For the month of August I was lucky enough to take a turn at Curating as a Guest on Ecency and a few days ago I formally finished up my responsibilities. I thought it was worth writing about my experience because I learned a few things about the Ecency Project and I am very grateful for the opportunity they gave me to have a peek behind the curtain so I could see how the curation team works. In short, I was impressed - but please allow me to embellish a little...
One of the things I was initially frustrated with when I first started Posting and Boosting my content through Ecency was the fact that some of my content would be Boosted and other content would be Refunded. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing right or wrong. Having now talked to a few people about things I came to realise that this can be a common frustration. Now that I understand the way the curation team works a bit better I think the best way that I can help alleviate some of that frustration that others might face is to try and explain what is going on.
The main voting account of @ecency has over 1.2 million HIVE Power and while that seems like it’s a LOT, there are a LOT of people on Ecency requesting Boosts and that massive HIVE Power can only go so far. I did some analysis early in August and realised that only about half of the Boost Requests are successful. The curation team tries to keep the Voting Power of the @ecency account at, or above, the 80% mark and so with the HIVE Price where it is and the minimum Boost sitting at $1 USD there just isn’t enough power to go around. There is a team of around 10 curators that work through a constant stream of Boost requests and they effectively try to ration the voting power a bit to be fair and curate the best content but sometimes there is just too much. There are a number of things that curators look at that can help your chances if you are requesting a Boost for yourself, or another.
1. Produce Original Content – This goes without saying, but I’ve deliberately used the term Original instead of Quality here because it’s really about effort. Short posts with a few random pictures or Contests with lots of regurgitated text tend to miss out. But if you’re making a genuine effort, regardless of the topic, style or even language of your post, you’ve got a good chance of getting Boosted.
2. Post Age – The way curation rewards work on HIVE it’s best to get your votes in the first 24 hours to maximise those curation rewards and this is one of the important sources of funding for Ecency. That means it’s best to Boost posts that are very fresh. Sometimes the curation team can lag by 12 or 18 hours behind the Boost requests so if the post is more than 24 hours old by the time they get to it then you are probably going to miss out. The early bird gets the worm so always Boost early!
3. Points Used – Especially if the Voting Power on the @ecency account is around that 80% mark it is best to only use 150 points to Boost your posts. The team is trying to spread the love as far as it can and if a Boost has 300 or 500 points on it that means supporting it will result in 2 or 3 others missing out. So even if you’re producing a masterpiece, its best not to be too greedy and just Boost with 150 if the Voting Power is around that 80% mark.
4. Artificial Intelligence – This also should go without saying. Don’t use AI to write your post because Ecency has some automatic AI detection in place. It can sometimes pick up translated language too so it’s wise to be careful with translaters. The curation team is aware of this but I think it’s best to post in your native language and put a translation in below if you want to post in another language so that the curation team can clearly see it’s a bi-lingual post.
5. Use Ecency to Post – One of the things that I think is great about Ecency (because it shows their integrity) is that they will Boost content that wasn’t originated from the Ecency front end website. However, when the Voting Power gets tight around that 80% mark and a curator is hovering over your post trying to decide….having your post created through Ecency can just tip the scales slightly in your favour and get an otherwise borderline Boost request approved. Ecency is such a great project and the front end is pretty damned good, so I don’t think it’s a big ask to be using ecency.com to post. Give it a try if you haven’t already.
So, in conclusion. I am finished up as a Curator with Ecency but I am still going to be using Ecency to post and Boost my own and others content. Ecency has won me over and so I have no shame shilling for them if and whenever it’s appropriate. I think Ecency is a great project with a great team behind it. Good luck if you’re requesting a Boost and please remember to be patient, persistent and kind if you miss out from time to time.
Thanks for sharing your experience as an Ecency Curator. Those are some great things to consider and it is really great that Ecency open up their curation to give everyone a chance to try curation on their team.
I have picked this post on behalf of the @OurPick project which will be highlighted in the next post!
I've run out of VP tonight thanks to all the Waves that were posted today on Ecency, but I promoted this on Ecency for 7 days and will share it all around! I'll be back to vote soon!
!DHEDGE
Thanks. Love your work!
Thank you very much for being great curator and dear friend to many… 🤗
Thank you for everything that you do. Keep up the fantastic work!
Hi @buggedout
You seem to have a good experience with ecency. I also got the opportunity to become part of their guest curator once and it was learning for me. The team is vibrant and needless to say that they are doing great work and @melinda010100 is awesome. Have a good day.
Nice. I totally agree. Being a guest curator is a great experience for anyone looking to learn more about curation on HIVE.
Thanks for the great insight. I have a ton of points on my Ecency account that are just sitting there and I have never used them because I didn't really know what they were for. That makes more sense now though. Plus the tip about only using 150 at a time is great.
We're happy to have you a curator of Ecency 😺 the points which you told us are very unique and especially i love it when they try to spread more love to other by selecting 150 points. I asked from Melinda once why my post refund than she told me something like your post that curators have to keep voting mana above 80%
Thank you for sharing amazing content I hope so people can learn a lot from it 🙂
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
I was in the last weeks messing around and trying different front ends. When I logged in to ecency, I discovered I had a few 100 points laying around so I tried to boost articles. It didn't work out. Some days later I found out that it's best to go for the minimal size of boost and afterwards sometimes it worked and sometimes not.
So it's really great to hear the 'behind-the-scenes' story as of why things happen.
Thanks for sharing your insights!
There is no doubt that ecency is a great project,spreading love and generosity. I was not aware of several features of Ecency until @dreemport had a collaboration with ecency. Since then I am using Ecency for my publications.
With regards to boost, I figured out the vp problem. @beeber helped me understand. When Hive price was high boosts were working fluently but when Hive price dropped, the boost request started to be refunded. It makes perfect sense.
I didn’t know about AI detection though. Now, I am more impressed with the project and I appreciate the curators who put so much efforts in the task assigned to them
Kudos to you @buggedout and every otger member of the project
Ecency is my favorite Hive frontend and has been for a while. I also was a guest curator in August and had a blast. I'd also add to this that if Leo Voter curates a blog post, Ecency is more likely to pass it up. But that's not really a negative because Leo Voter votes can be pretty good. Ecency curators will still upvote content that is curated by Curie, Qurator, and other high-profile curation trails if the post meets Ecency guidelines.
@buggedout, just a heads up. This post was mentioned on the latest @defluenced podcast.
https://cast.garden/w/sksK3m7rLrWiCcrVQsKVi1
Thanks for the shout-out. Really appreciate it.
You're welcome. Always ready to help a fellow creator/curator out.
Promoting our posts instead of boosting can be better. It gives visibility for our posts, and thus increase the chance of getting real followers. People, who actually interested either in us and/or in our content. Mostly I promote my posts instead boosting it.
I prefer using ecency most of the time when I'm making a post. I also think it's a great project that is doing great work on Hive. Thanks for the glimpse of what it's like to be an ecency curator for a month, will keep the tips in mind whenever I'm boosting my post on ecency :)
Hey! Thank you so much for this most valuable info about boosts. Ecency for me is also a go to front end which I use for almost everything and I love seeing how devs continually work on developing new features as well as fixing issues at hand. I do often use Actifit on my alt account to post my daily activity reports and I often use boosts for these, which I may add are often approved, but when they’re not, I understand it too, as I have asked about Boosts in Ecency Discord in the past and received the answer pointing some of your points as well. Still, it’s great to have a post like this laying it all out nicely with explanations ☺️💙
!ALIVE
@buggedout! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @ fantagira. (2/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want, plus you can win Hive Power (2x 50 HP) and Alive Power (2x 500 AP) delegations (4 weeks), and Ecency Points (4x 50 EP), in our chat every day.
A very good post about your experience as a curator. !LUV
@buggedout, @seckorama(1/1) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoThanks for sharing your great and valuable experience with us. This month I became a guest curator and I'm also getting to learn a lot.
😊😉🌈🙏🙏 wow, thats so much for ur effort and for explaining A LOT more about the process. I've been using ecency for some time, but it was hardly explained till now.. :P
Thank you for such a great information about Ecency and tips on getting better
I want to become an Ecency Guest Curator, and I have applied for that <3 Your post is very insightful and informative for anyone who wants to become a curator. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Thanks for sharing this. Great info here. Much appreciated.
slowly I understand how things going here , especially those they called curators..thanks for sharing
That was a grate help for the users wanna boost their posts. Thanks for sharing..
Nice explanatory write up. Thanks!
👍👍
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thank you for the great work you did in the month of August
You received an upvote of 99% from Precious the Silver Mermaid!
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This post has been manually curated by @bhattg from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
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A friend explained exactly this same thing to me a few months back and ever since I have been following it, I have never had any problem with Ecency boosts even though I still do not get boosted all the time
Thanks alot for this explanation, i really appreciate this coming from you. People will know what they are doing wrong and yes on one hand we might be frustrated for not getting a boost but if we remember that the team is working hard to go through the post submitted for boost we would learn why our frustration is not valid.
Anyways thank for the manual curation coming from your side.
Thank you
Thankyou for being the good curator, sharing your experience with us. @ecency is most comfortable platform in blockchain for commenting and posting.... Love using @ecency
Thank you for this great information. Now I have an idea on boosting. Ecency😍❤️
Top post this
I wonder how i missed this 😅