Hello Steemians,

My post 2 days ago got me thinking..

Here I am, putting thought, time, and effort into making Steemit a better place , hoping that the Steemit community will appreciate it and would give it the attention I thought it deserved.

The reality?

It got lost in many other posts.. The few Steemians that actually saw it and engaged with it thought there were some valid points in that post.

One comment in particular caught my eye. It was a comment by @tundraxd :

"...I did get lucky on my first "quality" post - I received only two upvotes from people with a lot of steempower, which gave my post a potential payout of over 200 SBD! It kind of sucks that you have to get lucky and be seen by powerful steemians in order to make it somewhere..."

And it got me wondering... Is it all about luck?

The way I see Steemit right now, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that there is practically NO WAY for anyone to get noticed and make money here unless they:

invested a lot of money in Steem Power.
Brought a HUGE following with them from a different place. But even then the followers need to buy some Steem power to make their upvotes count..
Have connections with some Whales.
Get lucky. But that applies to just a few posts.

If a Harvard professor would sign up to Steemit right now and start writing the best quality content, he would maybe get some upvotes that are worth a few pennies, some "cool post dude, follow me and I'll follow you back.." comments, and maybe some followers.

And that is a BIG problem.

Right now Steemit is not about quality, it's about luck.

Were you lucky enough to be one of Steemit first waves of members?
Were you lucky enough to have thousands of dollars to invest in Steem power?
Were you lucky enough to catch a whale's attention and get an upvote worth a few bucks?

So it got me thinking a little more..

How can we make Steemit a better place?

So I've got an idea I would like to share with the community and would appreciate your honest feedback.

Introducing: SteemIt Whales Mentorship Program!

The program is pretty straight forward:

Any Steemian can join as a mentoree.
Steemians with over 100k Steem Power (whales) can join as mentors.
mentorees need to post unique quality content at least 6 out of 7 days a week. failing to do so for 3 weeks would cause the mentoree to drop out of the program.
Mentors will read at least 15 mentoree posts / day.
Mentors will upvote at least 7 mentoree posts / day.
Mentors will post at least 7 comments / day with guidance, constructive criticism, or encouragement.

What's in it for mentorees?

The obvious is the getting more money for their effort. In addition this will give mentorees a feeling that they are actually an integral part of the Steemit community, and that their contribution does not go unnoticed.

What's in it for mentors?

Seemingly nothing. But the truth is, everything.
Steemit is an online community. And just like any other online community the money is in the numbers. More serious Steemians in the community, means more impact in the world which will translate to more money.
On the other hand, if Steemit will lose active members that will go somewhere else the value of Steem will go somewhere else as well...

If Steemit shuts down tomorrow, members like myself would maybe lose a few bucks and some time but that's it..

Whales on the other hand... well, they can lose millions.

So, this program is obviously just an idea of mine and will not happen if Whales won't participate in it. It is not set in stone and just gives the basic structure of how I think it should be. Any other suggestions are more than welcomed.