Ya, the hard sell never worked for us as smokers when we'd go into the doctor and s/he said, "this will kill you", right
I've given away gear I no longer used to relative strangers because they were interested enough to give it a try. A friend of mine did the same for me when I first got interested by giving me a couple old ego batts and CE4 toppers so it's all a matter of paying forward and really, that is what I feel epitomizes the vaping community and what's made it grow so quickly.
My other worry with new vapers is helping them establish relationships with good vendors. We have a local vape shop in the next town from me and I'll never recommend them to anyone since they told me some crappy MXOJ batteries were rated at 30amp continuous when I've learned from people like mooch (at that other site
) have educated me otherwise (Yay mooch!!!). The vape shop I go to and encourage others to use (locals anyway) is about 25 minutes drive from my place but the guy is straight up and educates in a manner that doesn't leave his customers feeling like noobs.
We have to understand that vaping has become a bit of a quagmire for new users and can be very confusing and very daunting particularly for long time smokers who find picking up a fag the easy way to get their fix.
Helping others side step all the current pitfalls of getting into vaping is the best way I know to increase our numbers.
Cheers