Steemit Strategy - Your "Quality" Content Isn't Valuable
Some Insights Why Your "Quality" Content Ins't Making You Money
I never browse the Trending Page, but the other night I was about 6 liters of beer in and had some time before bed and took a look at the posts that were Trending. I quickly realized that many of the authors of these posts weren't any more talented from a literary standpoint than some of the posts that I curate in the #Payitforward contest or various other "Minnow Help" communities that hang around in.
The biggest difference was that these posts had a target audience that believed that there was a perceived value in reading these posts. I'm going to use a post I read by Jerry Banfield. I want to point out that I have highest level of respect for Jerry and I think he does an admirable job advocating and promoting Steem as a platform. That being said, his post was just "preaching to the choir" or "free ice politics" if you will. His post was titled something like "Why I Think Steem Will Surpass Bitcoin" or some shit like that.
Yes, I said shit because it is not only unlikely to happen, there is very little reason to believe it will happen despite his 1500 word dissertation. The key thing about the post is that it was making a ton of money. Not just vote bot money, but REAL upvote money. Good for him. He has found a topic that everybody wants to discuss and, to be honest, he is telling everyone what they want to hear. People are eating it up like candy. It's like a Haejin post talking about Dope Coin going to the Moon or some ridiculous shit. Every Bong pilot on Steemit wants to believe it so they upvote the post. Literally the posts have absolutely NO VALUE to me personally, but others don't see it this way.
So, why do they get such great upvotes? There are several reasons, but the most important is that they have branded themselves as someone whose opinion/advice is valuable to a huge number of people. The second most important thing is that they have presented their posts as having something valuable for their audience.
The Raw, Hard Truth that You Don't Want to Hear
Most people don't give a damn about your posts! - I can hear it now. "Your so mean and insensitive." - "You don't care about the little guy." Well, if you believe that, then you haven't been following my posts or your stupid and I wish you wouldn't follow my posts. I DO care which is why I'm trying to help you understand that your photo of your sister's dog with it's new haircut has ZERO value to anyone except you and few other people on this Earth. Yes, it's cute, but I'm not giving up my valuable upvote for your picture of a dog.
Let me give you the real reasons that most people are here on Steemit. I say "most" because there are many people that are just messing around with the platform for fun and others that truly believe that they are saving the world from poverty, global warming, big pharma, or whatever the cause du jour is today.
Here is a basic lesson about human nature gifted to us from a pretty smart guy named Maslow. As you can read from the pyramid graphic I borrowed from some guy on the internet who wouldn't claim it or source it (source - https://medium.com/@CLHedgeFund/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-99b0946e7788), people take care of the basic needs in life first.
Most Steemians didn't come to the platform to spend their upvotes or investment (most people have invested so little it's comedy to call it "investment") on your pictures of flowers, story of Grandma's knee surgery, or European Beer Tour (in my case). They come to Steemit because some idiot told them they could make money upvoting crap and posting even worse crap. The truth is that they won't make money no matter how many dummy accounts they create.
You're SO NEGATIVE! - Not so fast. I love the platform and I love the posts about your Grandma's knee surgery if it is entertaining or interesting to me, but I'm not a whale and I don't have a Curie trail following me. If you want to make decent returns on your posts, then you need to find an audience for your posts or you NEED to change your posts to suit the audience that exists.
It really is that simple. It isn't that the platform is "flawed" or "the have's always outperform the have not's" or any of that whiny defeatist leftist crap. If you want to make money on Steemit, then you have to find an audience that truly values your posts and that potential audience isn't as big as you would like to think it is.
Your FB and Instagram food posts won't make you a freaking dime in Steemit regularly. You're going to have to be creative and work (like I did on this post that I'm 2 hours into after actually thinking about it all day before I started writing). Yes. It's work. Maybe not building houses kind of work, but it takes time.
I actually spent way too much time discussing an issue with an "artist" that thought people should be finding her on Steemit and upvoting her art because she worked so hard on it. Excuse me? Why the fuck am I supposed to find YOU to PAY you with my upvotes to LOOK at your art? What am I getting? Some people have lost their fucking minds on this site. If you want to get paid, you have to provide VALUE to the people you want upvotes from.
Strategy Basics Recap
I'm finished with my overall rant. Some questions that you need to think hard about and answer.
- What value can you provide to people so that they will upvote your posts? If you don't know, you need to figure it out and fast if you TRULY want to make money on the platform. Remember, some people convinced us to buy "pet rocks" once. Value is often just a perception.
- Why are you an expert on the value that you're providing? Why should I trust you? How will you convince me that you're an expert and I can trust you? Don't just tell me you were in the "investment banking business for 20 years". I've heard that about 18 quadrillion times. Usually they sold insurance.
- Do I have a special niche or sphere that I know a lot about and enjoy discussing? Yes, this is an option to make some income. For instance, the Homesteader community on Steemit is fantastic and super supportive of each other. Are they making Haejin dough? NO, but many of them are getting good returns on their posts for talking about something they love and enjoy. Value doesn't have to involve money on Steemit, which takes us to #4.
- Can you make money outside of Steemit based on your activities IN Steemit? This is the best question to be asking yourself because there is NOT a lot of money to be made on Steemit. Sorry, hate to burst your bubble, but none of you are retiring next year because of your Steemit accounts. I say that with 100% certainty. Here's an example - I feature BBQ videos on my blog. I have a catering company. I send my Steemit posts to my friends and clients. They see a bunch of upvotes (many of which I pay for) and think, "Wow, people really like Jerry's food." Sale done. They don't know that you only upvoted me hoping that I would do the same for you. They just see $25 or $100 dollars that I got paid to talk about BBQ. Then they write me a check for $500 to deliver lunch. Leverage your Steemit success in the "Real" world.
- Are you buying upvotes or participating in communities that trade votes? No, why not? Oh, Jerry that is not "real" votes. BS. Nobody likes a loser. If your post has .17 on it, even people who like it are afraid to waste their upvote on it unless their upvote is .001. You need to show some interest and success for people to give you credibility. More on this in a future post.
- Are you upvoting your own posts at 100%? No. Stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's like someone saying that they don't put money in retirement because that is their employer and the government's job. It's your #@%^^& money! If you don't believe in your own post, then why should anyone else? Also, you're killing yourself on curation rewards (yes, another future post). People ask me about this all the time. Yes, I spend 60+% of my voting power upvoting myself. "You're so greedy Jerry!" Screw you. I pay for my SP unlike most Steemians and still give away nearly 40% of it. I grow my account so that I can continue to help others. If you are truly some altruistic monk, then you should do the same. If you're a poor schmuck, you can't help anyone. See the Maslow's pyramid again for slow learners.
Things to Do For Those That Must Be Guided
Here are some basic things you should do if you didn't figure it out from my questions above.
Figure out what your true goal is on Steemit. Write it down. Be clear and precise. If you wrote, "I wanna be a whale." Go back to instagram and leave me alone. Precise is, "I want to build my account to 2000 SP." This is clear and achievable (and easy if you have 8K USD that you want to invest).
What can I post on Steemit that MOST Steemians want to read about? "Ooooh Jerry, I want to talk about Crypto. Sia Coin is going to MOON." Really? You're going to have to do better than that to gain an audience here. You need to have some special insight, information or general understanding that separates you from the pack. I write about history, travel, some Steemit tutorials and BBQ. Why? Because I'm an expert on them and SOME people like to read about them. I'm not trying to be on the Trending Page because my stuff isn't that interesting. It's okay to be honest.
Post about your chosen specialty everyday or 4 to 5 times a week? If you can't, then you're not likely an expert on the topic. Add a few posts on other things you like. That's okay. I have a broad-based page and so do many of my friends. Honestly, I spend more time curating #payitforward posts than I do writing my own and I have more fun doing it. lol
Find people that like the same things you do. Find people with SP that like the same things you do. Discuss these things and make friends.
Quit worrying about how much money everyone else in the world (including Steemit) is making. Focus on what YOU are making. You can't control their income, but you can impact your own income. I should have put this point at the top of the post, but if you haven't read this far I don't care about your success anyway.
Invest in your "Quality" articles. If you believe in the product, then advertise it. You will never know how many morons gave me crap because I spent 80 SBD to promote the payitforward contest. These idiots think they are "purists". I made my money back and promoted a great program BECAUSE I believe in it. I can only imagine Apple saying, "We don't need to promote our product because it is QUALITY." Yeah, good luck with that.
Last thing. Be the BEST! Yes, the best. Know your stuff. When you establish yourself as an expert and authority on a subject, people will listen to you. They will share your advice, upvote you and bring people to your page. People like a winner. Show them that you're a winner in one way or another and they will flock to you. If you don't believe me, look around and ask yourself why some of your Steemit "friends" are so popular. Usually, it is because of respect for their knowledge, expertise, willingness to share (VALUE) these things with others, etc.
Okay. It's Friday night and I want a beer. Sorry Steemit, but I'm taking a 12 hour break. All the best to you.
Like this article? Please resteem, upvote and comment.
Don't like it? Comment and tell me why. Let's discuss it.
All intelligent comments get an upvote for effort (even if I disagree).
Send me a copy of one of your posts and I will try to read it quickly.
All images are mine or downloaded from pixabay.com.
Posted using: busy
https://busy.org/i/@energyaddict22
Follow me on:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jr.byers.58
VK - https://vk.com/id185155240
Discord - EnergyAddict#9726
Special thanks for support from @qurator @dynamicsteemians @newbieresteem @resteemit @asapers
You got a 16.67% Upvote and Resteem from @ebargains, as well as upvotes from our curation trail followers!
If you are looking to earn a passive no hassle return on your Steem Power, delegate your SP to @ebargains by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links:
50SP | 100SP | 250SP | 500SP | 1000SP | 5000SP | Custom Amount
You will earn 80% of the voting service's earnings based on your delegated SP's prorated share of the service's SP pool daily! That is up to 38.5% APR! You can also undelegate at anytime.
We are also a very profitable curation trail leader on https://steemauto.com/. Follow @ebargains today and earn more on curation rewards!
Hahaha, some of your rant looked like my ranting. A few observations I have on the ideas you mention.
I would suggest anyone who has a skill that can be marketed elsewhere NOT give it away here. Because you will be giving it away. I came here due to videos the witness you mention at the top had made pretending making money here is easy. What he was not so clear about (nor many of the other people making videos on YouTube) was most of that money was their money to begin with. They handed it to a bot and got most of it back.
Based on my perception due to some very misleading videos, I figured if mediocre posts could make hundreds, so could I. I have self published for years, getting my start in how to books. I published some how to material that could have made me thousands on Kindle/Nook etc and it was met with crickets. I can not publish this material now as the online stores really frown on you charging their customers for what you are giving away for free elsewhere.
I will be honest, I was considering leaving. It seems like most of the money is just a circlefest handing it to whales, only to get some of it back for so called visibility. But unless you are spending hundreds per post, there will be little to no visibility.
I decided to stick it out though as I have found many authors (like yourself) who teach me things I do not know, and i am a sucker for learning. And while I doubt I will get rich here, I do make some money by interacting with interesting people like yourself, something I would do elsewhere for free.
I am still feeling my way here as to what I can post. I am not given to idle chat in real life, nor am I here. So my posting has went way down, and only through encouragement by you and a few others have I recently posted a couple times.
I wish more videos with this realistic view you give existed on YouTube. The lying ones I mentioned are probably the cause of the low retention rate as perceptions were built that were not realistic.
Yes, many people arrive at Steemit with serious misconceptions. This is the problem with the free money we call "upvotes". They have no respect for it, but they do have great ideas about how others should spend their "free money" much of which isn't actually free (many of us have invested in Steem and the Steemit platform).
You bring up a great point as to why you stay and I'm glad you do because your comments are some of the most thoughtful I read everyday. This part of the platform is good for me because the conversations are more engaging than other social media (and I make a little bit of money).
The promoters of Steemit often do a disservice to the community with bogus posts about rich rewards, but there is money to be made, or at least an increase in value since much of our rewards are tied to SP. However, none of us are going to become rich bloggers here or probably anywhere. The tough part is learning how to use the platform to enhance our lives here and offline. I'm struggling with this as well, btw and still feeling my way on many issues like vote bots, resteems, the whole trending page thing, etc. So, I try to learn and share.
I hope you continue to stick around and, of course, I truly appreciate your comments and support.
Seems to me that it could be a general Human Truism that everything revolves around the lowest common Denominator. There's a good reason why Sports Illustrated has 10x more subscribers than a "quality content" magazine like Atlantic Monthly.
It's a pretty good rant, and pretty on the money. Maybe it's a misnomer altogether to even call Steemit a "social content site." Maybe it's just a "money making circle jerk." Which is OK — but let's have some truth in advertising.
Oh wait, nobody wants "truth."
Truth is that most humans behave like jackholes as soon as there's money involved. And in bizarre ways... like they start to behave badly over five cents, which would make zero material difference in their lives.
Biggest and most relevant truth in this rant: #7 — pick something and be the best at it. I say that because it's also misinformation to think that you need "thousands of followers" to do well. No you don't. You just need a couple of hundred who think you're all that and a bag of chips in your niche.
=^..^=
First, let me say that YOU are all that and a bag of chips. Thanks for reading and commenting.
This phrase has been getting more and more use lately and much of it is true, but that is also the case in business, friendships, etc. My friend has a nice jazz restaurant. There are many of these places in St. Petersburg, but if we go out to listen to jazz we go to her restaurant. Why, because we support our friend and not necessarily because her's is the best place. If I need a carpenter, I hire my friend, Victor, because he always needs the work and I trust him. The key to the "circle jerk" is expanding your circle to the point where your accumulated value to the circle exceeds the value that you expend on the circle. Steemit is no different in this sense, but the "game" of it can appear very stacked against the average Steemian because we look at $ in other people's accounts instead of growth of our own.
You point about SI is so spot on. Love it. Also, spot on is the behaving badly over .05 STU. It drives me crazy when people ignore real value. (had someone irritated with me because I upvoted them less than someone else - .02 difference) I think I wrote this post about 30 minutes after that happened. lol
Thanks again for the thoughtful response. I hope to see more of you.
Well, I totally agree that we help our friends; and presumably we have something in common with our friends or they wouldn't be our friends. I'm likely to upvote my friends on Steemit, and have hopes they might return the favor. In a sense, that's the core of the being social part.
Part of the circle-jerkiness here — as best I can interpret it — is that a bunch of the participants don't actually care about each other's stuff, they are just trading favors. My guess is that you would probably NOT hire your friend Victor if you needed fine cabinetmaking, and he was a shit framing carpenter. At some point reality has to kick in.
The biggest challenge we seem to face around here is — to paraphrase you a bit — that we "we look at $ in other people's accounts instead of growth of our own" to which I say YES, and people get wrapped up in short term gains rather than long term growth. Which is a variation on people choosing two "full buckets" TODAY, rather than the value of a steady flow into their bucket for the rest of their life.
Maybe those $200 worth of paid upvotes from bots look really good right now, but if the consequence is that in a year from now Steemit has a global reputation as a "spammy joke" and the Steem token ends up at $0.05... just how clever is that, really?
=^..^=
I would say there is less risk of Steemit becoming a spammy joke due to the people paying for upvotes than those that are posting someone else's pictures 10 times a day, creating 10 dummy accounts and then upvoting each other. While the posts on the trending page aren't always "quality", most of them aren't spammy. The community does a fairly good job of maintaining some standards as opposed to other social media.
Struggling on this one:
Writing a post for a stranger is quite different from applying expertise in person. It takes time that I currently delegate to things with a better or more immediate return, like my job and family. Obviously I need to decide whether I'm fine with the results I'm getting or whether I want to change how I delegate my time. But not keeping up that frequency is definitely not a function of expertise in my field.
Oddly, I've been hesitant to even write on the topic I had planned to focus on. It's like I don't want to commit myself to something that I will be driven to write about daily.
Good piece, and thanks for this:
That's the direction I'd really like to go.
You are pure gold @wholeself-in! Thanks so much for your comment. Of course, you can't spend so much time on Steemit and either can most people because we have lives that generate more overall utility in returns than spending hours on Steemit. There is no way I would have considered blogging daily when I was a parent. Not because I didn't have good things to post, but because the overall utility was less valuable than being around my children and raising them. Lucky for me, mine are all grown.
Unfortunately, many people think they can make a ton of money here by investing 30 minutes a day on something that isn't very interesting and that some benevolent whale is going to come by and give them 100 STU for their picture of a sunset. If they were full-time Steemians, it would still be difficult without investing in the platform.
Side note - I truly believe in investing in the platform because it has more utility than most cryptocurrency.
Last note and you hit it on the head. Can you use Steemit to show your expertise to potential customers outside of Steemit? That is the real ticket here. If you figure that out, you are golden. Of course, I would love to help in any way possible and look forward to hearing more from you.
All the best.
Brilliant post! I love your rants! Thanks so much for writing it. I've looked at Maslow's hierarchy before but never from the point of view that I am at the thin end of the stick when it comes to audiences. I guess that's because for me self-actualisation and self-transcendence in particular are survival ...and I'm just learning to let go of the idea that 'it must be good for everyone.'
I was also watching Jerry's post and thinking - how do people do posts like that...? In my small niche, I guess I've been hoping that the steemit pool is big enough for me to find like minds... or at least some minds that like what I write.... unlike the small town in Australia I grew up in.
Fortunately the one really great thing I have found about writing on steemit, is that writing posts evolves me... The process of posting on a semi-regular basis is bringing me personal clarity, insights and better ides. So that's worth 10cents a post in itself!
Thanks again for your experienced insights, I look forward to reading your post again, especially after I've had a few beers, as I think it over further.
warm regards, Margot
Margot, I haven't read all the comments yet, but you have made my day! (maybe yours is comment of the day).
I agree so much with you about writing here. Some of my posts are me trying to build my account and brand, but much of it is me sharing my thoughts and developing them in the process. I would like to think I'm growing as an individual because of my writing (this post may not be a good example of personal growth, Iol)
I certainly think there are like-minded people on Steemit for all of us especially if we grow the platform, but some of these audiences will pay better than others.
I highlighted the homesteaders community in this post because I love these people and their stories. They give great DIY help that we use at our country house here in Russia, but another person that is great is my "friend" @yankee-statman. He gives good market analysis several days a week, but also talks about baseball, which I absolutely love. He gets an auto vote from me because I believe in him and his writing. If ever I was to find that most of his articles were "rainbow and unicorn" bs, I would stop following.
We all have posts that we love for different reasons and I absolutely love reading posts from Aussies outside the city because their lives are like epic adventures in many cases. lol
Have a beer on me. Cheers.
LMFAO Oh crap you were on a roll here. Love when someone speaks the truth and nothing but the truth.
You make an interesting point about the paid votes, but my biggest issue with them is that I wasn't seeing any sort of ROI. Not only in the fact that my votes were returning enough after curation to cover the investment, but I wasn't getting any sort of added views.
Are you finding that you are seeing some ROI these days?
Thanks for actually reading. LOL. Yes, I was definitely a bit frustrated with some of the people I was reading last night and some that were messaging me with questions. I may have been a bit off in overall organization with this post. However, most of it is accurate in my opinion.
ROI, you are correct here. I have been running some experiments with upvote bots, promotion, resteeming, and curation over the last 2 weeks so I could give better advice on strategies. One of the reasons I leased a bunch of SP and why you see my post promotion so up and down ($25 - $50 - $200). Of course, I spent the most on the experiment promoting #payitforward because if promotion was going to work/or not I wanted to invest the most on something I actually believed in. The results aren't complete yet, but I will let you know what I find out (you will be one of the first).
If I comment I've read top to bottom, if I only vote odds are I still read it just didn't have much to add or not the time to add it. I enjoy your posts and think we have a lot in common in our overall thinking.
I'm not a fan of bid bots, but it's mainly because the way it skews the reward pool and moves the income to the richest members of the community with zero effort on their part. IMO the paid slots in trending should be achieved with a payment to steemit of SBD that get burned (gone forever). This advertising fee would be based on how long you want to be promoted and the tag traffic you want to be promoted for. The only want to recover your investment/cost would be if your post is actually good and people give votes once you hit trending.
I did resteem your post, I found it because @elsiekjay, resteemed your post. I also liked and enjoyed the rant and the message, that was why I resteemed and let you know how I found your post. So far my feed is still light enough for me to find some post. I also think you did a great job of covering several various styles of using steemit, and the central one for how to grow a persons account. At some point I am sure I will see he wisdom of self votes, but right now I just do not have enough SP to do that and try to help as many people as I can, I do understand what you say about rent/leasing/buying SP, however I do not make much on steemit yet, and likely my renting would only be on a sporadic basis.
A lot of nice info, thank you.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I'm glad I didn't scare you off with my rant. After you read my post on Curation that I am doing in the next day or two (waiting for researched posts to hit 7 days), you will see why you should upvote your own posts immediately. Better for you and for your followers. My rich uncle (yes, I have one) always says, "pay yourself first, then help others."
Something I will have to think about. I don't believe in any absolutes other than shit happens and things change, the only two eternal truths of the cosmos. (well that I have found so far). looking forward to the next post. I am glad that not everyone has a rich uncle then there would be no rich uncles.
Excellent article. I've resteemed it because I think it's so important for people to read! I like your take on it, even though it does feel negative in many places.
I well understand that my main weakness is my lack of willingness/ability to market myself. That's always been a problem of me because I do have an underlying shyness that keeps me from really putting myself out there. The stuff I'm offering "for free" right now have generally been offered elsewhere and have done "okay" (in the case of the photos) or not really got there (the fiction) - and I figure that pennies is better than nothing - especially since I can always repost the same crap in a year or whenever.
I had been discouraged originally from upvoting my own posts with the idea that it discourages others from upvoting a newbie because they won't get the first vote... However, since my posts are now regularly getting 0.20 and more (yes, that's a significant step for me) I may begin self-voting again. Very fortunately, I did choose to upvote the episode which got curied. :-)
I know what you mean about people not adding value to their posts. I'm sometimes guilty of this myself when I just want to get a picture out - since that is one of my strengths along with my writing. I do always describe something in the picture though - even if it is simply to say what plant it is - or express the fact that I don't know! I've seen so many people who don't bother even that much - and expect my upvote or curation (when I'm doing the pay-it-forward contest) and a picture with no explanation does not get my vote! What's worse, is when people use a picture that is very clearly not theirs - and they still can't be bothered to say anything about it!
(I was really, really excited to have my vote increase to 0.02 yesterday after I steemed up again - now at 80 SP. My goal is to make $100 real money by the end of the year - preferably in one month. Maybe...)
Anyway, thanks for the great article. And thanks for your time/effort supporting me. It means a lot!
Thanks for commenting and sharing. I do appreciate it. Congrats on reaching a new threshold. I would say that $100 by the end of the year is very achievable. I think you are doing many of the correct things to get there such as interacting with people and building relationships. Eventually, this tends to payoff in my experience. Everyday doesn't have to be a perfectly written post, but the good posts should outweigh the quicker posts so people can feel good about giving you their vote even when they can't read it everyday (like me).
There is NOTHING wrong with upvoting your own post. I am so tired of hearing that from people. Let me give you an example. I upvote all my own comments but usually after 3 days have passed. Why, because it's my money and I can spend it how I want, but also because everyone that upvotes my comments gets better curation because of it. For example - Person A has only 0.001 upvote, but they want to show me some thanks for giving them .10 or more on their post. They upvote my comment. They will make nothing on that curation because the comment wouldn't reach the .03 threshold to get a payout. I upvote my comment and not only do I get paid, but they get curation rewards that they wouldn't received beforehand. I give them first crack at upvoting (3 days) my comment.
Another thing I do is I use upvoting bots. Sometimes several and sometimes less depending on the situation. If everyone that follows me was to auto upvote my posts at 30 minutes, they would get more curation because when the bot votes come in, they will receive a better percentage of the curation rewards. The bots generally do not give me much of a profit (sometimes I lose money on the deal), but that is my risk. The people who follow me are still going to benefit in curation no matter what as long as they "beat the bots" to my post. As opposed to upvoting a post that is going to get a total of 5 to 10 votes.
I am writing some posts for this week that details how this works in both vote bots, curation and curation trails, and other strategies for newbies/minnows.
Talk to you soon and keep up your good work.
It will be interesting to see what you have to say about vote bots. I find a few of the free bots to be worth the effort such as the resteem bot and the steemit world map bot (the originalworks bot was another one,) but the only paid bot that seems to make sense to me is the steem basic income. I currently have three shares, and have won a fourth - I've paid for only one myself for a minnow who asked a good question on my fiction, prompting an "ask the author" post. :-)
Still, my upvote alone isn't worth much, so I'm guessing - especially after reading @thedarkhorse's article about getting out of the dust - it didn't actually make any sense for me to self-vote until now. So, that's a caveat worth adding to your original article in this case - that the self-vote only makes sense if the posts are getting at least 0.03!
There's also something in getting the length of the post correct - too long is bad, too short is equally bad - and catchy - when I do a photo salvage, I put the outcome at the beginning because the original isn't going to bring in readers - that's the whole point of the salvage! When I do my fiction, I hate keeping the posts short because my chapters were written to be longer than what I want to do for a single post - and sometimes it doesn't want to break into nice, need 2-3 page sections, but that's what I do, because people's attention spans are short.
Anyway, thanks for commenting. Catch you later.
Once I kinda sorta started to understand Steemit, I developed thinking aligned with this post.
WAIT WAIT WAIT
I'll not bore you with how my thinking has been evolving on the 82 days I've been here on Steemit.
I'll boil it down to 2 questions...
(I must spend some time going through your posts to see how that all happened in your life!)
Thanks for commenting and raising some great questions. We are much better off if we don't pay attention to how much others are making. Rather, we should see if their methods have value to us. Of course, rich friends support each other and so do poor friends. There is some logic in the belief that if we grow together then we will still support each other when we have more resources to do so. This works out well for many people.
Using bid bots can be profitable, but not in the way most people think and the difference between Steem and SBD price is a huge issue where this is concerned. I will be posting some stuff on my results soon.
Here are some communities that you might enjoy. @qurator is my favorite. They don't sugar coat their program with rainbows and unicorns BS, but they do help and their members are growing their accounts (this is a fact and not just conjecture). Another group that seems to work really well together is @asapers, but I have less time to interact there with my #payitforward responsibilities. @yallapapi has a Discord called Shark School that I think is full of great information from some very sharp people. Unfortunately like everywhere on Steemit, you have to weed through those that are full of shit and those that have some valuable insights, but @yallapapi is a truth teller and I like him despite some obvious flaws. You may like @steemgreetersguild also. Many of friends here are very involved with it from a curation standpoint.
Great to know you're from North Central MO! I spoke at the community college up there (North Central MO College) in Trenton several times about 8 years ago. Nice place with good people.
People here love the American BBQ recipes and food that I share with them. I use mostly KC style cooking, but I have some Southeastern and Texas recipes that I throw in. We have a lot of fun with the project and it looks like it will start making a net return soon. We will see.
Thanks again for commenting and I hope to see more of your comments soon.
22 miles north of Trenton is Princeton. I'm the water/wastewater plant guy there.
15 miles west of Princeton is where I live. I'm 5th generation on a very small farm homesteaded from the government around 1860. You mentioned the homesteaders group here on Steemit. Yes, they are great!
I recently joined qurator. I will check out the others you mention.
I really need to figure out discord...
I like the people I've kind of gravitated too, but man, they had me feeling guilty for upvoting my own content or using an upvote service of any kind. Yet, many also applaud qurator, which has it's own upvote bot. And how are you ever going to be able to join their service (4 Steem now) without using tactics to get yourself built up? But then I recently realized something. Several bought in and at least one was delegated very early on. Some of their logic is flawed. I believe everyone's first goal should be to get at least a 2 cent vote and do whatever it takes to get there as quickly as possible, as long as you do it without breaking any rules. And I'm not talking about some madeup rules some people come up with (like those who say self-voting is unethical...).
I've started looking through your posts and am liking what I see.
BTW I was Utility Superintendent over at Rock Port, MO where they have wind turbines hooked directly to their city distribution system. I'll be commenting on that alternative energy post you did.
How could someone NOT like KC BBQ?!?!? haha
Very cool that you took it to Russia.
Thanks for actually discussing your ideas. There are a lot of people who toss out ideas, but don't actually discuss with their commenters. I think that's a key here on Steemit. I look forward to digging down through your posts, reading new ones and discussing ideas with you down the road...
Discussing things is my pleasure. That's why I like Steemit as a platform. It doesn't always happen, but when it does it is usually good stuff. Good to hear from someone from Mizzourah! Getting to the .02 vote is so important. 500 SP is the most important though for the vote slider. Also, check out the post by @thedarkhorse on "Voting Dust". It sheds some serious light on minnow voting. Talk to you soon.