A Five part series on Steemit - Chapter 1: Voting/Curation

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

How do you Steemit? - 1: Voting/Curation

This is the first of a five part series in which I'll be talking about how I 'Steemit'. The topics will be as follows:

1. Voting/Curation (This post)
2. Steem Power Delegation
3. Posts
4. Interaction
5. Bid-bots

The goal is to be open about what I'm doing here and perhaps provide some hints to help other users. I'm also hoping there will be some feedback from you guys, containing tips, tricks, and advice to aid the Steemit journey - How do you Steemit?


main.jpg
Courtesy of pixabay.com



Voting/Curation

Voting is key to the platform. Without rewards for 'mind-mining', our community is unlikely to last and our best mind-miners are likely to jump ship to somewhere they feel more rewarded for their work.

Note: Anyone who isn't mind-mining and producing their own content feel free to jump ship right now!

So with 350,000 registered accounts and 35,000 active users each day, how the hell do you get around voting for the superbly mined stuff? Answer: You can't.
Some of the best stuff will always be missed, even with an 'auto-voting' bot and hours of manual curation. Don't worry about it, do what you can to surface the good work.


Auto-voting with SteemVoter and Streemian

The auto-voter tools are not loved by all, but I find them essential in aiding how I want to reward good content and authors. This is a list containing some (but not all!) of the reasons why you might find yourself on my 'auto-vote':
- You are present in a 'community' I am interested in - e.g. tags: steemitexpats steemitcouples sfpl
- You are the user that introduced me to Steemit
- You are a competition host
- You have me on your auto-vote (and I've noticed!)
- You are a consistently good writer/blogger
- You consistently comment on my blogs
- You are my Girlfriend
- You are a user who promotes Steemit, online and offline
- You are a supporter of Minnow support groups
- You have delegated me some Steem Power
- You are @abh12345
Now, I make 0 apologies for any of the reasons above. This is my vote, and I can choose to vote on what I want. I think it is a fair stab at spreading the love, even if it is not perfect.

steemvoter.png
Courtesy of steemvoter.com

I currently (11th Sept 2017) have 30 rules set on steemvoter.com out of possible 50, and so there is room for more lovely people...... Lets see :)


Manual Curation

Basically, manual curation takes a lot of time. However, and unlike voting via bots, this is your chance to expand your community and reward the new/existing but not noticed by you so far, authors who are mind-mining with uniqueness and skill.

I manually curate over a wide range of topics and in the past 2 weeks, I have voted for 415 different users (myself excluded)



Courtesy of steemreports.com

My manual curation usually happens in the introduceyourself tag, on blogs that stand out, and on user accounts that I expect a blog will receive further votes on. I will try to vote between the 20-30 minute mark to gain a curation reward but for some posts I will vote before the 15 minute mark to show clear interest to the author.
With 2-2.5k Steem Power, curation rewards are usually in the region 0.001/0.002 and so not really worth worrying about for me as yet.

A manual curation tip for a guaranteed reward

Have you ever thought about checking the Wallet of bid-bots like Booster? Viewing these wallets can tell you where a large vote is going to land in the next hour or two. If you are looking for an additional boost to your curation rewards, why not follow the money and vote the post before @booster does? Don't tell everyone about this eh? ;)


Self-Voting

Yes, I self-vote. 99% of the time this is restricted to my own blogs, which I average 1 per day. It will usually be a 100% vote, unless the slider wont move to 100% because i'm on my phone - I have to settle for 88% sometimes :) My current max vote is equivalent to 0.17$, I don't feel bad about rewarding 2 hours of my own mind-mining with this sum.


Voting on Comments

This is something I do a lot of and will discuss again in the forthcoming 'Interaction' post. I find voting comments or 'interactions' a good way of rewarding users that are communicating, on my posts and their own. Sometimes your vote can be lost in the 100+ votes that a user will receive on their blog, and so I like to show that I am supporting the user and their work by adding an additional vote to their comment.
Voting a comment doesn't need to be at 100%, just enough to make a mark is fine. It's difficult to quantify how rewarding this is but I suspect that I've gained a few followers by showing this small but additional support. I especially like to do this if i find a valuable 'older' post that cannot be rewarded as its past the payout date. If you ask a question and receive a reply, it's a nice gesture to up-vote this reply.


comment voting.PNG


Other points to note

- I don't give a shizzle about my voting power, as long as it stays above 40%


steemsupply.png
Courtesy of steem.supply

- I vote dozens of times a day with variable power ranging from 4% to 100% (500 SP is required for the 'slider' on steemit.com)
- add @originalworks in a comment in your blog for a +1
- follow @minnowpond for a +1


Summary

So this is part 1 of 'How do you Steemit' complete.
Next time: How do you Steemit? - 2: Steem Power Delegation

Please comment below if you have any questions, feedback, ideas to share. This is what the box is for :)

Thanks for reading today

Asher


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Excellent article about voting and rewards, learned many things about voting. Thank you, about to go to the next article now. Upvoted.

Excellent article and series.... I will resteem so I can come back and read them all. Upvoted

That's very kind of you and good to hear, thanks!

Lots of great tips and advice there... I needed this help

I'm sure i'll be editing it before the week is up. Hopefully based on ideas in the comments :)

Thanks for the insights !

I'm only just above 500 SP myself but will have a look to automate some of my votes with steemvoter and adopt a similar approach. What do you think of steemfollower.com ? I've seen a lot of referral links around but also negative reactions on that platform. Let me know if you have any referral links and I'll use them when signing up.

@originalworks

Hey dude, thanks for dropping by!

I'm registered on SteemFollower - https://steemfollower.com/?r=184 but i don't login that much. It's worth a few votes but that's about it imo.

I should add a short section on it above.

Thanks for your comments!

Very nice article, a lot of questions solved reading it. Thank you!!!

Thanks @esdival! I'm glad you found it useful 😁

@originalworks
Okay, done.

Just joking. I have no real problems with the auto-bots for casting votes, or with self-voting as long as that doesn't vote the s**t out of the system.

I think your approach is sound, automate part of the work but also take time to find content you appreciate. I have a feeling that most users that auto-vote stop at that and don't do anything more.

Which is a shame, both for the community as for themselves as well. But, nothing we can do about it, I guess.

haha, think that's the 4th @originalworks call in this post :D

Yeah, i'll have more to say about the (bid)-bots in the last (and most risky!) chapter. The bots that vote for who you say so with your account, on your behalf are different to me.

Agreed that users who only use vote-bots are missing out on new content, but with 500,000 SP - do they care? They make 100's a week on auto-curation!

This post is just too original ;-)

I agree with the whales, they don't care or have the time. I'm just concerned about the new-comers, they see that behavior and are prone to copy it.

Can't wait for your 5th post about this, I have some double feelings about auto-bots.

New-comers can only repeat the behavior if they buy in whale amounts of SP. You wont get far curating with 29 leased SP :)

They (we) need to repeat the process of our first whales by building a community that supports each other. Then one day, we can choose to sit back and watch the curated SP roll in. Until then, it's work time!

Thanks for article. Some times I get so involved in the writing and blogging aspect of steemit, that I tend to forget the other benefits of being here.

@originalworks

Well we need focused writers and bloggers, just as much as curators, and investors - many would say you guys are the most important people!

Thanks for stopping by :D

Thank you for this post. It is interesting to see how the more experienced members here organise themselves. With so many great posts about, it is a shame it is impossible to see everything!

I look forward to seeing posts 2 - 5 from you in this series.

Thanks @coffeehub - I hope you found something of use here :)

I'm working on part 2 right now.

Thanks for stopping by!

Asher

I certainly did. Thank you!

I used to be against auto voting but I definitely see it's use now when I have more and more people which I follow. If I know I'm gonna upvote someone when I see them i might as well automate it ! Could you please tell me how I do the autovoting ? Another question do you use the esteem app ? Third question how did you make that awesome Giff in the end of your post ?

Yep I can try!

Autovotes - Register at steemvoter.com

ESteem - sometimes - it's worth posting at least 1 comment on there a day for a good-karma autovote :)

Right click and save it. I asked the guy if I could use it, I think it's @gmuxx but I could be wrong.

Also, do you use the discord chat, and/or would you be interested in joining an expats group?

Cheers!

Thanks a lot for all the information ! How does discord work ? It's like chat groups ?

Yes it's a rather snazzy chat application.

This is the link to the expats chat: https://discord.gg/aFNVfz

#steemit-expats could be a tag to look out for in time :)

Haha snazzy, I might just have to check it out :)

Looking forward to the future installments. As a new user, part of each session is dedicated to learning about Steem and how best to operate here.

I am presently thinking much about self-voting, and the ethics of it all. I found your comment "My current max vote is equivalent to $0.17, I don't feel bad about rewarding 2 hours of my own mind-mining with this sum..." valuable as it adds perspective to the practice. If our "job" is to reward good content, can we not reward ourselves for a particular job well-done?

I also found value in another's approach. He said he chose his best comment each day and upvoted it. Just one. Yes, it's self-promotion, but it is measured and purposeful.

Thanks again for this post, @abh12345. Cheers!

Thanks for the comments @braveboat.

I think no harm in an upvote a day, the comment idea seems fair too. I'll occasionally 'promote' a comment with a vote, for visibility, and sometimes remove the vote later on.

Good luck!

Ash

Thanks @braveboat! The next installment is out :)

I think we should be able to reward our own efforts and not feel bad about it.

The rewarding of your own short comments and replies with your own account or via proxy is not cool though.

Cheers!

Okay, I'm going to read this whole series of yours.. I'm trying to really grasp what I can do in this platform and this is definitely a great start.. thank you for sharing! :)

Great stuff, thank you @gabjornacion!