I've been reading a lot of posts from new people asking why the payout of their posts keep creeping down and what can be done to increase the price of Steem. Reading some of the comments and responses inspired me to broach the conversation here and offer some ideas.

Now, let me be forward, I'm new to Steemit too. I could be totally wrong about this. I welcome correction and arguments in the comments. I'm writing this for the friends who are following me that want some real answers (in plain English.)

Inflation vs. Deflation

Foremostly, Steem is an inflationary currency. The more we use the blockchain, the more hashing goes on, the more coins are produced in greater numbers. Currently, just over 40,000 new Steem enter the reward pool every day. That means as long as the blockchain operates, Steem will inflate. That means its value in USD will go down— relatively speaking, since USD also inflates. But that's another topic. Lol.

This is different than Bitcoin because Bitcoin deflates. It does the opposite.

Liquid Steem vs. Steem Power

Steem Power is Steem that is locked away. It's locked away so that it can't be traded. Its function (in a way) obligates people to hold some Steem because you can't buy other currencies directly with Steem Power on exchanges. You have to convert it to Steem first.

Liquid Steem is available in wallets as Steem and in the reward pool. To turn Steem Power into liquid Steem, you have to power down (which gives you back your Steem in increments, not in one lump sum.) Because powering down takes so long, it becomes impossible to trade rapidly with the Steem locked up as Steem Power. It's inconvenient. And holding it has incentives.

Steem Dollars are a token on the Steem blockchain. More on tokens later.

Other Big Reasons Steem Prices Go Down

• Large account holders cashing out large amounts of Steem rapidly
• Bad news about Steemit, Steem, or any cryptocurrency
• Nobody is buying more of it on marketplaces, or it's selling very cheap

Note: As a large account cashes out, the value of ALL Steem is reduced, including the Steem being cashed out. So the first 1 Steem cashed out is worth $1, the second 1 Steem cashed out is worth .999 cents, the third 1 Steem cashed out is worth .998 cents and so on (not exactly those number, but just for example.) What offsets this is all the simultaneous actions that increase the value of Steem.

What We Need To Know

We have to reduce the reward pool or number of liquid Steem when the price of the currency is low.

We have to increase the reward pool or number of liquid Steem when the price of the currency is too high.

Actions To Take While The Currency Is Low

When Steem is low (like now) it is a good time to:

• Buy more Steem
• Open more accounts (each one is a wallet address)
• Power up
• Microtrade (within the marketplace)
• Use voting bots

A key problem is that new people think of crypto— Steem in this case, as a currency on top of the US Dollar. Steem is totally indipendent of the US Dollar. Even if Steem wasn't worth anything in the United States, it could become the primary state currency of a small nation and be worth a lot in real actual goods there. Those goods bought in that market, could sell for way more money here. So, it's all relative. Nothing has a true absolute global standard unchanging value.

Moving onto solutions!

Smart Media Tokens

Smart Media Tokens are tokens (similar to SBD) that live on the Steem Blockchain but have their own sub-blockchain. Imagine taking 1 Steem, chopping it into 10 pieces, and renaming it (and giving it a new picture.) That's pretty much it. The SMT project makes launching your own token easy. And it provides wallets and a basic economic infrastucture for the new token. As for the Steem used creating the token, I'm not sure if it's vested or burned- but it's no longer available as liquid Steem.

Because the Steem used to create SMT's is no longer available as liquid Steem, it slows the inflation rate. It could also increase the price of Steem— depending on how the token is used.

_{Screenshot belongs to Opentest Opensource Game}

Smart Media Tokens can be used in a lot of practical ways:

• Building tokens into popular Open Source games like Opencraft and Minetest. These are free Minecraft clones and extremely popular. I know if there was a SteemCraft in existence, I would start a Stream on Dlive that very day. Any takers? hint hint
• Guilds and clans can build tokens and incentivize team efforts.
• Communities (online AND in real life) can be economized, incentivized, or gamified.
• Time shares can be created.
• Musicians can raise money for their music. There can be a coin for their brand and fanbase to interact with. There can also be a coin for each music project— like an album. There can also be a coin for starting a music pool. The list goes on.
• Social groups can have a coin. A Sims gaming community on Discord for example.
  Or, a single mother's baby sitting club could use coins to pay each other.
  Or, an Autism based group can incentivize awareness efforts.
  Or, a Zine swap group could use coins to fund their community.
• An entire commercial feature movie could be funded, filmed, and aired on the blockchain.
• Of course, apps can use them. Texting, photography, and social media are all very popular.
• Coins can be used to economize small countries, towns, cities, colleges, businesses, unions, anything.
• Loyalty programs for your eCommerce business.
• Appstore games for children (or adults.)
• Cellular phone credits
• Online educational degree credits
• Vehicle, hotel room, and residential rental
• Sky miles!
• Credit card networks

Almost anything you want to gamify, incentivize, or economize can use a Smart Media Token.

So, we know Smart Media Tokens are coming, as well as, communities. However, I think most people are looking at them as things big developers are using for major apps like Appics. I haven't seen too many people looking at them like real functional tokens for anything imaginable.

Creating Platforms

A very innovative platform concept I recently saw was the Advertising Platform being developed by @zthomas. Current platforms already exist (@Daudio, @Dlive, @Dtube, etc.) but any free or premium platform already in existence could be cloned into to a paying platform. This brings more users into the economy.

Onboarding

Speaking of bringing in more users, the more accounts are opened, the better it is for the price of Steem. This is for various reasons including:

• More Steem gets locked into Steem Power
• The reward pool gets soaked up more
• Human effort and time (non-renewable resources) are exchanged for Steem

Onboarding..... INVESTORS

While onboarding (in general) helps the price of Steem, even more helpful is onboarding people who are NOT looking to make money or cash out regularly. *Presenting Steemit as a way to make money doing things we already do — like Social Networking — is one hell of a hook, but it's not only misleading but it's bad for the price of Steem.

Users who come online in droves, make $10 per day each, and cash out directly— they contribute to the instability of Steem. They (and Steemit) would be much better starting a SMT and using that for a local economy.

Because whales power down, and someone has to buy their Steem and hold on it, it's better for the Price of Steem to be realistic and honest when onboarding. In addition, if the user is a celebrity or a big name, the publicity could increase the demand for Steem.

Onboarding..... First World Countries

Steemit is growing at an amazing rate in second and third world countries as a means of providing income and building their communities. However, these communities represent larger populations of smaller, constantly fluctuating, accounts. It's better for the price of Steem (not neccessarily the culture of Steemit however) to attract new WHALES: single accounts with major investiments in Steem Power.

For that to happen, onboarding first world countries (or wealthy persons, within any country) improves the price of Steem. This may sound disheartening, but it's true.

Maximize Use of the Reward Pool

This is an upopular opinion but, upvoting yourself and using your voting power every day is actually GOOD for the price of Steem. There's a particular whale (that I won't name) that went around upvoting himself for large sums while powering down. A lot of people find this rude. However, when you think about it, as he was powering down the value of his Steem was going down. Upvoting himself offset the value lost by powering down. Smart huh?

Now I'm not saying go rape the reward pool like maniacs. But it's actually helpful if you upvote people and upvote yourself regularly, as well as tip, post, and do anything to use the available Steem (and hopefully lock it into Steem Power.)

Powering Up Fast but Slowly Powering Down

As mentioned above, buying Steem Power (instead of just waiting for it) reduces the amount of liquid Steem. Unless you go really hardcore with bid-bots, moving your SBD into Steem then Steem Power is better for the price of Steem. If you want to cash out someday, consider powering up and powering down in cycles so you always have some liquid Steem, but not more than you need just sitting around as liquid Steem.

BURN THE MONEY

_{via Giphy}

Say what?!

Yes. Burn the Steem. Burning Steem makes the price of Steem go up. But why would you want to burn the money you spent so much time earning? You don't want to, obviously. But you can get something for doing it.

THE PROMOTE BUTTON BURNS STEEM!

When you click the promote button on your posts in Steemit, and spend the Steem/SBD to promote your post, that Steem is sent to an account called null. That null account burns Steem. It's destroyed/locked— forever, and doesn't even come back to the reward pool.

In exchange, your post earns its place in the PROMOTED section of Steemit, in the order of the highest payer, for the life of the post.

Build Websites and eCommerce Stores

There's some really cool plugins and hacks for Wordpress, Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, and Shopify that let you accept Steem in your own domain. There's also a plugin for posting your blogs right to Steemit. You can also embed Steemit blogs into other blogs using an iFrame. The various ways for regular people to build their everyday website to interact with the Steem Blockchain are ennumerable. Some ideas are:

• Musician Websites
• Music Distribution Sites
• Artist Portfolios
• Event Listings
• Podcasting
• Magazines
• An Etsy-like Marketplace

These improve the price of Steem by making it more known, trusted, liked, useful, and tradeable.

Good Publicity

_{via Giphy}

It's said all publicity is good publicity but not so for cryptocurrencies. Bad publicity can cause a rapid sell-off. It's good for the price of Steem to promote GOOD experiences with Steem, Steemit, and related products and services. Brag, brag, brag, and praise! Anything you do like promote Steem in a good light on other platforms to other audiences will improve the price of Steem.

Steem is my bestie. Steem is everything. 🌟

10 More Things

1. Post 4x per day (if you can) so your followers have enough to vote on.
2. Flag plagarism and utter bullshit. Just do it.
3. Report abuse and drama.
4. Recommend Steem be added to more exchanges.
5. Shill Steem at festivals, rallys, community events, etc.
6. Upvote and give quality posts some love.
7. Submit high quality posts to curators.
8. Place your sell orders at 10 cents or more above market.
9. Look for great ideas and implement them if you have the skill, resources, or power.
10. Become a whale!

Share this information with those who need it.
Thank you!

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More posts by Omi your Homie. ♥

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_{Hi. I'm Omi. You can learn more about me here, here, and here. I verified my account here and my music here. I'm new to Steemit! I joined to support my friends and family in their adventures in crypto— and I'm learning along the way as well!}

_{I'm a Moderator at @steemers > Discord and a member of SteemPunks and Steemit Mastermind Group. Facetious but real. Follow me now before I become a Whale. ;o)}

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_{If any of the above links are past payout, my newer are posts here.}Chat with me: http://discord.gg/gcZkjH4+ Are you online every day? Do you use all of your Steem Power?
If you can spare to loan 1 SP while I build up my own,
it will keep this little Minnow swimming.❤
_{Delegations are 100% refundable.}

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HAVE YOU RESTEEMED THIS YET?