This short article will be random ponderings, ignorant observations, and possibly stupid questions, regarding a few things that have occurred to me about Steemit.
I currently have over 5,400 "followers" here, which--as far as I can tell--means that 5,400+ people invested the massive time and effort (that was sarcasm) to click on a button, to say that they wanted to read my stuff. So far, so good. (Correct me if I'm already wrong.)
Now, I do understand the drastic differences in influence when different people upvote a post. But almost all of my posts get between 100 and 200 upvotes. Very rarely more than that, or less than that. That either means that only a very small percentage of my "followers" ever see my posts (maybe 3%), or plenty of people see them but hardly any bother to upvote them.
If I had to guess--and I am guessing here--I would surmise that how many people see it, even among "followers," depends upon how many other people are upvoting it, or resteeming it, or commenting, etc. I know this sort of thing happens on Facebook, for example.
So, even though this is obviously a self-serving experiment (I don't know how to do it without it being that), I'm going to ask that if you saw this post, and read this far, you either upvote it, or comment without upvoting, just so I can get some idea of how many of my "followers" on Steemit actually see what I post here.
And if you want, feel free to let me know, if you follow my rantings, how many of my posts tend to show up for you, without you having to go hunt them down. It doesn't seem like I'm talking to 5,400+ people here, but it does seem like 5,400+ were hoping to be in on the "discussion." Thus my pondering.
I've learned a few things about Steemit the hard way. The first primary thing people need to realize is that even at 100 people followed your feed is practically useless. There's just too much data to track it. You'll miss a ton.
The solution for that before and still a little after Steempeak.com is to use GINAbot. GINAbot can be configured to send me a notification any time you make a new post, comment, etc. That's really the only way I'll consistently see your content.
There are two ways to profit on here. One is to get a massive amount of minnows following and upvoting you. The other is to attract whales and not have to worry so much about the minnows. Those pennies from people like me (My 100% upvote is about 30 cents with 5K SP), add up quickly when you have hundreds of votes.
The main objective would be to attract a whale though who'll support you with regular upvotes or even a SP delegation. I've seen quite a few people on here secure solid support from individual liberty loving whales. It just takes time to be noticed by the right people. The other part of the puzzle is quality content, but you already have it.
Full disclosure: I saw this post from @mattclarke's reply. Within it, he used the term "voluntaryist." From our discussion on fascistbook today, you will not be surprised that the term is one setting I have GINAbot configured to search for. I'll add you to the list of people I watch all activity from though too.
If you are not already using GINAbot, please consider setting it up. It takes five minutes to be up and operational. Also, please check out my recent onboarding post. It really helps new users get started here. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask. I'll gladly assist!
Hey Larken :)
Steemit (and the front end I prefer, Steempeak.com) display posts in chronological order. There aren't any algorithms. If you post, everyone who follows you will have it appear in their feed. They may have left the platform 6 months ago. They may post without ever checking their feed, or they may be a bot; but nobody is being shadow-banned.
Currencies are valuable because they're used. If you're selling it to someone else, you're using the currency and making it more valuable, even if that's putting some downward pressure on the price.
Do what you you gotta do, it's your money.
You've posted on facebook and youtube for free for years so I know you're not here for the $$.
I've greatly benefited from that content, which is why I love being able to upvote your posts here and now.
My most recent freedom themed post made less than $10, but it sparked a lot of interesting conversations. I post on a lot of different topics, and comment on posts made by others in a lot of different topics. That has given me a heap of followers who aren't necessarily voluntaryists, who then engage with questions. You might find a lot of us, myself included, upvote your posts but simply have nothing to add.
Have you noticed on facebook, that your comments are coming either from voluntaryists or trolls? I've noticed that when I post about Steem I only get comments and likes from others who've previously posted about Steem. It's like Mark likes to put us in little bubbles. If so, preaching freedom to the freedom choir on facebook does literally nothing, (except perhaps implying to your congregation that posting on facebook is somehow useful and effective.)
What we're doing here is building the future we've been hoping for. On facebook you're getting a lot of comments, but you're not speeding up the adoption of crypto, and crypto is how we win. I'm not just here to educate people about the nature of the state, everything I do here is hacking at the root, and its really satisfying.
You are a member of the @tribesteemup community because @jamesc, the sponsor, and the founder @kennyskitchen like your work and potentially even met you at Anarchapulco 2018. You get one upvote a day from the tribe for 15% voting strength with one million Steem Power delegated from @jamesc alone, plus others from the Anrchapulco and freedom community. There are many people following a curation trail via @steemauto and upvote the same that the @tribesteemup account upvotes. That is why you often have a similar amount of upvotes.
These people have probably not read your post while others have who did not upvote. We have @jeffberwick, @lukewearechange, @pressfortruth, @joshsigurdson, @benswann and many more names you probably know.
The amount of followers doesn't say much. Networking and personal connections count usually more here. You are a popular figure on Steemit and could grow a more substantial stake in Steem Power with a bit more effort. Being in the tribe is like a basic income. Use it. :)
And join us on Discord channel as you are a member and we appreciate your input and can help you with Steem related question: https://discord.gg/vmdpp3H
Thanks for the info. That makes some things more clear.
Also, the laws of economics--supply and demand and all that--dictate that when I make less than minimum wage for writing and posting articles on Steemit (which is the case now), I tend to do other things instead. Nothing personal. :)
Well if you are only here to get upvotes and cash out with no intention of being part of the community and would rather be on other social media sites that literally pay you nothing... You will find that people that care about steem and the blockchain wont value your contribution to the blockchain... Nothing personal :).
Also... You can live stream and upload videos on dlive.io, a dApp on the steem blockchain, fyi. They also dont take 25% from your rewards in addition to the 25% that is already taken out for curation.
Also, the amount of effort that @flauwy put into responding to your questions is deserving of an upvote... He is trying to help you.
If you want rewards from the community I suggest an effort to be part of the community and upvote others that go out of their way to answer a question (In great detail might I add).
It is not like they are taking rewards out of your pocket when you upvote stuff.
If you didnt cash out every amount of rewards everytime you could you might be a whale on here with a million dollars worth of steem power literally living off self-upvoting.
You seemingly know a lot about economics but seemingly not about investing.
Also, my goal is to get the message to as many people as possible. If I'm preaching to a "community" of a few dozen anarchists here, instead of getting it out to thousands of statists, I would choose the latter, regardless of who was paying what.
I dont know your situation but I do know the situation better here. If you want help promoting your message here and how to be a larger ASSET to the community and, thus, letting the "few dozen" anarchists here promote to other social media outlets FOR you this could be a great way to do that.
You cant just come on here, throw something against the wall, cash everything out then come and complain that you get less than minimum wage for your efforts.
There is a learning curve here and a strategy to be effective.
If you want I can help, if not, good luck.
I don't have much interest in helping people that only care about what the community can do FOR THEM rather than what WE can do together.
Regardless of what your upvote is worth at the very least it is symbolic of your appreciation.
Not wanting to engage in the community and show appreciation or value for other people's contribution is a quick way to waste a lot of time on here.
You're right about the upvote for his response. He got one whole cent from mine, just now. And if I didn't need to pay bills while constantly on the edge of poverty, I wouldn't have cashed out every time. Your last comment presumes that you know my situation. You don't.
Vote the way you want. It's your SP. Spend it as you wish. You have no obligation to upvote a lengthy reply. That's one of the beautiful things about Steemit. People can support what they want.
If @jamesc wants to support a person running for political office, he's free to do it. If he wants to support someone who doesn't believe in private property, he's free to do that as well. Right, @kafkanarchy84?
That's a really great thing to read.
https://steempeak.com/informationwar/@mielia/idea-instruction-how-independent-alternative-voluntaryist-media-on-steemit-could-help-itself-out-financially
wrote an article a while back, adressing this issue, because I saw unused potential (voting power) which the alternative voluntaryist press could use for themselves, including @jeffberwick @larkenrose @dbroze @corbettreport
So there already is to a degree what I hoped for. Great to hear.
how does one get into the tribe?
One is being suggested by members to other members for their conscious work. But @earthtribe and @freedomtribe are our sister tribes and easier to join.
As a follower I have you in my feed, but because I don't always have time to check my feed your post might have gone way down my list and I'll miss it. If I remember, I'll check your page now and again, but often posts are out of the pay window. So there may be people who read, but don't upvote because it's too late. I often have accounts I think important on auto vote for this reason, but sometimes I won't get around to reading some of their posts even after the payout window.
You show up in the feeds of people who followed you. I saw this post in my feed cause I followed ya - I dig what you have been doing for humanity. I don't often read your posts but that is because I check my feed too seldomly and - I am thoroughly acquainted with your message ;)
And yes, the more upvotes you get the more likely your post will show up in "trending" and hence be seen by more people (which doesn't always mean more actual interest in your writing but often just people who hope to earn on curation rewards, upvoting posts by high profile authors before other people do).
I want to guess that many people who upvote you regularly might be people who are aware and appreciative of your work and trust you with their (auto)vote even when they don't read every post of yours anymore.
Once the big religion has been seen through by someone there isn't much more to say or read about it, except of course to all the others whose faith in authority has not yet been shaken and who are totally new to the concepts you present.
Hi Larken, I've been here almost 6 months now and have right at 400 followers. That's it. I usually watch or read all of your posts within a day or so. I've left a few comments in the past almost 6 months.
I usually keep myself pretty busy I would think I would have more followers. One thing about Steemit I believe is that as many bots there are, I bet there are more bots then there are actual people. I know of several people that have alternate accounts. Jeff Berwick, and Adam Kokesh do that. I mean if you had two accounts, wouldn't you upvote your other account and vise-verse? Making yourself more money voting yourself a little more at a time? It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of little teeanaged Indian boys in India are running several bot accounts loading up on tons of Steem, and constantly pumping up each account with upvotes upvoting the bots off each other making little at a time slowly getting rich. They need like lets say 10 bot accounts to make enough money to support their lifestyle. More or less.
There are times I see them using Steemit to lead us on another greed game based on scarcity.
Saw your post in my feed without having to scroll down too far.
I found this post because @freemarketkev resteemed it.
Posted using Partiko Android
Since the view counter disappeared it's even more difficult to get a handle on how many people actually read even half-way. You can get hundreds of votes and not a single person reading.
If I was to guess, I'd say the vast majority of your 'followers' are actually bots or ghost accounts of some sort (i.e. not real people). There seems to be a lot of that on Steemit. I'm not sure what the point or advantage of them 'following' you might be. Especially if they don't participate. But then I'm not sure about a lot of things here on Steemit... :-)
Yeah, I know some are definitely non-people, though I have no idea what percentage. And, like you said, having a bunch of fakes that don't participate--and thus have no chance to get any rewards--seems weirdly pointless. Oh well, maybe it's all a mystery of faith.
Larken, from my point of view as someone who has been a fan of yours for more than a decade: I am a Steemit follower of yours here since 2016, but I also didn't log in to Steemit between 2016 and now. So, that's one follower who didn't react to posts. Further, on my own account here, 90%+ of my followers are spam. For example, somebody called "hdporn" follows me. That's presumably to get me to check them out. Follower count does not seem meaningful.
I'm starting to think there's fairly high % of non-people. Either that or 90% of the real people follow folks and then simply don't participate. Kinda defeats the purpose of even being here, I would think...
@larkenrose I have over 500 followers. I hardly ever get an upvote. Lol. Most of those "followers" are probably either bots, or people hoping you'll upvote their content.
Posted using Partiko Android
Oh, I may have also just skewed the results of my already-unscientific experiment by including "Steemit" as one of the tags. Oh well.
Apologies, I skewed your results also... I have a curation trail of 5 that also upvoted early on. I did read this post, upvoted in the first few minutes actually, but had to go out. I'd say I sometimes read your posts, and doubt I read all of everybody's I follow.
The tags do help a ton. People have triggers setup to search for posts that use certain tags. A good example is all the automatic replies an introduceyourself post will get. It helps to post using proper tags. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more actual human readers though. Please keep in mind that you can post here and link to the post on fb and other sites. People don't need accounts on the blockchain to view posts here. I've posted tons of my authored physical security and private investigation posts on other social media to get more people to see my content here. My objective isn't to earn from it either. I am simply spreading my wisdom to help as many people as possible.
Followers don't matter, I have 600 and hardly read me about 50 if I'm lucky. Maybe comments is a better way yo know how much people actually read or sees your stuff. But a lot of your followers actually follow you hoping for some upvotes, try once or twice and them just don't read you again. That's the shitty part of sp linked votes. I found you months ago, sometimes i read your articles but just if i see them in my feed. Sorry my bad english, hope this comment helps you.
Posted using Partiko Android
I just read your post - but most votes on my own posts are auto votes and not actual views.
I only vote for stuff I've read because otherwise I might be upvoting utter crap. But I'm a freak...
Last I checked, my carcass was still biological.
;)
How long ago did you last check? You might be a cyborg and not even know it! Aaaaahh!!!! :)
I believe this is the first time one of your posts has appeared in my feed.
The feed is practically useless unfortunately. People need to use GINAbot.
I'm here, dumped fascistbook months ago and look forward to your posts on here Larken. Thanks man.
I see and read all of your posts but I do not create content myself here on steemit so I never bother to upvote since it holds no value.
To be honest I follow you but this is the first post I’ve seen in a while! Rant posts normally tent to get a bit more attention! I think a lot of people don’t follow users for their content but because it’s still new and the novelty so they just slam a bunch of follows out hoping to find authors they like or get attention from some bigger accounts! It’s not really a bad strategy but I do feel it’s not a very helpful habit maybe yes in the beginning cast your net wide and then refine your network over time by trimming people you’re not interested in!
We all talk about curating content but no one talks about curating authors
Perhaps if steemit had a reminder like you haven’t engaged with these authors in a while..remove them or see what they up to lately kinda feature it could encourage more authentic followership
Posted using Partiko iOS
My comment and vote
Larken, another thing to consider. I have found some of your writings on steemit by googling. You don't need to be a steemit member to find your stuff and read it via that method.
Steemit doesn't "notify" me every time someone I follow posts something. I wish they did.
Use GINAbot for this. See my onboarding post recently for the details.
Well, I can confess that I am busy and don't always get to read every article from every author every day. I also subscribe to Twitter, Medium , youtube, dtube, bit.tube, various Telegram chats and whatever else.
So Larken I'm sure the 200 out of 5400 are the ocasional visitors are a bit like me, pressed for time with the rat race.
Please forgive us for our tardiness.
Well, I can confess that I am busy and don't always get to read every article from every author every day. I also subscribe to Twitter, Medium , youtube, dtube, bit.tube, various Telegram chats and whatever else.
So Larken I'm sure the 200 out of 5400 are the ocasional visitors are a bit like me, pressed for time with the rat race.
Please forgive us for our tardiness.
I usually catch you on Youtube but I'm trying to learn Steemit and start using it more.
Larken,
I currently select to follow only 3 members. I've written incessantly around the web for years, never distracting myself in pursuit of so much as a penny. Through the old "elephant-talk" newsletter a Robert Fripp King Crimson shared periodical email, I became subject of a couple posts by Fripp in his online diary at DGM global mobile. He wrote a dissertation casting me as a "basement dweller", even going so far as to offer "basement dweller" t-shirts from his web store.
Those diary posts can be found here:
https://www.dgmlive.com/diaries/Robert%20Fripp/two-of-the-three-future-210916
https://www.dgmlive.com/diaries/Robert%20Fripp/david-alex-amp-robert-are-210916
In those days I had taken an apartment in Phoenix, AZ and was drinking heavily attempting to absorb something spiritual from the works of Jack Kerouac. I had no idea anyone paid much attention to what I was writing nor did I care. I've never written anything that wasn't a conversation with myself first, and I never will. Such is the nature of exercising one's virtue of selfishness. I'm not here on steemit for money, I came here to contribute my woodwords. I'm not a story of a woodchuck, basement dweller, nonhuman, white trash redneck pirate. Stories aren't real. I simply "am".
Steemit exists to exercise and facilitate a commitment to the pursuit of infinite truth or it will cease to exist and be washed away by collective indifference manifest by pragmatism (aversion to principle). Can there be anything more saturated with pragmatism than the 4 P's? Product, Price, Place and Promotion seek to exclude more than include. If you're going to chase money then you have to engage in ritualistic embrace of mediocrity. Anything too intellectual, requiring critical thinking and excellent attention span, will in your case differentiate your output to small netting folks looking for Anarchy 101. My advice: Stop playing it safe.
In case you haven't noticed you are standing on a dying planet. The screams from Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Africa, and all around the globe should be keeping you from sleep, driving you to call out the evil, the devil that the indifferent know within.
Perhaps the "Anarchapulco" crowd is morphing into a feelgood escapist hippie clone of the 60's collective obsessed with diversionary productions designed to escape full consciousness of the evil instead of confront it. Nary a mention of geoengineering in the whole lot of them. Shame on them for selectively turning blind eyes to the truth. Shame on them for fixating on less than full commitment to infinite truth which facilitates transparency in the realization that the human race can not coexist another decade with statism. Shame on them for exchanging the pursuit of infinite truth for aversion of principle in hopes of a better proximity to abundance.
What kind of people busy themselves with the pursuit of money amidst the screams of those with no shelter from the Greater Israel Agenda? Be careful what you wish for, because it won't be an achievement to enhance monetary success doing videos Like Jeff Berwick discussing his masturbation habits. Such is the nature of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. It has nothing to do with facing the reality of near-term planetary omnicide and the Zionist Agenda.
Fuck the considerate content, get back to work. Fuck the pursuit of abundance. Fuck popularity. Choose to see the warfare. Answer the screams.
PS: It's perfectly fine to continue to ignore my replies in your posts. I really don't care. I can't be paid to live on my knees. so I have to die on my feet. I don't plan to die of abundance in between.
Woodchuck Pirate
aka Raymond J Raupers Jr USA