As long as we stay away from MLM "downlines" and just do one-off rewards, ref= links and qr codes, that should be sufficient.

I agree with this.  Referral systems and giving a reward for getting a referral (a percentage of fees of your referee, and maybe a bonus), is great.  We have all read the story of how Paypal went into massive growth with its referral program.

Making it multi-level and rewarding for referrals of your referrals screams 'scam' and 'stay away' to EVERYONE. 

Please do not all hastily rush to turn Bitshares into an MLM scheme, lose the following of most of our remaining die hards, and cause yet another 75% price drop.  Just because some initial posts on the forum go "yay, this is great!   Bitshares will go up and I will make money!".  We made this mistake already in november, and it lost us most of the support of the chinese community.

You really need to realize that if Bitshares goes MLM, there are going to be 1 million people screaming in every thread in bitcointalk that it is a scam, and every single person is going to see the MLM scheme, and pattern match it to other scams, and think "yep, Bitshares is now confirmed to be a scam".

In fact, I am surprised that NewMine and DecentralizedEconomics havent ALREADY made posts saying this, even though it is just people talking about it.


Please consider just doing a referral plan and rewarding people for referring their plans, and not going full pyramid scheme and turning Bitshares from a wonderful idea into the spawn of evil.

[fav]

,,,
Tier 1: 100 people :: everyone holds 1000 bitUSD (100*1000 = 100.000 bitUSD) :: 5% are 5.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 500 bitUSD :: i will get 40% so 200 bitUSD
Tier 2: 200 people :: everyone holds 200 bitUSD   (200*200 = 40.000 bitUSD)    :: 5% are 2.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 200 bitUSD :: i will get 30% so   60 bitUSD
Tier 3: 200 people :: everyone holds 100 bitUSD   (100*200 = 20.000 bitUSD)    :: 5% are 1.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 100 bitUSD :: i will get 30% so   30 bitUSD

so 290 bitUSD sounds maybe not much, but you should consider it is "as long as the account is used" and the considered invested amounts are not really big!

is this better?

sorry, but I don't think we would get marketers on board with this system. and that's the only reason for a MLM - to increase the userbase

[Shentist]

  for the idea, but affiliate structur was discussed in the past and the devs didn't liked it!

I am not against MLM, but i see the critic points.

What i like of the proposal was the idea of the factoryowner who paid their employees in bitCNY and get some funds back from them and from the people they are inviting into BitShares.

I am a fan of KISS and the system Max suggested is to complicated

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. to pay 20 bitUSD! 20 bitUSD are in some places a huge amount and maybe this are the places we need the most.

- so, get rid of this idea and make it available for anyone

----------------------------------------------------------------

2. to get a share of the fees will not help much, but we should share the paid yield on this account as long as the account is used!
 
- so, get rid of 20 years or other restriction. If i am a user and i know how the system works i just create a new account and get rid of the shared yield and get all of it. So lazy users will share and smart users can "OPT out" if they want.
- maybe share 10% of the yield and split it: 40% Tier 1 ; 30% Tier 2 and 30% Tier 3

- with this in mind, you want people in the system who will put their bitUSD, bitCNY etc. into BitShares and earn interest.

- for this we need to ramp up the yield to 5%, so i would like to increase for the shorts the minimum interestrate to 5% at the moment without much interest to short you get it for free!!!

with this approach bytemasters concerns are gone because, we would pay anyway the 5% yield, but distribute it now a little bit different and if you are smart and just create your own 4 accounts and get the whole 5% yield i don't mind.

-----------
so it is not as good for MLM groups, because you don't get something instantly, but if you are doing a good job you will get paid a lot more on the long run

Assume you introduced 100 people into BitShares and everyone of them intorduces 2 more and of them 1 more


Tier 1: 100 people :: everyone holds 1000 bitUSD (100*1000 = 100.000 bitUSD) :: 5% are 5.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 500 bitUSD :: i will get 40% so 200 bitUSD
Tier 2: 200 people :: everyone holds 200 bitUSD   (200*200 = 40.000 bitUSD)    :: 5% are 2.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 200 bitUSD :: i will get 30% so   60 bitUSD
Tier 3: 200 people :: everyone holds 100 bitUSD   (100*200 = 20.000 bitUSD)    :: 5% are 1.000 bitUSD and 10% for the affiliates are 100 bitUSD :: i will get 30% so   30 bitUSD

so 290 bitUSD sounds maybe not much, but you should consider it is "as long as the account is used" and the considered invested amounts are not really big!

is this better?

[Pheonike]

20 yrs is crazy. Maybe 1-2 year then a halving reward each year after.

[Empirical1.2]

This is a very good idea

As I've said previously I think BitSapphire & other third party products should incorporate elements of fee sharing too.

ASAP but KISS.. and obviously we'll need a league table to see the real impact and learn from who's doing what and how.. kudos can be as valuable as BTS!

  This is true

BitShares still unfortunately has the possible Achilles heel of being viewed as a crypto-company vs. a crypto-currency which makes it very hard to build network effect.  (A solid crypto-currency is big FU to Governments, banks, central planners and even manipulated precious metals & a no inflation BTSX with funding, rockstar developers & BitAssets was the best crypto-currency on the market & it's constantly growing community & valuation reflected that.  I know some people don't grasp how hard it is to build a community around a variable dilution company but hopefully seeing the massive and consistent decline in BitShares value ( >70% in $ & BTC terms)  these last 6 months you have at least observed in practice that the valuations & popularity of the the two models are world's apart.)

I think moonstone plus something like this could give BTS a shot, it's just uneccasarily hard work when the $ BTS accesses via dilution at this CAP is less than a no inflation BTSX was getting just from fees.

Every Silicon Valley startup works the same way we do - pay early employees with stock to conserve liquid cash.

BitShares is structured for growth into the general population where its self-funding model will enable exponential growth unimpeded by old school crypto-think.  I agree it makes that big old engine a little harder to start among the small crypto investor community, but that's just one of many steely-eyed tradeoffs we have to make when thinking bigger.

The core product IS the crypto-currency itself.

When you destroy the crypto-currency to optimise yourself as a crypto-company you destroy your core product on which your community, network effect and valuation is based. So much so that a self funding BTS has less $ to work with than BTSX generated from fees and these dilution $ are eating into the share price everyday.

Whatever BTS develops, a popular strong crypto-currency will add to their blockchain if it's useful, so BTS will even struggle to be like an Apple and build some sort of community & value around BTS products.

As I said to you 6 months ago on the last day that BTSX was consistently rising in value on a trajectory that would have made us all wealthy and helped change the world for the better... 

At first I wasn't sure if this was a good idea but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

We know that a lot of bitcoiners and altcoiners think btsx is a "crapcoin" and a ponzi scheme. So why do we really care what they say about us diluting btsx? Many of them are set in stone and won't "convert". This is why they aren't a target demographic for btsx. Our time, money and energy should be focused on people outside the crypto sphere. Those people don't care how it works, but if it works.

I think as long as this is well thought out and all other options are exhausted that we should go for it.

Kind of reminds me of the famous five monkeys experiment. 
Nobody in those communities is willing to go for the bananas any more
but no one remembers why.

http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

Kind of reminds me of the famous goose that laid the golden eggs.

I think moonstone & this idea look good and I'm still holding a little because BitAssets are fantastic. However if this model really takes off you will have the last laugh because I could be buying big at these prices and I'm not. So possibly my loss.

[davidpbrown]

As far as I can tell, there is a strong hunger in the crypto community for something (mining! clicking ads! anything!) that the average Joe can do to participate in the crypto gold rush.  Those blessed with exceptional abilities build little things and hope to profit from the resulting exponential growth.  Max's MLM model (really just self-funded teaching and technical support) is something everybody can do to build their own dream financial empire.  Lets not deny the average Joe the chance to live the same dream!

Marketing/PR is the product now?...

[Xeldal]

Only marketeers like MLM because it's a lazy way to a quick profit.

I've been in many MLM businesses and can attest that *none of them were easy.  They all took a great deal of effort for little to no payoff.  Generally speaking, to be successful in MLM you have to work extremely hard for no pay, for a long time.  with the hope that eventually your work will take on a life of its own.  Many may get into MLM looking for quick easy profits, but I guarantee you it is not there.  Some do get lucky where their upline builds a network for them, but this is rare.

Such an approach considers the product as fodder.. single level marketing reward makes more sense here where the product is its own reward.

I don't think its made fodder.  The most successful MLM'er's truly believe in the product they are selling and have a story of how the product has changed their life.  There are many different people who will find appealing different aspects of a story.  Sometimes its the product, sometimes its the money/opportunity.   In my experience the products offered in these systems are generally of very high quality and do actually work. 

MLM I suspect also fails because people resent earning money for chumps further up the chain. Flat reward is perceived as 100% of the reward to the one who earned it.

MLM is no failure.  Its proven to be an extremely effective approach
The people with this issue would not be interested in the affiliate system.  Which is fine.  The system would not require any of it.  It would work just the same as it does now and you'd never have to think about it.  You'd still reap all the benefits of the actual product.

[bobmaloney]

Fair enough, Stan -

But I will repost this and hope we consider it seriously: (I think we can all agree that 20 years is laughingly ridiculous)

I think you're missing the reality of why people do not like marketing of whatever flavour that is:[MLM/ponzi/pyramid/scams/etc]. Only marketeers like MLM because it's a lazy way to a quick profit. Such an approach considers the product as fodder.. single level marketing reward makes more sense here where the product is its own reward. MLM I suspect also fails because people resent earning money for chumps further up the chain. Flat reward is perceived as 100% of the reward to the one who earned it.


I'd suggest that we keep this simple.

There is nothing wrong with a referral fee as reward but that should be a straightforward and time limited - the big long term reward follows from real growth in the value of BitShares. So you could approach it from that direction too.. reward those who do best after the fact.

X% of fees for a year, seems to me really generous as a long standing commitment and if the delegates are widely happy with that, I'd support it.. getting those involve who can create excitement is worth the cost, if it sees a big uptick in userbase.

If X% of fees is not considered enough in the first year, then you could enhance that with a reward based on a league table.. pay to top 10 promoters and celebrate their success each month. There could be a pool account for that or a delegate.. your chance to grab a fraction of a 100% delegate would motivate more than 10 people.

Certainly such an approach as OP, makes more sense than gifting 100% delegates to those who don't deliver. Not having any referral fee, makes no sense.. the more generous that is the more seductive the idea of promoting BitShares.

[Stan]

Egad Brain!

Those are all good points, but the A-word and the P-word will be applied to us by the trolls no matter what we do now.

Let's not let them set the agenda. 

As far as I can tell, there is a strong hunger in the crypto community for something (mining! clicking ads! anything!) that the average Joe can do to participate in the crypto gold rush.  Those blessed with exceptional abilities build little things and hope to profit from the resulting exponential growth.  Max's MLM model (really just self-funded teaching and technical support) is something everybody can do to build their own dream financial empire.  Lets not deny the average Joe the chance to live the same dream!

[lil_jay890]

Agree, this should be addressed by BM tomorrow on mumble and hopefully we have a road map for implementation by next week.  No point in sitting on this.

[fav]

I think it's safe to say that the majority wants an affiliate system and as soon as possible. is there a chance to get it on the priority list?