Recently I have seen many accounts dedicating their steem power on curation. Some people using curation bots and some are doing it manually. Curation is basically the reward for finding undervalued posts and promoting those by upvoting.
Self voting on the other hand is quite self explanatory. I see many people don’t like self voters for obvious reasons. There are ongoing debates whether to self vote or curate and which one is more profitable.
In this post I am trying to find out the financial benefit of curation vs self voting by following some curators. I have listed few curators with high steem power, some of them are even curation bots. I have used steemnow.com to find out how much their vote worth with 100% voting power. We know that after HF19 we can cast 10 upvotes with 100% power each day. For example, if someone’s vote is worth $1, he/she can earn $10 daily just by selfvoting their own post.
Examples 1
Let's move into the examples I was talking earlier. I am showing 2 curators below who might be making lot more by selfvoting other than curation. The list can go on and on.
Above picture we can see the user's single vote worth approximately $98. So 10 self votes per day will make him $980 daily. Yet, the account is making 70-80 steem power daily which is equivalent to around $120 at today's price.
Examples 2
Here is the 2nd example of another user who's single vote worth $21 and daily potential earnings could me $210 using self vote. But this account is also earning 70-80 steem power daily which is equivalent to around $120 at today's price.
An I missing something here?
Curating other posts is always good idea you have chances of getting votes from other people. It also has long term benefits. If you curate minnow posts then he will grow, recognize good content and curate. I am following the above.
Hi @krishatnet, of course curating others post is the best practice from ethical point of view. But I have mentioned on my post the analysis is based on completely financial point of view. Also I wanted to know if I am missing something on my calculation, because there should not be such a large gap between rewards. Thanks
Strictly from a dollar-and-cents point of view, curation will be more profitable if and only if the content that you curate gets a lot of other votes after yours.
One issue here is the approximately 80% cut (50% nominal cut, plus a larger cut due to the 'reverse auction') that was made to curation rewards earlier on, a cut that I opposed. Instead of curation and content being equal in value (a balance that would make earning the same or greater amount via curation much easier, though still not guaranteed), content is heavily favored.
In slashing curation to almost nothing, it made other 'alternative uses' for votes more attractive. Previously those alternative uses were things like whales hiring or partnering with writers, voting for them, and getting a lot of the rewards back under the table. Now that non-whale votes have real value, it includes (non-whale) self-voting as well.
The underlying problem is that real curation has insufficient incentives (in large part due to the 80% cut).
Still, in cases where you can recognize good content early, you can probably make more with curation, but the way the reward share has been set up, the system is unfortunately working against this sort of desired behavior.
They are not throwing money away. They aren't selfish and thats a good thing. You shouldn't be here for the money but for the fun and knowledge.
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5.71% upvote thanks to @rkrijgsman - Hail Eris !This post received a 3.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @rkrijgsman! For more information, click here!
I find that I make almost as much money upvoting other people's posts as I do upvoting my own. If you're the biggest fish upvoting a particular post, you usually end up with the lion's share of the curation rewards.
The great thing about Steemit is that you can actually help others while you help yourself.
Hi @talanhorne, I agree with you that curation is the best way to help others at the same time gaining the reward share. Are you sure you are earning the same curating as you would by self voting? Thanks
Now this might be why people don't like self voters. If they are the giant and they self vote. Then they take the lions share. The others who vote then don't get as much as normally so it almost penalizes your supporters. Interesting. Very Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Completely agree. you can help everyone out on steem.
Yes, that analysis needs to be done to compare to this one. Find someone who votes for only a few of their own posts and mostly on other posts and see what that says. This post only checked one option of many ways to slice and dice your votes.
Would it be possible for steemit to make it so you made the same payout for both selfvote and curate?
Nice post :)
We need to change balance of author and curation rewards from 75/25 to 50/50. I think it will solve the problem, won't it?
I see nothing wrong in keeping it half and half at this point in time. My power is pretty low. If I spend half my power increasing my own, it will reward the other posts I upvote more. Win-win in my eyes.
Self vote is more profitable. Curation profitable only when after you more and more voters vote that post.
My dear cut baby, you have to kept the money for your future or let me catch the money. As a new steemian I need lots of Steem Power. Thanks @codebreaker
I vote self vote until they hardfork it
Thanks for your honest opinion.
You could call it "throwing away money" or you could call it "contributing to the steemit ecosystem" (a rising tide lifts all boats)...plus it SHOULD cost you something to give to others...if it didn't, then there'd be an endless supply of cash which would make it worthless. There's no way around simple supply and demand
Hi JacKeown, there is no doubt that curating is the ethical thing to do and I believe good quality content should always be rewarded by upvoting the quality content. I have mentioned in my post that it is from purely financial point of view. I want to know if my calculation is correct or am I missing some parameter in my calculation. Thanks
The market value of Steem is linked to the quality of content on the block chain, and 1/2 of author and curation rewards are locked away in steem power for up to 13 weeks.
What will that $980 or $210 per day - along with the sizeable investment that lets those voters earn those returns - be worth in 13 weeks if everyone here is only voting for their own content without concern for quality? OTOH, what will the $120 per day from curating be worth in a year or 5 or 10 years if people are voting for the best quality content they can find on the block chain in order to attract users and investors?
$980 per day becomes much less attractive when you realize that you can only liquidate $490 of it immediately, and you're getting it by pursuing a strategy that devalues your large investment in steempower.
Hi Steve, there is not doubt that curation should be the best practice from ethical point of view. But the comparison is based on purely financial point of view. I couldn't understand the reason for such a gap between curation reward and self voting reward.
Those who invested hundred thousands on steem power here are for staying long term. As you know the previously the power down took 2 years, now it takes only 13 weeks. So I guess it doesn't matter for them if it takes 13 weeks to liquidate.
Thanks for your opinion.
Hi, I'm not addressing the ethical aspect. I'm addressing their perceived self-interest. Your example accounts have about 500k and 200k steem power, respectively. That's worth about $850k and $300k. If they follow a voting strategy that leads to devaluation of their investment by 10%, they lose $85k and $34k to offset whatever they earned by self-voting. What if they devalue their investment by 20, 50 or even 80%? That's a whole lot of value to risk for a comparatively small return.
I'm not saying that self-voting never makes financial sense, just that the market places a limit on how much self-voting can be used. Exclusive self-voting is not a sustainable strategy because self voting can only succeed for as long as there is enough authoring and curating going on to prop up the price of Steem.
Hi, thanks for your inputs. By referring devaluation, did you mean the price decline of steem or declining reward pool? If you are referring to steem price, I don't think it will depend on individual users action, rather its a community effort. There are some self declared self-voter on that community, but that doesn't stop coming of new users and making good quality content.
If you are referring to the declining reward pool that we all noticed after HF19, then its not declining anymore. I have noticed the reward is not declining by time even the steem price is not fluctuating much.
By no means I am supporting exclusive self voting. I just don't understand why there such a huge gap between rewards. If my calculation is nearly correct, steemit should fill the gap as early as possible.
I do mean the price of steem, and you're right it doesn't depend directly on an individual's action, but on the aggregate of all user actions. When there is a high ratio of self-vote/curation, we should probably expect to see the price of steem go down. Whales do have more influence on that aggregate than minnows.
If I understand your question, the gap between rewards is probably because the self-voter collects author rewards and curation rewards, but the curator only gets curation rewards. They could close the gap by posting some comments or articles and getting author rewards via upvotes from others.
I have also seen a post suggesting an increase in the curation reward percentage. That wouldn't eliminate the gap, but it would shrink it.
Good point @remlaps! tiny minnow observation
I did a little experiment regarding this from a minnow pov if anyone is interested to read.
It appears that even if all you get is 0.01 per vote that you need to self vote plus curate. In my minnow stage every penny adds up. Thanks for sharing this break down.
Thanks for pointing this out. I never really thought of it this way. Now my thinking cap is on. Great post!
I have been thinking about this for last few days and I couldn't find an answer for such a huge gap in rewards. That's why I made the post. Thanks.
Well first, I love that GIF lol.
Very interesting article as I'm still very new to steemit and I didn't even know you could "self-vote".
May I know how you arrived at the screenshots you displayed in the examples?
Great article, please keep sharing!
Hi, thanks for reading the article. I guess you are referring the voting power screenshot. You can check how much voting power you have on this site https://steemnow.com.
Ahhhh I see, time to explore that! Thanks!
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Hi from - @super-grand-ad - I am upvote number 119
for codebreaker and also a new follower
I am a relative newbie joined 18 August 2017
I am a curator & replier
I upvote & follow everyone that either
upvotes or follows me @super-grand-ad
I don't see what's wrong with upvoting oneself
and trying to get as many Followers and upvotes from
followers as long as I follow & upvote them back.
From joining to the 01 september I got 22 followers
All got followed back and got an upvote from me
and those that upvote or follow me
in September, so far I have now got
72 total followers and some time in september they
will all get followed back and thereafter
will get an upvote each month on a post or a reply
that they participate in, weather mine or another steemers
Once my followers fully embrace what I am doing
there will be a point that I will not be able to respond
in Kind to new followers - But if my followers do as I do then
we will all steem into a bright future.
This is a very comprehensive article, we are still in the beta phase, who knows what add on's and features may be added to the block chain in the near future!
Yes I believe there will be changes coming. Thanks for your opinion.
This post received a 3.1% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @codebreaker! For more information, click here!
nice information, I follow you
So is this basically a big part of the reason 100% voting quantity was reduced to 10 per day?
Yes, I guess thats the reason. But it doesn't stop that way as with 10 daily vote self-voters can still make a decent amount. Maybe in future update there will be a solution. Thanks
Its a hot topic, and something most of us are interested. Im excited to see what many of the veteran users opinions are on this...
I wanted to know the others opinion too. I hope I will find others view on this.
Upvoted and RESTEEMED :)
Thank you.
For me I have to self vote myself. My vote 100% not even $0.1 . It is frustating after all the hardwork I put in a post... It is for this time being I guess.
Hi Jen, thats same case for me. But some users vote worth over $100 as I mentioned in the post. Thanks
I am still learning, and kind of just assumed that voting on yourself if tacky. Are you talking about upvoting a post? Nice to meet you.
Hi Bruce, he in this post I have discussed about financial gain of uploting own post vs upvoting other people's post. Nice to meet you too.
Well maybe they do make less, but they do get a lot of good will, @liberosist is new to me but @pharesim has upvoted a good number of my posts, of course at a low percentage, so I figure he does distribute his votes to a lot of people which I think is great.
By the way I do upvote my posts, my voting power is low so I get about 10 cents and I post about 2 or 3 times a day, so I don't think I do much harm, and also with people up voting so little nowadays I have to upvote my post so it can get at least some more viewers, because at 0 votes it's lost in seconds. And I do up vote a lot of posts also, not much money but I guess every little thing helps.
I upvote for both myself and others. Mostly others as my voting power is small. Trying to move up my rank.
Man,, I wanted to translate your article to chinese language in order to spread it to chinese community.
Please allow me to do so,upvote me if you like my action ,thank you!
https://steemit.com/cn/@incrediblesnow/curation
i have seen a user who has 7 user names posting everyday and upvoting himself -- the quality is very low and it is supported by curation trails by other whales to make even more money - the system is being devalued by the greed of the whales who are not searching for good content but instead auto curating on trails following other whales
Interesting find... I guess those users are ok and happy with the contribution they are making to the community...
But yeah, seems like after HF19 self-voting is more profitable than curating, i think steemit should find a fix for this somehow...
Maybe removing the self-upvote, allowing it only for posts and not for comments...
What is HF19
HF19 stands for Hard Fork 19. Hard fork and soft forks are update of steemit platform.
Good article! I upvoted and followed you! Please follow me back so we can become friend :D
Crazy to think how much SP those guys are accumulating per week.. Can't wait until I can do that :P
Self-voting makes you literally 4 times more.. But it's also seen as being selfish. I think a 50/50 is good if you want some decent returns
You are right, only self-voting will not help the community. Thanks for your inputs.
Only my pleasure :) We should engage in each others content more often. I trust we will talk soon.
After reading this (and comments below) I think yeah, Self-voting gives you better money... But I think it's also good to vote for others, not only good but is the best because you get more longterm benefits from them.
But I agree, if you haven't missed anything. according to these stats: self-upvoting gives you better rewards.
Wait!! did you calculate only the money you get from curation? but also the money the post you curate make too. Are the collective "profits" of you and the poster bigger than your "profits" if you self-upvote?
Thanks for noting this issue @codebreaker! You can read as many white papers as you want but it doesn't always make sense until you can see a practical example of how it all plays out... I find posts like this are helpful to a minnow like myself in getting some insight into how the mechanics/tech of the platform operate ... However, no idea why the gap either! Some techy person will no doubt have an explanation...
I think this is a very good article and well thought out. This is only my third day on Steemit, so I'm still learning the ropes, but one thing I've shied away from so far is self-voting. However, if curation along with posting original content is not sufficient to show a monetary reward, I will definitely start self-voting. It remains to be seen for me which is the better way. I'll continue to upvote others and leave comments and follow people, of course, just as I have done for your post. :)
Hi @codebreaker, I was also wondering why there is such a huge gap in incentives between self upvoting and proper curation. I took a sabbatical from Steemit for about 8 months, and now see that the curation rewards were halved. I think that one of the reasons why content creation is now weighted higher is because Steemit as a platform needs to build its online presence quicker, and one way to achieve that is to have more good content creators publishing primarily on Steemit and sharing it everywhere else online. I do agree with this strategy, even though it does create some temporary incentive issues. I am now following you.
What about if you self-upvote only to give it all (the gains) back to as many minnows as possible? Just a dumb question.
Thanks for sharing such a good post , yes i agree need to understand purly the financial benifit point of view , why those guys not using self voting , i think u missing one thing as u share those two accounts m b there are vote boosters , vote boosters getting Steem or SBD from users n giving back voting power or upvotes , so they getting from both sides from users also & from curation rewards also