There are some myths that you come around on Steemit daily and I commented a lot on them in the past days, so I wanted to take some time and give you my approach summed up in one post.
Myth #1: Self-Voting is bad
People tend to believe, that self-voting is only for egoists and with self-voting you will hurt the reward system. This is not true at all.
See, I prefer to have STEEM-rich followers, that’s how egoistical I am.
The more SP my followers have, the higher the chances, that I will get an upvote from them in the future, that is really worth something.
So I want my followers to be rich! Yes, I want you to be rich!
What’s the best way in the current ecosystem to get rich? Well, besides posting good content and interacting with people, it’s the good old self-upvote!
See it this way: A self-upvote is an act of self-love! To be able to love another, you have to first fill yourself up - then the act of loving another is not something you do, but it’s a natural overflowing you can’t prevent.
Your basket is filled to the top with Love and everything that is overflowing is profiting everyone else. That’s a very important life lesson.
It’s the same with self-votes here. Fill yourself up and then the overflow to others will naturally have a bigger weight and meaning.
I’m not saying to use 100% of your VP to upvote yourself, but until you become a bigger fish, you should keep about 60% of your VP for your own posts and comments. Doing so, will guarantee, that the other 40% of your VP will grow in weight more and more over time.
When you have accumulated enough SP, you can always reduce the % if you want.
Self-Love is a social act!
So please, be social and make yourself rich - if you don’t want to do it for yourself, please do it for me and all the people, who also prefer STEEM-rich followers over poor ones.
Myth #2: Bots are bad
There is also a huge sentiment over bots and most people believe them to be coming straight out of hell.
I have no feelings about bots and neither should you. It’s not healthy to attach yourself emotionally in a special love/hate-relationship with - well - basically a computer program.
Bots are simply an advertisement service for Steemit - that’s all.
It’s like Google Ads, but with benefits…
Bots are not an investment strategy, because you won’t get a big ROI anyway - so it’s not like you put 10SBD in and get 20SBD out.
Most bots are overloaded and if you are clever, have a good ad strategy and timing, you will get free advertisement for your posts.
This means, that your post will show up in the trending, hot or active sections and real people get the chance to see it, interact and upvote it.
As I said, if you are clever, you can get this nearly for free. Another way to see it is, as a cash back reward. Imagine Google giving you back 80 cent to $1 for every Dollar you spend on advertisement there, making your ads basically free.
The other cool thing is, that all the real people who also upvote your post will get curation rewards. So again, this is like Google saying, we give you a cash back, but also everyone clicking on your ad gets paid some cents too. That’s cool. I would take that one for sure.
The only case, where bots become bad, is when they are abused, which brings us to…
Myth #3: Robin Hood will save us!
There are people on Steemit, who claim to be Robin Hoods and protect the reward pool. They speak about „reward pool rape“ and tell everyone and their grandmother, that they are the good guys.
I’m sorry, that I have to tell you, that Robin Hood is a thief!
It’s even worse on Steemit, because these Robin Hoods also behave like schoolyard bullies - they will threaten and flag everyone, who dares to have another opinion or is intelligent enough to see through their facade.
This is how it works:
Some random guy with self-worth issues thinks, the best way to distract himself from his emotional pain, is to make himself look powerful on the outside. So in former times, this guy would have bought a Villa, a Lamborghini and some women to show everyone how powerful he is.
In these times, this guy buys some STEEM and decides to take this game to another level.
He wants to look like a hero to others, so he takes on the role of „The Protector of the Reward Pool“. Since TPOTRP sounds silly as a superhero name, he names himself after some political figure (just an example! nothing, that someone would really do, right?) - just to make sure, that everyone will know his name.
He then fills up some bots with SP and begins to celebrate himself as a hero, proclaiming to flag „all the bad guys“ with his army of bot friends.
Since he also needs to gain a following and people fighting by his side, he wants to post something on Steemit. The problem is, that he doesn’t know, how to write good content, nor what this even means.
So he decides to do, what he can do best: Hatred and cursing, flaming and threatening people.
There is always room for some good hate and envy, so he easily finds people to be in resonance with him. These followers will upvote and like every hate speech, because… well… because if someone who has so much STEEM/Power and shouts this loud… he has to be right. Right?
So our Robin Hood is raping the reward pool in many ways by now, while telling everyone, that he is protecting it.
First, because his posts are only filled with hate speech or just one sentence or picture, and he gets rewarded by followers, who unfortunately believe his story. He gets paid in the thousands for… well… hatred.
To make this even worse, he is also using the bots of others, to upvote his nonsense posts with huge amounts - raping the reward pool a second time and doing so, taking away in every bid round the opportunity of all other bidders using the upvote bots to get seen with their valuable content.
To understand this third rape - because it’s tricky in a very devilish way - you have to know, that when you bid a huge amount in the last minutes before a bot goes out and votes, it will reduce the value of each other bidders amount and no only steal their money, but also reducing their chance to get seen with their valuable content.
So guys, the next time you see someone telling you, that he is Robin Hood, the protector of the reward pool, please dare to look deeper.
For every $ Robin Hood is „saving“ from being raped, he is stealing a lot more. Just don’t upvote this shit. Seriously. Don’t get backdoor raped!
There you have it. Three myths. Three ways of misunderstanding. Three opportunities to see them different.
Thank you for reading and let Love guide your way! ❤️
Top post. Brave and insightful. Itwould be great to believe great posts get great rewards, if a little naive. I think it is true that 'failure cannot live weith persistence, but as you rightly said in the last post, that would have to be some determined persistence!
You the man!
🙏
I'm with you on upvoting, and I agree that you shouldn't use your vote exclusively on your own content.
The bots I'm torn on. Yes, properly used, they are a very cheap form of advertising (much better than paying to boost posts on facebook), and that's clearly in keeping with Steemit's unflinchingly capitalist ethos.
However, have you seen some of the stuff that ends up trending due to purchased upvotes from bots - if not on the main page, then in specific tags? Before you say it, I know this isn't a meritocracy, and no one steemian gets to be the arbiter of 'good' content. But people creating really great content sometimes fail to get recognition/rewards, and at the same time, anyone with money to burn can get on the trending page.
I'm totally with you. It's not fair and yes, it's not different to any other platform, where only paid content gets seen. I don't like that either, but I surrendered to play by these rules, changing them wherever I can by providing what my readers think is good content.
I would never post some shitty meme I copied from Facebook and then promote it with bots. People do that, I know. The only thing I/we can do, is play by the rules, while trying to provide the good content, that this platform and the real people behind it deserve. I see no other way at the moment...
I enjoyed this posts. I needed to hear about these three myths. I did upvote myself at first and then thought it was not a good idea. I couldn't find a decent answer to it. You've solved that one for me.
I barely grasp bots and have be wary of getting involved so that was informative. And about the Robin Hood characters, I just don't want to play that game at all. Bored with it in real life, bored with it here.
Thanks for the enlightenment. I feel a little less lost today.
Thank you @joannereid! I'm glad, that this has helped you! Blessings! 🙏
This is so eye opening! I love your post and am going to resteem it! Thank you for your words🙏🏻✨they wwnt straight to my heart!
Aww.... You are so charming! Thank you @simple.pure.katy! 🙏
Have you read my article about self-love from the past weekend? I think, that also could be something for you 😀
I’m gonna read it now! Have you checked out my blog post from today? ☺️
You mean the one about colon hydrotherapy? I hope it's not shit 😂
It’s about shit😂 nope, just kidding. I tried to keep it as informative as possible. Thanks for your support my friend, you can always count on mine too🤗
I'm more or less with you on self voting, at least for us proletariat. I feel like we have to scratch and claw to get anywhere because our good content isn't getting rewarded so any leverage short of dumping our own money in is a good thing. That said, for those who are whales, I think it is another form of reward pool rape and I'd be happy if the algorithm were changed so people can't pay themselves like that.
What I see with bots is that posts are getting upvoted without being read. This works AGAINST rewarding quality. For that reason bots should be outlawed.
Are you talking about berniesanders? Why not name names and why not expose the others who are doing the same? I think that would be helpful.
Yes, I agree, that self-voting for whales is a different topic, but the chances that this article is really read by a whale are minor 😉
I also agree, that it would be great to have quality control for bots. I would never use a bot for lets say a meme or just 2 lines of "content", but unfortunately not everyone has these standards for themselves. I see no possibility to make this a reality though, since it would require manual editorial work.
And the reason why I didn't mention any name is simply because then he and his army of fake accounts and bots would have flagged this and every other post of mine and I would have been threatened to be "destroyed" like he is doing with so many people here, when they dare to speak up, expose his wrongdoings or have another opinion.
I have witnessed this often over the past weeks and every time the result was this abuse of power.
Last week, he did this with another innocent victim here, who is German and to tell him, that I support him, I had to write my comment in German and post it as a screenshot picture to make it impossible to be translated by Google Translator - so that this bully had no chance to flag it.
This is where we are here with these kind of people and yes, it's sad...
What makes me really angry though, are the loads of people kissing his a** and upvoting 2 sentence hate-posts for $1000+ while every person with a decent IQ should easily figure out what is really going on here.
I also would love to flag each and every one of his posts, but would then get revenge-flagged, which makes this no option.
The one thing I'm doing though, is to make people aware of it and also asking people who resteem these useless hatred why they are supporting it.... What else can we do here?
Thank you @kirbyhopper!
Upvoting one's own posts, well that's just the platform default.
But what about upvoting one's own comments?
I post maybe once a day, if that. But I leave probably 5-10 comments each day. It is a real battle within myself whether I should upvote my own comments.
I have bought a ♨ Delegation last month. 1800SP for about 900USD for 3 months.
To make this investment a positive one, I also have to upvote my own comments - at least for the 3 months - and then have a look, what I really could get out of it. It's kind of an experiment for me. I do not immediately upvote my own comments though - instead I make this dependent on my VP, and if I got enough (and I'm below my "goal" of having at least 60% self-votes), I have a look at steemworld.org and upvote comments I did 5-6 days ago. So this is my "strategy" at the moment - although I haven't thought this through in the details and it feels "natural" to me.
That's a really good idea. Wait to upvote one's own comments until day 5 or 6. I think I need to plan that into my schedule. There is so much judgment on here about what is right or not to do with voting. But ultimately I see it as a feature of the platform that it allows self-votes on posts and on comments. So if you're a minnow and trying to grow, why let dolphins and whales guilt you into handicapping yourself.
That's exactly the point. ..and again, the more I grow, the more weight has may vote for you. It's a natural progression, that needs some balance.
Besides that, I want ♨ to go up to $4 - it's much more fun this way 😀
"It’s not healthy to attach yourself emotionally in a special love/hate-relationship with - well - basically a computer program."
It is decidedly so.
I have been somewhat reluctant to use bots because I rather lose money instead of gaining it. Of course, visibility is great, and using them is kind of an investment to attract readers. But with only some SBD I think twice about doing so.
I keep releasing some short pieces and commenting on other articles to raise my reputation and accumulate more SBD. And when I have a decent amount in my eyes I will use some for my SP and perhaps SBD for the bigger bots when I release longer articles.
Generally, I think the discussion about self-voting is superfluous. The only "danger" is that we upvote ourselves with the fear of being pillorized by others, hence feel guilt. There is no guilt! Do it with Self-Love and stick to it and there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty for...
I also started with only 10SBD for bots and now I got about 30SBD every other day. It works, when you just use the bots with at least a positive ROI, which in the end (and when SBD prices are going down during the week until payout) will still make it slightly negative, but when prices go up during the week (which may actually happen someday 😉) your ROI will increase.
Of course it makes no sense to do this out of greed.
Thanks for your remarks, that I appreciate very much!
He said "it's not healthy to emotionally attach yourself to a computer program" 👀😂😂😂😂 ah man I cracked up on that because some of these guys be going hard body, hating on the bots
I like the way you write and the content you post. I'll be following you from now on. Keep it up, buddy!
Thank you so much! 🙏
Another insightful post. I enjoy reading your content. The positive theme around it is refreshing. Especially for someone like me, who is new to this platform, I am glad to come across helpful content. I agree with your abundance mindset. Something I will look forward to emulate. Thanks. Cheers! :)
Very sharply analyzed. Good one. thumbsup
I am really impressed with your artical, especially about this schoolyard bullies .Lol
When I monitor their account they all get big chunk of pie from big bot services by selling their voting power... Come on bullies if you really wanna help good content go for it and upvote the good content promote them... All this fake ass robin woods doing here jealous of each others growth on steemit and wasting their voting power to downvote each other post.. i can point out their names or even i can make report card how whales and DOLPHINS destroying growth of steemit community, but if i do that!! Boom downvotes right on! Sometime it made me feel like (I am being scared little bitch) lol but I can't do much,
Seriously if don't have investment on steem power your nothing here but I knew few of you (@atomblack) doing something good and speak the truth out loud and i believe bot services really helped me out and keep promoting my content. And like you said self voting its not a bad thing, because they invest in steem and they have rights to mining steem by their own by upvoting their comments and content..
But bitches who complainted about it they selling 10000 sp for 15 steem per day! what we call this??
Thank you very much for speak about it.
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Interesting this Robin Hood-thing, haven't heard of it yet since I'm so new here. So good post, thanks👍🏼