Minnow Voting - It is still OK to vote 40 times a day

Many users have complained that with the new 4x voting strength, they are running through their voting power too quickly. Absent the slider to control the strength of votes, many users are only voting on 10 posts/comments per day, so they do not 'run out' of voting power. The "10 votes per day" is a fairly misunderstood concept, so I wanted to help clear something up.

You can still vote 40 times per day - even without the vote slider. Your votes will just be worth 1/4 as much.

 
I will demonstrate how below. This is a little simplified to demonstrate the concept, but it does work out even with the more complicated math.

Let's assume:

  • You want to vote 40 times per day.
  • You don't have a vote slider, so all your votes are cast with 100% strength.
  • With pre-hf19 voting, each of your 40 votes would have added 1 cent to the payout of a post.
  • Under the new voting, your votes are 4x as strong, so they now add 4 cents.

If you start voting 40x per day, what will happen?

  • After a few days of doing this, your voting power will drop until it reaches an equilibrium at around 25%.
  • Each vote you cast will be 1/4 as strong (since you are voting with 25% voting power).
  • Each vote you cast will use up 1/4 as much of your total voting power (since only 25% is left).
  • Each vote you cast will be worth 1/4 as much, so they will now be worth 1 cent instead of 4 cents.

Will I run out of voting power?

  • No - not if you are casting around 40 votes per day.
  • Each day your voting power will dip down to around 5-10%.
  • Every day your voting power recharges by 20%, so you will gain what you spent back.

HF 19 gives us the choice

After you start voting forty times per day, you will end up casting forty '1 cent' votes. This is the same as if you were casting forty '1 cent' votes before the HF. If you want to cast only ten '4 cent' votes per day, that is entirely up to you - but you are not forced to. Forty '1 cent' votes is an option too.

Focus on Engagement

My suggestion is to not get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. Focus on engaging with the community and voting on the stuff you like.

If you find 10 good posts/comments a day, then great - vote on those. If you find 40 good posts/comments a day, then even better - vote 40 times. The system will automatically adjust to your voting behavior, so that you can vote how you want.


Reminder to vote for witnesses!

The Steem witnesses are the elected leaders of the community that power the blockchain. Everybody should learn about the Steem witnesses and vote on who they think is best. If you don't know much about witnesses or aren't sure who to vote for, you can check out this Witness Voting Guide. If you think @timcliff is doing a great job, please consider voting for him as witness! You can vote for witnesses here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

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"My suggestion is to not get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. "

Absolutely. Great advice. I still struggle with the idea of how many times should I vote, etc . . and was seriously fighting voting sometimes. I joined a bit before the latest hardfork, and noticed a big difference in the payouts cast by my votes immediately after.

Your advice is sound. Rather than going through steemdb to check my voting power and going to steemnow to check what my vote is worth, I just started to vote on content I enjoyed. It took some of the pressure off. There shouldn't have been any, but I have a habit of overthinking things too much.

When I just started reading people's posts that I liked, and didn't think too much about the voting scale, I enjoyed my time here more. I don't know if anyone else can identify with what I'm saying, but it helped me haha

I too got really caught up in the numbers, and it totally made my head spin and made it not fun. Now I just try to seek out good interaction, and create content that hopefully brings it to me!

Up until hardfork 19 I used to just vote without a thought.

And I still do, but now I usually vote at 10% for comments and 50% for posts. I vote on anything I like because hell, who needs to worry about voting power?

Only those that invest a lot of $$$$ in Steem Power and want to maximize their ROI via curation need to worry about that.

I agree with you. I just kept voting anyway. I'm pretty good at running my voting strength down, but my vote si still worth a couple of cents.

I am still trying to figure out how steemit works and had been on a upvoting spree, hiks! There are just so many helpful posts like this one, I just cannot not upvote.

Well, thanks for this key information. In fact, I was too worried about my upvoting habit. But why only 40 votes? Is your logic valid for more than 40 votes too? May be the vote value get down to the fraction of a cent but it would still have got some weight than 0. Isn't it? So why should I stop at 40 votes a day? Any explanation to it would be highly appreciated.

Thank you @timcliff for all these info and a sound logic to not to stop upvoting. I'd even like to upvote posts older than a week even if it's of no monetary value. I don't care much of curation rewards. So what's your take on it?

Yes, that is a great question. You can do more than 40 (or less). I just used 40 in my example because that is how it was prior to the HF. At some point if your voting power gets really low then you will not have enough SP to cast the minimum vote. I don't know where it reaches this point, but it is definitely more than 40 votes per day.

WOW! Thanks a ton for this clarification. Now I won't be so reluctant in my voting. It seems that you have given me a new freedom ...a freedom to vote to whomever I wish 😊

Yes, I have observed at times my votes do not make any difference to the potential payout figure of the post voted up but only its vote count goes up.

But I'd still prefer the sliding bar as others have that. It allows me to judge the content on its merit and I can express my vote according to the degree of my liking and admiration for the content I'm upvoting. Currently, all my votes are at par ...without any of my discretionary power to the content. It's just a case for either YES or NO or FLAG! I'm not allowed to judge the content and rate them e.g. if I wanna discriminate my voting weight to a 5 star content from a single or may be 3 star content, I just can't 😢. May be it doesn't make any substantial difference with my weak micro ...err nano-vote. But I'd love to progress to gain that privilege of a sliding scale soon. Presently, I'm enjoying my newly found freedom to vote. Hence upvoted yours 😂

Thank you @timcliff for this updated info from a different perspective. There is so much information out there that it makes hard to absorb it all.

I think Ill resteem this for sure!

I have been following the whole HF19 discussions with great interest. To me this a great example of emotions vs rationale.

On paper what you say makes absolute logical sense.
For most people it doesn't at all on an emotional level.

It is well known that the fear of loss is a powerful emotional motivator.
People can't articulate it but seeing something go from 100% to 25%
is experienced emotionally as a loss, so people will avoid it.
Doesn't matter that they are actually in exactly in the same situation as before, on a deep emotional level it seems like a negative to avoid.

You can't program incentives without keeping these emotional factors in mind. Perception is everything! Check out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

People do weird stuff to avoid even minor losses, actually they'd much rather avoid loss than take a chance for a much higher gain. That seems to be what is happening with the whole HF 19 saga.
It doesn't make sense but there you go...

Haha, very true. Well said :)

I know that you may have heard this before, but as a newbie, I've been fascinated by the posts people write. And, when I see one that inspires me, I vote, sometimes even though I know it's not going to even leave even a penny but because psychologically, I hope it encourages the other person to know that even though I didn't have monetary value with my vote, that they understand that they have my appreciation. I have lots to learn still. And, probably shouldn't keep doing that because I guess my account won't have time to recharge? Either way, I know I'm going to figure this out. I've fallen in love the community.

I'd say go for it - just vote on what you like. The system will automatically adjust the strength of your votes.

I agree that the votes we cast shows that we support another person's time and effort. I can understand a vote not having much of a monetary value but the appreciation factor goes a long way. I want to grow my following so I make a point of commenting on whatever I think is most interesting, I agree with, or find valuable and informative. It has helped me thus far so I see nothing at all wrong with showing support however I can.

So true - it's beyond me why all these people with empty wallets have suddenly started worrying how much their votes are worth - your votes are worth bugger all - toss them about like confetti and make nice blue dots!

Thanks for the dis! I feel even more welcome now.

The reason I am asking questions because I have already been on platforms I worked hard for that were going to pay money at some future day. My hard work never was rewarded, the platforms disappeared and I was lucky to save my content. Today, I am unclear how Steemit will work and trying to figure it out.

I am excited about the platform, see the potential, and want to do well here. But so far - all my posts "pay" at .01 or less of "money" I am unsure about and my commenting and replying also do not pay. The promised interaction is not quite what I expected with 70% of my commenting unanswered or answered with one or two words. Or I am told it is rude to comment if I do not upvote the post or other comments on it. i'm still unclear about that.

My upvoting seems to be the only way to earn any income here at all for the moment. I am in se asia where very small amounts of money make a huge difference.

I came here to steemit because i was convinced this was a place to get the word out about my work while making some money out of it. Instead it turns out to be much more complicated than that. I am an accountant by training and experience with no knowledge of crypto until 14 days ago when I got here. If i do not understand what is going on now with tiny amounts of "money" being added to my wallet on occasion, then what is my motivation to continue?

You are very correct - I feel like my input is worth "bugger all" and hoping that will change soon. Enjoy your fiesta and hopefully soon I will join you.

I've just given you my 100% upvote for your in depth comment.
Steemit does pay off in the long run but it can take a long while to really make much money.
The main thing I learned on Steemit was about crypto currrences, and I have made a lot more from investing in those than in Steemit payouts.
And to be zen about it all - if you post quality content and stick with it long term, eventually you may find yourself doing what I'm doing now - thinking wow am I an established Steemer with money in my wallet, giving some advice? - And it only took 11 months! - hang in there, it may not happen over night, but it can happen. (You have 258 followers in a month - it took me about 2 months to get over 100 followers!)

Wow! You give me a lot of hope and thank you so much for the upvote and advice. I do feel positive about being here and really want my message to go out to a wider audience. And I am nothing if not a networker. I'm the lady that raises the funds for the elementary school and that type of thing.

I will just put my head down and post for awhile to see what happens. I've held back on my real content until I knew what I was doing, but that may never happen.

I'm an accountant but I do not enjoy finance or investing (hence broke). If I am a crpto pro in 11 months that will be a miracle! I have actually been thinking of how I can survive here without learning too much about it >>> Can I come up with any dumber idea? No!

Thank you again, and I will go on with renewed enthusiasm :)

I remember you from the old days of Tsu. I would say look up some of the old Tsuvians as a place to start #tsufamily. Perhaps you remember @molometer from there. He is very engaging. There are many engaging folks posting to #oldtimers that love to interact.
From my experience here, the money will come and the effort wont be wasted like on Tsu.

Thank you I am using #tsufamily on many of my posts and have connected with a lot of my old tsu friends. That was one of the wonderful things I found when I first got here. I'm happy you see this as not wasted effort. I'm committed for the time being and will do my best. I will check out your tag and connected with @molometer. Thank you so much for the tips!

That was very nice of you :)

Your comments are valuable. The platform is confusing. And in my opinion doing a bad job of welcoming minnows and explaining the platform to minnows.

If it makes you feel better to be in a crowd, there is a crowd of 20K new minnows who joined in the last month that feel exactly like you do

STEEM On!

This is the exact issue on one of my other platforms that failed - a small bunch at the top making bank and a huge hoard at the bottom being ignored. That platform failed because the little people could not find a way to make it work.

I want to invite my many contacts here, but I need to have results to show them. I intend to keep posting. I have not yet put much content while trying to figure it out. Maybe for the next days I will make more and longer posts to see what happens. Not sure at this point. Thanks for the reply :)

hopefully the powers that be find a way to spread the wealth which is a way to keep minnows interested

Yes, that needs to happen - but some people might come just to rank on Google if they have good content to share. Those of us who have built brands are always looking for new outlets.

Not as confusing as deciding when to buy cryptocurrencies!

Give it six months, then it will all make sense and you will be laughing all the way to the bank...

It does take a long time for most users to start earning here. There are thousands of people posting things, so when you post stuff it does not get noticed among the see of all the posts. The people that stick with it though and work on building a following and a "brand" for themselves do usually start to see returns on their effort. It is more of a long-term investment platform, more than a "get rick quick" one :) Good luck though. Looks like your comment here has gotten you off to a good start.

I do have a brand - six years old - with about 3000 pieces of content on multiple platforms. If you google fitinfun, it is all me me me. Now my Steemit profile is there too! That was quick and due to the Alexa ranking I am sure. This was one of the major selling points for me to come here.

Back when I started, Google did not even recognize the word and made it "fit'n fun." I feel proud of that, but I still do not get the results I seek or help other people as much as I want to.

I think I might just put my head down and get some of my content linked on here to see what happens. I've pretty much just been posting photos and music to get my feet wet. This is really why I joined, and why I join anywhere - to get my message out there where people will find it.

Thank you for your encouraging words, Tim. I think I am just down in the weeds today :)

I definitely push coconut oil on my blog, videos and even a fb page. I love the stuff and can't be without it. I have an open bottle on my desk right now in case I have a dry skin emergency while working :) I will take a look and see where I can boost you!

Many thanks - just keep it away from your keyboard! :)

@fitnfun, I've only been actively posting for 50+ days now and spent a lot of time, patiently learning how-to steemit. I have made friends and enough SP to have the sliding scale. It's humbling to start and learn. It's a pretty complex environment.

The one piece of advice I would give a person like yourself. One that has preloaded content to roll out, is to hold on to the content for a minute. Cruise all of the comments you can and make a few more friends. It's almost a waste to post your own content until you've met a bunch of people.

I don't care if you're William Shakespeare, if you don't have an audience, nobody will ever read your book.

Good luck. You'll do great on steemit.

Thank you- you are confirming what I was thinking too and why my posts are mostly photos for challenges now. I figure I need to have something on my feed, but not the important stuff yet. So I have been reading and making many comments a day and adding friends, just like you say.

I'm really encouraged you are doing so well in such a short time. That gives me hope and I will keep on trying. Thanks for the boost!

Plenty of people have boosted me along the way. Some of my posts do well, others don't , sometimes it's the content, others cases it's the timing. Content really disappears in the ether and steemit is finicky. If you don't have a following, you'll just be throwing pearls into the ocean.

Practice writing stuff that you're uncomfortable with. This is warm up time for you. You'll blow up shortly. Then you can unleash your content that is already in the can.

I say, post your good stuff now and in the future, Sharon! There's no downside to reusing content - or certainty reframing your content. I see plenty of people doing that. If you put out a lot of content, the way the interface is set up, nobody will ever even see your really old stuff. It's on the blockchain, but that's not a detriment for people seeing it for the first time a few months from now. Put your best foot forward, don't hold back.

Even the folks who have been here awhile can't count on much of anything for earnings. There's no figuring out what any one post will earn or not. Just keep it flowing and don't get too attached to any one piece content. Or build something that has future value to you in other forms, like a book. There's lots of folks doing that.

You are in a good position because you do have a lot of content to draw from, rather than create from scratch. The folks who do well here are the ones who put their stuff out there -- over and over!

Your upvotes on other people's content won't earn you anything worth cashing out, until you get a lot more SteemPower yourself. The best way for you now is to comment, comment, comment and post, post, post. Get connected with a project like the Minnow Support Project, too!

Steemit is a complicated ecosystem that is always evolving. Even people that do well here have to adjust from time to time and re-orient what they do. But the market capitalization of Steemit is so much higher than Tsu or the other platforms that try to support themselves by ads.

I don't post that consistently, and I've had gaps totaling about 5 months out of the 10 I've been here. I've got 5200 Steem Power now, worth over $8000 at today's values. That's not near what other people are earning, sure. But it's more than any of us ever made on Tsu!

You have a good story and message for folks. The Steemit developers and their young crowd, who have so much of the voting power right now, aren't necessarily the audience for that message. But there are other people here, too. As they grow here on Steemit, you will, too. All the best!

Good luck :)

As you can see from the upvotes on your comments, at the very beginning it is your interesting and thoughtful comments that will drive your (small) earnings and get those same people to read your articles. Good luck!

Thank you - I will keep on this path for the time being :)

I also joined recently and, yes, slowly change your MO to gain genuine followers who will read your articles. I discovered that I quite like curating so continue doing it within my niche subject area.

I'm not sure if I understand what curating means here.

I usually resteem a few posts for each of mine. So if i post in sunthursday, I will find a few I like and resteem those and possibly comment and/or upvote. Is that it? or is there something else?

I notice few people resteeming much and lots of people with only their own content on their feed. I also resteem the good "how to" posts I find in my never ending search for understanding here and the main posts of challenges I enter usually.

This good advice for everyone, not just minnows.

After HF 19 I was scared! to upvote more than 10 times, till' I reached the slider. So this post should help a lot of people to be quiet about that!
Thinking-01

Thanks for the post Tim. I think it's important to put out information for all levels of Steemit users and you do a great job at this. This is one reason that I support you for Witness.

Thanks :)

This is such a relief! I've been trying so hard to keep my voting in control that my interactions had been mostly limited to those in my immediate feed. My VP just kept on dropping like crazy and when I hit 29%, I took to keeping a list of the posts I would like to upvote and then come back to it the next day or so to upvote then comment. I didn't want to just drop a comment and not upvote as I felt it wouldn't show how much I've appreciated the article. I even took to spacing my steemit reading so I could control my voting habit x.x

Thats funny. I was trying to mark and hunt back up articles because I would only vote if my power was in the 90 something's . It seems silly now. I'd think, I'd like to comment but my power's down in the 80s so I cant vote.. I'll just move on.

I was okay with voting a lot as I thought 50% was a long way away anyway. When I got there, I said, ah 30%. Then I caught up and went below it and noticed my upvotes weren't giving anyone even a cent. So I used a notepad to save the ones I know I would love to upvote if I had any power. So far, the list kept piling up and I was thinking of ways to go around that. But knowing it didn't matter if I went down the VP bar, I can start catching up I suppose. It's regrettable that any upvote doesn't give the single cent though but in the end, I suppose it's the thought that counts. An upvote is an upvote. A pat on the back is a pat on the back. And the money added is just a bonus. But now I have to find time to catch up lol. I will do it anyway because they deserve the pat on the back. Hopefully after I get through the list and keep up with my feed, I can start searching for more people to show my appreciation to. Good luck on your voting journey :P Thanks for sharing your experience (and upvote lol) :)

feel like i'll never see 100% voting power again lol i like voting too much

Nothing wrong with that :)

I'm so small that I guess when I will go to 25% voting power my votes will value actually nothing.

Even though you might not see it, it still may do something. If another user with low SP adds to yours, it may be enough to push it to the next .01. But yeah, voting in general doesn't do much until you have more SP.

Thank you, this was very informative. I was just voting 10 times a day.

Very good article. I had not seen such a concise explanation before. Thanks for sharing.

Enjoyed reading this post, because I have been one to wildly vote for any and everything I like, not paying attention to the money generated by votes. I think it's important for authors to know that their content was read and supported by others so I give my vote to whatever material I find worthy. I have not thought about limiting the amount of votes I give because I think that's similar to withholding. I'm not one for withholding love and affection so I don't see withholding my vote happening, either!

Hi @timcliff, can you provide some clear understanding on how this phrase is achieved?
"Every day your voting power recharges by 20%, so you will gain what you spent back."

Thanks in advance.

The blockchain adds 20% back to your voting power over a 24 hour period.

THIS: "Focus on Engagement: My suggestion is to not get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. Focus on engaging with the community and voting on the stuff you like."

I SO agree with this! I only joined a few weeks ago, but my focus has been on heavily interacting with those Steemians whose posts I came across and really liked. You can leave lots of comments and boost your 'comment counter', but comments like 'great post' / 'thanks for sharing' / etc. are pretty meaningless.

Instead, I do my best to start a conversation. Or at least show the author that I have actually read the post, and share my viewpoint on the topic discussed.

I never ask for an upvote or follow. So my follower count will be lower than that of others. But similar to an email list, it's not about the amount of people that follow you, but the amount of people that follow you that engage with your content.

And the only way to build that kind of following is to (1) create really great content, consistently, and (2) engage with others who also post great content.

Focus on the long term. I have spent a lot of time on Steemit in the last weeks, and I have to say it's quite liberating to completely detach from any revenue my posts make (hint: not much). I don't care. I'm sure success will come eventually for those that contribute value to the platform. Yes, it may take (a long) time to get noticed. But I am confident that will happen, if I engage daily with fellow Steemians.

There are many successful Steemians that receive high rewards for their posts now, but made very little when they started out. Some examples that come to mind are @knozaki2015, @rea and @gringalicious. I'm sure there are many, many others.

Thanks for explaining how voting works for minnows, this was helpful for me!

Can we clone you? Like 100,000 times? :)

There are many successful Steemians that receive high rewards for their posts now, but made very little when they started out. Some examples that come to mind are @knozaki2015, @rea and @gringalicious. I'm sure there are many, many others.

You can add me to the list. I posted for around 6 months, barely having any success. I stuck with it though and just kept trying to find ways to add value. It took a lot of time and effort, but I finally got there :)

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...and if I might extent interacting and following up on (!) the amount of people that follow you that engage with your content.

I see lots of posts that seem to gain lots of traction and get lots of comments but the authors never come back to the comments and no one seems to care. I guess in the long run the system by its price discovery mechanism will take care of that but for now just knowing you can do better even if you don't get the immediate financial benefit is a good thing.

The liberating you talk about I can totally relate too as well. After I had gotten like a shitload of upvotes and positive feedback on the first part of a blogpost the third one got like 4 votes and 7 cents. Did I say f**k this and stop writing? Hell no. I'm just steamrolling this content out and if one post gets 1 cent and the next $1000 so be it. I completely agree with your sentiment here.

Yes, love the mindset there @peterschroeter!

And good one on engaging with your audience. Communicating with the ones that actually take the time to not only read your post but also leave thoughtful comments on them.

I personally try to leave meaningful comments on posts by other Steemians too (like I do on this post). And if the author of a post ignores me a couple of times in a row, I'm like: ok, I'll move on to someone who appreciates my reply to their content more.

Imo Steemit is not a one-way street. It's a social media platform, which means – to me, at least – interaction.

Absolutely. As I type this I see the value of my vote today went from 5 to 4 to now 3 cents. Thanks to your article and the comments I now know why and what's gonna happen with it :).

Yes, but doesn't it only regenerate back at the 10 at 100% power per 24 hour periods. So if you did this 40 times a day for several days you would be using it faster than it regenerates and it would get lower and lower wouldn't it?

Well, partially true. It will not get back to 100% - that is correct, but it will not keep getting lower and lower. When you are at 25%, a 100% vote only uses 2% of the remaining 25%, so you are using up less voting power too. If you are voting 40x per day, then it will reach an equilibrium at around 25% - where it will refill and you will spend at a rate about equal to keep it around 25%.

I had to read this article 3 times - and I'm a mathematician - to see the key sentence! That however many daily votes you do, you will end up at some average level of voting effectiveness commensurate with your number of votes. At 40 votes per day, your account bounces around between about 15% and 35%, averaging out, as @timcliff says, at about 25%.

One comment mentioned the psychology concern of "losing power". There is a good case there for possibly doing something within the UI to change that perception. On chainBB it tells you to a fair degree of accuracy how many more votes a user can make in order to stay at your current level. I find that useful.

Thanks for the post - useful change of perspective.

Wow I almost feel like an idiot after reading this just voting and clicking on comments and stuff I like never even realizing what it does to my voting power...haaa!

Then again I now know what it does to the voting power, how it recovers and also finally what those percentages next to the votes actually mean. Thank you for that!

On the other hand I don't think I'll alter my activities one bit. Seems to me building a base, connecting with people etc. will make the difference in the end based on good content of course. The whole voting only and calculating out how much money you're gonna make seems way too complicated and time intensive given the return that you can make IN LIGHT OF the currency risk of Steem.

Let's just say if you're a value investor you bought BTC and Steem long ago and are still buying during the dips and holding for the long term.

If you're a trader you have your systems set up proper and are benefiting from going short/long BTC and Steem and have probably modeled the correlation factors by now.

If on the other hand you're here to actually make money only and potentially make a living off of it I gotta say RESPECT! You're in for one hell of a bumpy and potentially fatal but also potentially extremely rewarding ride.

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting this!

A very nice helper for explaning the new voting power.

Upvote from @detlev who will have a beer now

Thank you for clarifying this voting power strength. Noticed yesterday mine was down to 1 cent. 🐓🐓

Yes, I also initially worried about how many times I can vote per day. Then I decided that I would vote as much as I wanted :)

Thanks for that it makes it clearer in regards to voting

Ok, so I think I understand the voting system, but what I don't get is the overall steem power. If people have lets say purchased $100.00 worth of power, does that supply dwindle over time, just if the person votes beyond 40 times, or does it always stay up, but the vote power goes down? I've just got into the community yesterday and there are a lot of questions I still have to figure out. Thank you!

Check out the FAQ. If you buy $100 worth of SP, the amount of SP you own will not go down, but the value may fluctuate depending on the price of STEEM. Voting does not spend any of your SP, but it spends your 'voting power' and bandwidth. Both will recharge over time.

Ok, that clears up a lot. Thank You. I think I might spend a little in SP then. I feel that Steemit is a great idea for an internal ecosystem. It sounds like there is a lot of benefit in investing in it for the long haul.

wow.. you nicely explained it thanks..

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Your minnow illustration closely resembles my guppy fish tattoo. Is that a promising sign or an omen that I will be swimming in Steemit love/rewards soon? LOL by the way, thanks for explaining stuff in the article.

image

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Very cool :)

Thank you for the advice! I do want to vote and comment and show as much support to others as possible and sometimes it's hard to determine who! Other than just the content I really love, I also want to support those who support the community so knowing about witnesses is super helpful!

Much love and Steem on!

When your STEEM POWER keeps growing, after a certain point, the slider will always show up when you cast a vote.

Yes, it shows up once you have 1 MV of SP (about 500 STEEM Power).

Well that's good to hear! I thought every vote would always use 2 percent of voting power, and so after 3 days of voting, I'd be voting with 0%... Good to know it scales! (like a fish)

This seemed counterintuitive to me until I read till the end. Thank you for the much needed advice. Lately, I have seen my voting power go unconsumed and I felt bad because I could have rewarded some deserving authors. Now though, there's no stopping me. I will upvote every post that deserves my vote.

And @timcliff is doing a great job indeed and should be supported with witness votes. You have my vote already. I would request fellow Steemians to vote for you as well.

I am still voting on most posts I read as I think no matter how small my upvote is worth, it serves as encouragement and support for those who are trying hard.

This was helpful and thoughtful, I kept on voting even after HF19 like it never happened, but got my voting power dropped down real fast. Still, I don't think it's what matters, I'd rather upvote many people to give them a thumbs up than powering up to give only few people the "big" upvotes, not like they would be big with my current voting power anyway.

This still can open eyes for some and encourage people to vote for good material. We've seen a sad lack of upvoting, even though people seem to appreciate content created.

Yeah, the drop in voting power can be a little misleading - if you are sitting at 25%, then your votes are at the same strength as before the HF. 25% may seem low, but with the 4x voting strength, it is not.

I think it's somewhat basic human nature - we want to feel as powerful as we can. It's like an attitude of "If I can't do my best, I won't do anything" and people will try to have almost full voting power all the time.

Someone else here on Steemit said that if you're voting power is low and you want it back up you have to not vote for 5 days? Is this false?

False. Your voting power regenerates by 20% per day. If your voting power goes down to zero (which is difficult to happen) and you want it to go up to 100% then yes you need to wait 5 days.

Thanks Tim!

There is really no need to wait for it to recharge to 100%. As @onthewayout said - you get 20% per day recharged. It is fine to be in the 5%-25% range - it just means your votes will be worth a little less. Not a reason to stop voting though, unless you are trying to get your votes to be worth more. (A vote with 50% voting power is worth twice as much as one with 25%.)

As I said in the post though, it is best not to get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. Focus on engaging with the community and voting on the stuff you like.

Tim, I've been posting about this, saying that the error of HF19 was that people were convinced that they could only vote 10 times a day. Many people will not leave a comment if they don't upvote. Therefore, people stopped leaving comments because they felt like they were out of votes for the day. Total negative.

The way you explain it in this post needs to be exposed to the entire small minnow community. They're confused and missing out on the one penny curation. I remember, a month ago, when my vote became worth a penny, I was so excited!

All the newbies need to feel like they can vote freely.

Feeling free to comment and engage with others is vital, not only to the growth of individual Steemers, but to Steemit as a whole. HF19 has been so confusing in this regard.

and what happens if u vote less than 10 times in a day ?

Basically you would be wasting voting power.

Most users want to use as much of their voting power / influence as they can, because it is fun to add money to people's comments and posts, and you can sometimes earn a curation reward. If you don't use your full influence, there is nothing wrong with that - you just could have voted on more stuff without running out of power.

I used to worry about how much my vote was worth, but then I realized that even if my vote runs down to 2 cents, my vote is still adding value to a post.

That is so true. That means so much to a post that only has four upvotes and .09$ It means a lot to get to .11$

Yes, that's how I look at it.

Thank you for this post, I just left a lengthy comment on @krnel Upvoting Article about being new and not understanding what or how the voting structure works. After two weeks I've spent more time reading others post than to try and understand the platform better. Thank you for this article.

Thank You for clearing this up! The amount of time to get your voting back to 100% is more than a few days which sucks on upvoting great content! Resteemit for others to understand!

There is no need to wait for it to get back to 100%. As I stated in the post, you are fine leaving it at 25% voting power.

Thanks @timcliff I had read a lot of posts about this issue but now I get it!

Glad to see Whales and Dolphins do care for Minnows

wow! i'm more relieved now.....thanks. I'm voting happily now

Great explanation of an important concept. I get frustrated when I see brand new minnows asking about this and I can't explain it right... now I'll just link to your explanation instead.

I hand out upvotes like motherfucking Oprah. I'm more concerned with letting people know someone liked their post than worrying what I can get out of it. Plus, I suck at math and I have no idea how any of this shit works anyway.

Exactly - that's a good way to go :)

Interesting concept. I wasn't aware that you could vote 40 times like that without running out of voting power.

@timcliff - Great advice and easy to understand! That is what I come to expect from you, and you always deliver. I appreciate the help as a minnow trying to find my way.

@timcliff, I have been trying to send you a message via Steem Chat, but there seems to be technical difficulties. Every time I check to see if you replied, the messages I sent are erased. About 3 weeks ago I send your a message asking "What advice would you give to a new Steemit user/"

You were gracious to answer, but your message was not saved due to a update on Steemit Chat a few days after you sent your response. Unfortunately, I did not receive an email with the contents of your response. If you have a chance, would you mind sending your response again? Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi @timcliff thank you for your post and taking the time to explain to little minnow like me how things work, there is so much to know about how steem work it can be a book subject. Your post answer some of my question like yesterday i've read so many great article and i was use to vote and add 1 cent to those post i like but after some time it does not add any sent just i can see i have vote for it but no increase in the number. Today i know why, big thanks to you

Even if you get to where your vote is not worth 1 cent, it may be worth 1/2 a cent. That may not seem like much, but if two minnows each worth 1/2 a cent vote on a post - then it adds 1 cent :)

At that level though, it doesn't matter a whole lot either way. As I said in the post, it is best not to get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. Focus on engaging with the community and voting on the stuff you like :)

This is really good advice, Tim. I like to engage and vote on content I like. I would feel bad though casting a vote with absolutely 0 voting power (I've never done that yet and don't plan to). I also for some reason prefer to have my votes go no lower than 0.02 if possible....I guess it has something to do with wanting to feel good about the reward I'm giving to the person whose content I like. I wouldn't wan them to feel like my vote didn't really matter or anything like that. After reading this though, I think I can just chill out about that a bit more. Maybe just making sure I don't go more than 40 per day and then take a couple days off from voting every now and then would be a better strategy. So, thanks for the post!

Sounds like a good strategy :)

Out of curiosity, is there anywhere on your account where you can see how many votes you have made over the last 24 hours? It would be a nice statistic to be able to monitor if not.

Excellent information for the minnows like myself! Thank you for the post

thanks for this good advice
first post to read for you but I liked it so much and followed you

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