Steem Basic Income is a social experiment to bring a basic income to as many Steemians as possible. Members join by sponsoring others into the program. Steem Basic Income is delivered through providing regular upvotes to member content.
To provide more interaction within Steem Basic Income (SBI), we are continuing our interviews with prominent members of SBI! We hope to bring a greater sense of community, get to know our members, and gain a better understanding of why Steemians are choosing to be a part of SBI.
Greetings again, fellow Steemians, I am @wesphilbin. This will be my third interview for the Steem Basic Income group. My first interview, I had the pleasure of interviewing @eturnerx; we spoke of the importance of community and the interaction with Steem Basic Income. For my second interview, @ecoinstant and I talked about everything under the sun… from decentralization to stewardship. It has been some time since I have brought you another interview; life has a way of speeding up on us. Today I hope to dazzle you with my latest Steemian...
I caught up with @jonnyla08, founder of projects such as Steemexplorers and Monster Madness Giveaways, two small personal ventures that @jonnyla08 and a handful of close friends and family organize that are focused on giving back to the community.
@wesphilbin: Let's start with your history on Steem
@jonnyla08: During the Bitcoin market surge around November 2017, I began to take an interest in all things cryptocurrency. I am a CPA and work in the banking industry, so I try to stay current with financial markets, technology, investments and anything that could have an impact in my personal or professional life. At that time, Bitcoin and blockchain appeared to be significant in both aspects of my life. Much like with a stock, I started reading up on various cryptocurrencies - to learn all I could about them and to pick the ones I thought had the best use cases and the best potential. I felt Steem had that because of its social media connection. From that point on I made the decision to begin my journey here on Steem.
@wesphilbin: How did you learn about Steem Basic Income?
@jonnyla08: In my early days on Steem, I found it very difficult to achieve any sort of recognition of my work, regardless of how much time I spent writing or researching. This was reflected in the fact that I made little, if anything, on each of my posts. After spending several weeks like this and beginning to feel as if Steem just wasn't for me, I modified my approach. Instead I spent the vast majority of my time looking at other people's posts - to see who was upvoting their posts, where the top upvote values were coming from, and then following through to each and every subsequent account that had a meaningful upvote value - to determine if they were individual users, service accounts, bid bots, community accounts, etc. It was through this investigative process that I discovered Steem Basic Income.
These are skills that I developed over the course of my professional career, mainly in the field of auditing. Asking questions and trying to dissect how something works has become a force of habit now with most things I do.
@wesphilbin: Do you think there is a place for Bidbots? Or should we just rely more on the input from users, community, etc?
@jonnyla08: I think when it comes to Steem there is a place for anything that provides values through an upvote. Organic upvotes can be very difficult to come by, especially when first starting out. People view success in different ways. To some, a bid bot can serve a purpose even if it's not returning a positive ROI, because you could view this as an advertising cost to building your Steem blog; in the sense that the more upvotes you get on your blog posts, the more people are pulled in toward your account or take notice.
The posts generating higher payouts will bring in other users hoping to benefit from the curation rewards. If you have any level of consistency in your upvote values, you'll likely notice your follower counts and corresponding follower-generated upvotes tend to start climbing. In short, things of this nature have a value but are not always measured in a direct relationship to the ROI you receive from the initial upvotes. There is, of course, no substitute for networking: building relationships, generating quality content, or finding ways to help others and providing some kind of value to the community as a whole.
@wesphilbin: Can you share a little bit about yourself to help the readers get a better sense for who @jonnyla08 is?
@jonnyla08: My name is Jonathan, but I go by Jon everywhere other than at work. I'm a New Englander, born and raised. I'm 31 years old, going on 32. I'm a husband and father to a beautiful little girl that's almost 4 years old. Our birthdays are only 4 days apart and coming up at the beginning of July. It's fitting we'd celebrate together because we're inseparable and she's the biggest reason behind most things I do now with my life and the driving force behind my motivations. We'll also be welcoming a baby boy in a little over a month right around the same time frame so pretty soon we'll all be celebrating together. Outside of my family affairs, I am an avid collector of old U.S. coins and paper currency, I like my IPA's and a good whiskey, and I love my sports (most of all I am a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan!)
@jonnyla08: I'm certainly not picky, but I enjoy Eagle Rare and Angel's Envy and of course my Jack Daniels to name a few.
@wesphilbin: Certainly nothing wrong with enjoying yourself after a long day’s work; can you talk about your services, and what influence SBI has on them?
@jonnyla08: The first project we rolled out about 10 months ago or so we've since dubbed "Monster Madness Giveaways." Simply put, this is a team of accounts that conducts regular daily giveaways of Steem Monsters Rewards cards. We do not give away the most expensive cards as some others do, but we conduct a lot of giveaways and we provide a degree of volume when it comes to giveaways to help the everyday players like ourselves that don't have a lot of money to spend on cards. There are no requirements to participate, other than to drop comments to our posts in various formats as outlined in our daily posts.
They're all easy and fun and also a good way to leverage Partiko and earn points when commenting on our posts. We cannot always be playing and completing daily quests or attempting to win things in tournaments so we lean heavily on what we earn from our SBI upvotes to help pay for these daily giveaways.
@jonnyla08: The second project that we on-boarded is called Steemexplorers. Steemexplorers hosts a discord server that provides a central database of helpful information on Steem services, games, upvote resources, steem resources and tools, communities, and various discord based bots that can help you grow and improve your experiences on Steem.
On top of this, Steemexplorers also conducts daily giveaways - but this account focuses on free daily giveaways of SBI. This is especially important because many people have a hard time generating even 1 steem over the span of a few days or even a week. Steemexplorers presently generates about 1 STEEM per day and we turn around and give that money back to the people through shares of SBI, doing our part to help others grow, improve happiness and thereby retention, and of course to improve our relationships with others. None of this would be possible without the income generated from SBI.
@jonnyla08: Finally, the newest service we recently rolled out is more of a side experiment but we created a service called @givememonsters. This service is a manual upvoting service presently holding a $0.03 upvote value and likely about to cross into the $0.04 territory. We essentially allow people to trade in Steem Monsters cards they don't want or have no use for, even the ones with little monetary value, in exchange for upvotes on any Steem post. There is no restriction and this service can be used for anything. This is designed to help others with their Steem posts, while also attempting to remove some of the more mass produced Steem Monsters cards from the marketplace and do our part toward improving prices. Steem Basic Income also plays a vital role in our efforts to grow this account larger over time.
@wesphilbin: What are your final thoughts on the future of both Steem and SBI, as well as your future endeavors?
@jonnyla08: While no one really knows what the future holds in this space with certainty, I like to base my decisions on practical measurements and data. With that said, I know Steemit is a for-profit company operating in a social media environment that is a fundamental part of our world today. The company that owns Steemit has a vested interest in doing everything they can to help this website succeed, or else they're going out of business.
I also know we're in a relatively new space that not everyone fully understands. That makes it difficult to attract new users by the masses, but that with time that should change and improve. The STEEM market cap is really only just over 100 million while there are approximately 16 different cryptocurrencies today exceeding 1 billion or roughly 10 times the current value of STEEM today. Is it so far-fetched to think that one day, at some point in the future, a social media-based platform such as Steem could reach those heights as well? I'd certainly say that there's a chance. All good things come in time and are worth waiting for. If you can maintain this frame of mind and stick it out over the long-term, you might just be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.
@Jonnyla08: To that same point, during downturns in the Steem economy, lower prices can help you increase your purchasing power in terms of SBI. Let's relate this in terms of even $1. With Steem at roughly 35 cents, you could just about get 3 SBI for every dollar spent. The longer you wait, the more you run the risk of prices rising and your purchasing power diminishing. That same dollar might only be able to buy you 1 or 2, if at all, depending on future prices. The more you are able to buy, the higher value your votes.
If you reinvest the money that you make every day back into more SBI, then your counts can be grown exponentially. You can see those results rather quickly in times like what we're experiencing right now. You have to also keep in mind that SBI upvotes carry a lifetime value and will ultimately return your initial investment over time. It may be a year, it may be two years, but beyond that break-even point, anything else you earn is pure income and consistent income thereafter. [Editor note: the premise here is accurate, but the actual time-table depends on external factors, along with internal sustainability multipliers.]
At this point, I see myself continuing to work my butt off on Steem forever. I have no plans on shutting down my operations at any point in the near future. I also plan to keep seeking growth opportunities and expansion wherever possible. In any venture myself and my team take on, SBI will always be our primary investment, because there's nothing out there, from my perspective, that can provide better returns over the long-term.
@wesphilbin: It is plain to see that you are both heavily engaged with your own endeavors… yet still very much involved with the @steembasicincome initiatives! Any last words before I let you get back to work?
@jonnyla08: In closing, I'd like to thank @wesphilbin for this opportunity; I feel truly honored and blessed to be a part of this great community. Steem Basic Income has already helped us so much, not just from the daily upvotes we get for our shares, but also because SBI has allowed us to be a listed member of their weekly contest posts and provides us a spot for our @steemexplorers initiative.
Steemexplorers has become the flagship of our brand, and the new discord that we recently rolled out has already proved to be an extremely useful tool for many users. We plan to continuously work on this and build it into one of the best and most interactive Steem databases out there. I'd urge everyone to come by the discord channel because you're sure to find useful information in there to help you grow and some very experienced and knowledgeable people hanging out here as well to network with.
Please feel free also to reach out to myself or any members of my team. We're always willing to lend a hand or provide insights where we can and we love interacting with new people and building new relationships.
Interview Conclusion
In closing; let me just say what a wonderful and inspiring person @jonnyla08 was to interact with. This interview was a “complete” collaboration of love and community standards! If you haven't yet visited the @steemexplorers page or Discord Group, I would highly advise you to do so! This initiative is one to watch! Thank you for your continued support in all things @steembasicincome; whether it's reading our interviews, participating in the many contests, or sponsoring other Steemians, you are appreciated!
~Wes
Enrollment
If you want to get involved, or to increase the level of basic income that you receive, enrollment is pretty straightforward:
Just send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of a Steemian to sponsor in the transaction memo (preceded by @). You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 unit in the program. You can sponsor any active Steemian (except for yourself), it does not have to be a current member.
The official currency for enrollment is STEEM. If we choose to accept SBD without refunding it, you do not receive extra value for it.
Enrollments are processed automatically every 144 minutes.
Questions?
Please read our FAQ. If you still have questions, ask in the comments section or join us in our discord channel.
You can look up your current membership levels by using the #bot-commands channel in our discord server, or on Steem by following the syntax used by the many members that are likely to check their status below in the comments section!
@steembasicincome's eleventh member interview!
@katysavage
@wesphilbin 
@eturnerx; we spoke of the importance of community and the interaction with Steem Basic Income. For my second interview, 
@ecoinstant and I talked about everything under the sun… from decentralization to stewardship. It has been some time since I have brought you another interview; life has a way of speeding up on us. Today I hope to dazzle you with my latest Steemian...
@jonnyla08 
@monstermadness