Steemit has a retention problem, there is no easy way to sugar coat this. I'm not going to fling numbers around as I have none, but it is a common thought that people come for the money and then see that the rewards are not matching the effort that they put into it, start posting less and then slowly drop out. Most are lucky to last more than a month I think.

Recently, I went through my list of accounts that I follow (I had over 450) and it was an interesting look at my stages of development here on Steemit. There was the whale/dolphin/orca following period (PS: they don't notice!), the follow everyone stage (lots of dead accounts there) and the follow people who wrote a good article (but then nothing of much interest after that). Now, I'm in a nice stage, I follow people that I have an interest in, who might genuinely come and visit my blog once in a while, people in communities on Discord or otherwise. However, the thing that struck me was how many accounts were inactive or had just reverted to formulaic posting.

The "Pay it Forward Curation contest" run by @pifc and @thedarkhorse was something that I was lucky enough to find in the first week of their running the contest. It has been a great chance for me to find and promote new bloggers, and has been a permanent fixture in my weekly blogging routine.

Generally, I wasn't looking for anything that was mind-blowingly exceptional that would be hitting curies with every post, but I was looking for people just doing honest posting about things they enjoyed or loved. I think that these are the people that we want to stick around to help Steemit grow!

Anyway, @thedarkhorse suggested that I do a retrospective to see how all the featured posters had held up over time. Maybe they were still around and still posting, maybe they had turned inactive, maybe they were shot down to negative REP, maybe they turned into whales overnight?

Anyway, it was an interesting idea that I have just had the time to do, and so I present my first 15 weeks (wow, nearly 4 months) of curation with the @pifc, the link is the chapter heading for each week. Although the Steemit retention rate is low, I'm hoping that the posters that I featured have a higher survival rate than blind chance... at the very least, I'm definitely hoping that the people featured last week in week 15 (we are currently in week 16) are still around!

NOTE: for the active bloggers, I will post a link (that might be past payout) that I think best represents their current work/posting on Steemit. If it is past payout, consider upvoting a different post, or making a comment and then upvoting the reply.

WEEK 1

LOL! Does anyone remember the old banner??? I actually was quite fond of it, but it was a little on the dowdy side of things!

I had to Google for this, I just wasn't going to scroll down through 16 weeks of daily postings to try and get this! I started to notice that I had used the same format for each week, Which made it easy to find the other posts, just by replacing the week number in the URL!

So, this was a pretty rough introduction to the curation game. I was accused of being a bot (which was later apologised for) which was a bit of a shock to the system and it was my first unpleasant encounter on Steemit (I'm sure I could get more unpleasant experiences if I went looking for trouble in the right tags). However, the first thing that I noticed when I opened this post was ARRRRRRGH, my eyes! My posts look better now, but then, let's say I was still learning, and they were much better than the previous month....

Well, this is a sad beginning to the post. The last post/comment from @revelationart was sometime last month, so I assume the account is suspended/inactive, Steemworld also shows no automated voting or anything like that, so I guess it is completely inactive. It appeared that @revelationart was posting from existing artworks that they had done, and so I guess it wasn't really worthwhile to continue doing that (I've noticed that the same thing is true for our orchestral account @musicapoetica) and it is difficult to continue creating professional quality work at the pace that Steemit requires.

@t-miles was my other featured blogger in this week, and he has also been inactive for 3 month. This is a real pity, I had hoped he would continue writing great gaming write-ups. He definitely had a great way of doing it, but it just wasn't recognised by the larger Steemit community. Likewise, Steemworld shows no signs of automated activity either.

This might be an ongoing problem as I look further through my posts, the Steemit experience is one of connections and networking. Unfortunately, it does appear that the large part of the rewards do go towards people that can do that successfully, and whilst not wanting to disparage the attempts at large scale curation, in the most (especially in the artistic fields) the curation and power seems to be mostly in the hands of well-intentioned and interested non-professionals.

ACTIVE: 0
INACTIVE: 2
UNSURE: 0

WEEK 2

Oh, I was happy when I looked at this contest entry! I recognised the names, and I still see them around!

@trincowski is still around and also helping out at the @pifc! Although, when I discovered him, he was having problems with being flagged, and recently, it appears to have begun again. I'm not sure of the cause, but it has made him take a temporary Steemit time-out. It does lead me to think about proportionate force, I don't know the details of what he did to attract attention, but at what point is it necessary to destroy completely someone else's rewards? The difference in SP power leads me to think that @trincowski could not have caused much damage at all, other than a disagreement of words and ideas. This is one part of Steemit that I'm not sure works as well as it could....

@crypto-econom1st is still going strong! Keeping his posts to a manageable level of writing and reading seems to be his trick and probably a good lesson to learn (not every day needs to be a 4000 word essay)! I do see him commenting a fair bit on lots of posts, so I think he has found his rhythm in the Steemit ecosystem! We need people that get around commenting as well as posters!

@curatorcat is still a cat and doing what cats do! Support the Steemit ecosystem so that there will always be a place for cat photos on the internet and the blockchain. Through some of her (?) most recent posts, I found at that Steemworld needs help! If you use Steemworld (and I think pretty much all of us do), then consider adding @steemchiller to your autovote list.

ACTIVE: 2
INACTIVE: 2
UNSURE: 1

WEEK 3

@giobardzero and @laviq were two musicians that I had found via my curation of the #classical-music tag with the @classical-radio support account. Both were great supporters of the tag and wrote great posts. Unfortunately, it appears that Steemit has failed to retain these two quality posters, and they have dropped out of view in the last month or so. @laviq still has a delegation to @classical-radio and some outgoing automated votes, so it is possible he might make a return. On the other hand @giaobardzero never cleared his initial 15 SP delegation from @steem.

Likewise @chickenburger stopped posting around 3 months ago, with no automation leading to the conclusion that it is now a dead account.

This was not a great outcome for these featured posters from this entry!

WEEK 4

@tin-tin was another person that was around at the time of the starting the @classical-radio account and the #classical-music Discord. She wrote great articles on music and writing in general, and although her presence has dropped a bit, she is still around and writing! She has won a couple (or more) of the bigger @curie votes, and so it is a really good thing that she continues to write!

Although @mardax hasn't posted a blog post recently, he is still active on Steemit with resteems from the @opgaming community. It appears that he has switched over to more livestreaming rather than long form reading posts

@barski is still going strong, posting a couple of times a day, mostly photography with a decent amount of writing to accompany it! Less of the family music videos which is how I found them, but the photography is still quite beautiful and the writing is good quality!

ACTIVE: 4
INACTIVE: 2
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 5

A new banner for the @pifc! Although it might have appeared earlier, I think I was one of the last people to switch over to the new banner! This was a nice upgrade from the old one!

Well, it looks like around this week I learnt how to centre images and also to justify my text! The posts are starting to look a bit better! Some new banners are starting to appear at the bottom and but I'm still spuiking referral links....

@papacrusher is still going strong, but that wasn't really a surprise as his account is older than mine, and so if he was going to quit, he would have quit before I every featured him! There is original creative writing in addition to the regular life blogging and it also looks like he has jumped onto the SteempPress bandwagon (like me!). Score one for the actives!

@sue-stevenson is also still posting, some creative writing, poetry and some life blogging as far as I can see at a rate of a couple of times a week! Great to see another #teamaustralia member sticking it out through the bear market, just goes to show if you write about what you like, then it is easier to keep writing!

@agmoore is going solidly, putting out incredible long form posts like Florence Nightingale: The Case for Brucellosis and Psychiatry: Moving From Ice Pick Lobotomies and Chains Into a Brighter Future. I think anyone would be proud to put one of these posts together once a month, @agmoore manages to do it multiple times in a week!

This curation week proved to be a great one!

ACTIVE: 7
INACTIVE: 2
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 6

Well, the first blogger that I featured I know already is inactive. @lifeinblue hasn't posted for two months, and I noticed as I was no longer seeing any posts in the #classical-music tag from her. It's a pity as she was putting together some really good posts, both music and written. Steemworld shows no automation, and so I will have to rack this one up as inactive.

@viking-ventures, I definitely know that she is still active and being a valuable part of the Steemit ecosystem! She is a regular on the @pifc contests as well as showing up occasionally on my blog as a commenter! She has moved over to esteem for the support that it provides to bloggers and has begun a new novel in her A'mara literary universe! Great that you are sticking to Steemit and keeping up some strong posting (as well as doing the part of commenting and curating!). See you soon at REP 60!

Unfortunately, the last blogger @mamajeani is now inactive. The last post was a month ago, and again Steemworld shows no sign of automation.

ACTIVE: 8
INACTIVE: 4
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 7

Apparently in this week, I forgot again about how to centre headings but at least I did manage to keep the text justification!

Both Venezuelan guitarists that I featured in this week (@talmid and @mayneth) are still posting and active. @talmid has recently returned after a month or so hiatus, but sadly he has forgotten the #classical-music tag, I might have to pay a visit from @classical-radio to remind him! Chasing the larger tags for huge upvotes is understandable, but sometimes posting in a smaller tag will actually get you noticed and forwarded on for a @c-squared or a @curie vote. Meanwhile, @mayneth is a superstar and he has brought on board a number of students and fellow musicians whilst posting continually great content!

@wildflowerjessi is still posting, but with a little less regularity (well, okay, probably a healthy regularity unlike some other Steemit diehards...). She has recently had a short film released at the Hobart Film Festival!

ACTIVE: 11
INACTIVE: 4
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 8

Woohoo! I finally dumped the stupid referral links! They weren't getting much traffic and they looked tacky... the rough template for my general posting on Steemit was also starting to take shape as well!

@melbourneswest is still posting strongly with mostly life blogging, drone photography and an apparent lack of ability to rotate photos! Come on, you take pictures from a drone and you can't rotate the phone photos! Even I can do that!

@lightoj is also still going strong from a blogging perspective, but I am a little worried about the personal side of things. There is a good chunk of motivational posts, but the last artistic post was a while back. I hope they return to that! Also another blogger to take advantage of the esteem platform for extra support!

@silentscreamer, all-round Steemit superstar and violinist/musician. She produces amazing work with her violin and voice in addition to great collaborations and occasional Steemit analysis. She is the very model of a modern major... Steemian!

ACTIVE: 14
INACTIVE: 4
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 9

Okay, weirdly enough, I moved the location of "entry" on the Title, leading to a different batch of URL's... poop!

@davidcentenor is another Venezuelan musician (guitarist) that is still posting strong on his music, but has left the #classical-music tag to seek the attention of larger accounts. Unforunately, as the @classical-radio account is a human-curated account, I only have time to look in the #classical-music tag, so I can't chase everyone around Steemit. I know I could just check the feed, but it is really too time consuming as it is!

@lifeobserver is also still posting strongly, sending in pithy and amusing anecdotes about life!. Also another one who appears to be using the esteem platform!

@plushzilla (aka @fibrefox) is still active (of course!) both behind the scenes and in front! Sorry about knocking you out of the @ifc finals round... blame @apolymask for setting us up in a kill or be killed round!

ACTIVE: 17
INACTIVE: 4
UNSURE: 2

WEEK 10

Sadly, we begin this week with an inactive. @jeltron hasn't posted in a month, and again Steemworld shows no signs of automation. Sadly, this is going to be notched up as an INACTIVE.

The second poster on the list is @fictionspawn, who hasn't posted in nearly 2 weeks, and so I'm not entirely sure if they are active or not. There is still signs of life on Steemworld, so I think it might be a temporary absence (hopefully!).

@teamaustralia... yes Australia is still exists... and still supporting the Australians (and the @teamnz colony) on Steemit.

ACTIVE: 18
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 3

WEEK 11

@teukuhanis is still doing amazing sketches and paintings, not to complain too much, but I think Steemit is much better suited to the visual arts rather than the musical ones! He is posting very strongly, at least once or twice per day! Great work!

@mariajruizb is also still posting great music from her account in collaboration with other Venezuelan Steemit musicians! There is some great music going on, but as I'd mentioned before... blah blah blah, @classical-radio support #classical-music tag... human curation.... lack of time.... Sigh...

@dreemsteem is still a huge positive addition for Steemit, writing incredibly inciteful posts like this... Sorry, I meant this. Along with her @welcomewagon, she is nuturing some amazing Steemians to build into her crazy horrible joke telling minion army! Join them now, or be crushed under their infinite cheeriness!

ACTIVE: 21
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 3

WEEK 12

@andrewjhonmex is still posting some nice artwork in his characteristic style but at a much reduced rate of roughly once a week. I think I would be racking this one up as an UNSURE, it isn't totally clear if they are going to soldier on or move out.

Also posting artwork in their own distinctive style is @lildebbiecakes, getting a quite a number of posts out each week in drawing and artwork categories. Great job!

@jackmiller is also active, although I would be terribly embarrassed if my Witness feature turned out to be inactive... He is still doing great work on and off the Steem chain, recently shipping out some prizes for a recent karaoke fundraiser.

ACTIVE: 23
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 4

WEEK 13

This was the week I tried testing out Esteem, which also made a hash of my URL's so no easy finding of past entries. Off to Google it was! Also, it was the first week of the current @pifc banner, which in this first week I thought was crazy busy and confusing... but I'm come to like it!

The posting from @jdoesstuff has dropped off significantly, although not enough to warrant an inactive status. The last post was still within the last week and I really enjoy the cartoony and bright style!

@tomista is also a bit of an in-between account at the moment. After posting a great @curie hit, he has gone a bit quieter... but the last post is still within the last week or so. So, another UNSURE!

@scrawly is posting strong, with sketches and poetry. No problems here, sticking with their interests and engaging strongly with others!

@rodrigo98 is still going strong with his music posting and I'm always so impressed with his videos! If I was able, I would bring him to Europe to perform... anyway, a couple of posts of really high quality new performances a week is pretty good for musician!

ACTIVE: 25
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 6

WEEK 14

How do you like my new upgoats (courtesy of @ryivhnn)! Also, from here I switched to using SteemPress to take advantage of a unused domain and the ability to cache my own posts. This way, hopefully if there is plagiarism, @cheetah will know where to look! The bonus support doesn't hurt either!

@veryspider is definitely active, both as a poster and a curator (at @c-squared). You have got to check out this amazing post here. There is a story, there is artwork and there is the behind the scenes creation videos and step-by-steps! Phenomenal!

@lordnigel is definitely active as well, IBT is in full swing at the moment, and the improvements that were made to the bot over the month of downtime are great! Automated everything, almost... and barely any bugs! This is still one of my favourite things to do on Steemit, although the comment sections can bog down my phone browser at times...

@scrawly... yes, still active... I was stupid and featured them twice in a row....

ACTIVE: 27
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 6

WEEK 15

Okay, both @eveningart and @andreasalas are still active, I hope they would be after one week.... @andreasalas has some tattoo artwork whilst @eveningart has a great deal of ulogs, promising to write a novel and an application for a mysterious Alliance?

ACTIVE: 29
INACTIVE: 5
UNSURE: 6

Round up

Phew! That took longer than expected... but I had better results that I had expected! Of the 40 featured bloggers, there are 29 that are still active and posting strongly, with 5 inactive and 6 on the borderline! That's great news, and shows that posting about things you enjoy and engaging with the community really does keep the retention rate high(er)! Don't watch the rewards column, it is hard not to, but the real rewards is in finding people that you enjoy reading about and chatting with!

I'm done! Off to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided... streaming to a local dlive station from @msearles!