Here’s what some ICO promoters will do to make their promotion appear worthwhile, spend $28 every day on a marketing agency. If we work out how much time we spend on promotion and development, it can cost as much as $20k per project for ICOs.

I spent $28 every day on promotion for 20 weeks and after ICO got a no from me. Most of the time I did it because I liked their idea or potential use case or was looking to learn more about the blockchain world of NFT marketing. But there came a point when my wallet began to feel heavy and that little voice in the back of my head pleaded me “stop”.

1. ICOs are spammy

I’d receive 10 ICOs’ emails per day. It’s insane, it feels like you’re getting spammed. I got tired of it and had to do something about it. So I started using filters for all my mails, there are a couple of sites that help you with this,

2. ICO promotion is expensive

I made a loose calculation on the money spent on ICO promotion and project itself so far, and the number was staggering: more than $20k. And I’m still not done! We’ll have to wait another month before we can consider this campaign successful enough to “stop”.

We’ve had to work hard to make this project possible and not just a marketing agency or press release, we have been promoted by the blockchain influencers, we have delivered all the offers from major news outlets and produced a detailed video that was viewed 1.5K times. We have done this for nothing but love for crypto and blockchain and believe that you should participate in crypto projects that really need help, not purely for profit.

I’m going to be honest here, most of us are early adopters so we want to see adoption come into our lives as soon as possible. I feel like there’s this pressure from the newcomers in the blockchain space that we need to “get on board” or lose our status in the community. There’s not much we can do about it, but when they ask could we please just wait while they build the product faster. That makes me sad. Guest posting sites are here.

3. ICOs are a huge gamble

Many people are looking for that next big thing and want to get in on the next crypto revolution, but most of them don’t realize that ICOs are a huge gamble where you can lose a lot of money if a project fails/embezzlement happens. So I hope everyone is doing their own research before throwing money at it for the promise of making millions with one hit coin.

4. I’ve lost faith in this whole process

I used to love ICOs, they were like a dream come true for many of us crypto enthusiasts. It made the crypto world feel alive, every day we would be getting updates on how many tokens we acquired and how much money we made. After hanging around the ICO space for a long time, I realized that it’s all about money for some people and that taints the space for me.

5. The blockchain influencer trap

I forgot about one very important part of this story, there are those influencers who were sharing our project without understanding with seo backlinks what it was about or even verifying with their audience if they wanted to support our campaign or not. This made me realize that they will share any project if they are offered money and influence can be bought. They are the ones who are driving ICOs to success or failure.

6. It’s all about the marketing

I talked with a lot of people and realized that it’s all about the marketing in the ICO space, they will pay a huge amount of money to those influencers so their project gets traction. It’s sad because these people usually tell you to stay away from ICOs because of scams, but at the same time say that “if we get your project on board we’ll make sure it will be successful”. I believe that your project should be honest with you, it’s not because of the influencers but because it’s what the market wants.

7. We’re in a bubble

People are getting really excited about upcoming IEOs, they will make millions if they get in on these before they’re oversold. But I don’t think we’re in a bubble yet. I have been in crypto for a long time and feel like we’re still at the very beginning of this space and there will be more projects that get built and get adopted by the mainstream which will cause the market to grow exponentially.

Summary:

I don’t think ICOs should be abandoned, but at the same time they’ve become a major source of income for some people. They are here to stay as long as people are looking for alternative ways to support their ideas and projects. I hope I haven’t offended anybody with this article, it’s just my observations from being in crypto and Bitcoin space for a long time.

I am going to stop spending on ICO promotion, because I highly doubt that if we do it for $20k or even $100k we’ll get many new users or investors who will make use of our product anyway.