HardFork19 gave smaller accounts more power.
There are lots of people who have gone from having a vote worth nothing or only pennies to almost a dollar or multiple dollars.
In my case, my vote went from being about $.15 to $3.50 at full power (I think. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's close enough to that).
With this newfound power, people are naturally going to upvote themselves, perhaps more than they did when their posts were worth less or nothing. It's only natural: the drive to give yourself some "free money" is strong, and with several votes per day to be doled out, people are perhaps being very greedy or precious about their votes.
I'm going to explore a little bit about what are the advantages and disadvantages of self-voting -- at least as far as I see it.
Self-Voting Blog Posts
When you write a post, you have the option of automatically applying a vote to it.
The box is below the text entry field, on the right side:
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This image is like Inception... I'm fixing that spelling error right now.
When checked, your blog post with be accompanied by a full-powered upvote.
PRO: The Tip Jar Effect
It is a well-known fact that if you put money in the tip jar at before the store opens, customers throughout the day are going to be more likely to leave a tip themselves.
This is the psychology of Social Proof: the psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation; so if people see that others are doing something, they're more likely to do it themselves, even if the origins are artificial.
So, by starting out your post with an upvote, you not only give yourself the value of your own vote, you also give your post momentum, because people will be more likely to upvote a post that is making money.
CON: No Curation Rewards
As I understand it, automatically self-voting your blog posts will get you no curation rewards.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but you do not receive curation rewards for upvoting posts that are less than 15 min old, and you receive twice the curation rewards for upvoting posts that are older than 30 minutes.
The sweet-spot for curation is exactly 30 minutes because you get in as early as possible with the maximum amount of potential earnings.
There are some people who like to wait until this mark to upvote their own posts, so they can gain that curation reward.
In all honesty, this isn't going to make a lot of difference unless your post makes more than a hundred dollars, because your portion of the curation pie will be so small that it doesn't supersede the benefit of the tip-jar phenomenon.
Self-Voting Comments
This one is a little iffy.
So, the way that comments are displayed under a blog post is by value: comments can be upvoted, and the more they are worth in dollar amounts, the better placement they have in the comments section, with the most $$$ valuable post at the top.
It is simply a fact that if your vote power has a substantial dollar value, you can leave a comment on a popular blog post and then upvote it and it will get more exposure at the top of the section.
I'm not entirely sure what the cons are in doing this besides organic community perception: other users might think it's unseemly to upvote your own comment for any reason, including getting it placed higher in the comments section.
In any case, this is something that you can do.
My Thoughts
Steemit allows you to upvote your own posts.
There are different approaches you can take, with different advantages and disadvantages, so what you choose to do with this power is completely up to you and what your goals are here on Steemit.
Personally, I like to start my blog posts off with an upvote to get the tip-jar effect. It's true that I usually get a decent amount of votes for my posts, and I could wait until that 30 minute mark to get curation rewards on top of author rewards, but my posts still earn a very modest amount of money per post, so I consider it more worth it to get the tip-jar ball rolling.
If your account is the size of @papa-pepper, @stellabelle, @lordvader, or @trafalgar, and you can expect a regular payout for your blog posts in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, then I would wait for that 30 minute mark to upvote yourself, because you'd be making a good amount back in curation rewards on top of your author rewards.
What do you think?
Did you learn anything from this post?
Or did you notice all the things that I probably got wrong?
Go ahead and tell me what you think about all the self-voting we are seeing going on after HF19. Do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing?
I was about to upvote, but it's only been 8 minutes. Comments being sorted by dollar value as a default was new to me. Good info!
We crossed the 15 minute mark so I upvoted your post @shayne
What do you think of using whaleshares and/or randowhale to create the tip jar effect and saving to self-vote until 15 or 30 minutes?
Not always reliable, imo.
I hadn't heard about randowhale until recently, and I don't really see a problem with it if that's what people want to do. It probably would work pretty well with the tip-jar effect, especially for the smallest minnows.
Yes I think I will upvote my own comment right now!
I believe self voting is okay. It's your SP, your $$$. There's now an even more demand for SP. Though it's also great to upvote other people's stuff and share the wealth
lol, look who upvoted himself to get higher in the comments section :p
hi
and look who upvoted you 100 % to share the wealth LOL
You are a good man... maybe too good.
(doesn't know what that's supposed to mean)
Thank you :D
and there it is, people.
hi
I agree, but like you said, with the caveat that to truly be part of this community you need to be upvoting other quality posts as well. To me that is a big part of the community.
true that :) I want to share the wealth as well, not just give it all to myself
You're one of the good ones for sure :) Now if only I could get that slider so I can start upvoting comments as well. I'm close!
you'll get there :) no worries. thank you for the compliment :)
Should be real soon, just need a few more payouts! Then I can get back to rewarding people for engaging in comments on my posts, one of my favorite parts about Steemit.
have fun :D
Yes I learned a lot. I used to be totally left wing about steemit. I am maturing in my thinking ;)
Wow, well explained to a 4 year old. Thanks
I only self-vote on certain circumstances :) gotta save the steem power for good posts
I'm pretty sure this is incorrect, because votes in the first 30 minutes are shared with the author, which in this case would be yourself!
For reference:
Link: Voting between 0 and 30 minutes
Link: New Curation Reward Algorithm: Penalty to Early Voters
Hehe, I think maybe you are overthinking it in the case of new accounts. Before HF 19 I was upvoting a lot of comments of my own because noone else did and so I got to the top of the heap . No consideration whatsever to earning since I often did not even see a return. After HF19 I started pay more attention.
l have to say that I have comments that paid much more then my so far 14 long form posts made TOGETHER . Before HF19 it was a lottery , now there is a bit more predictability which I think healthier .
For me it comes down to the fact that if you put effort in the comment, you want a maximum of people to read it, so WHY NOT upvote your own comment? Yes you give up some curation rewards by doing it earlier but if that means your comment is read first it can earn much better author rewards ! Upvoted myself, lets see if it works out !
:))))))))))))
If you have great Steem Power I think you should upvote your own posts and comments. I don't find anything wrong with it as long as you also contributing with upvote for others. But that's just my thoughts on it. Thanks for a great post as always @shayne
Yeah, some people might wind up in an echo-chamber of their own greed, but that'll eventually run out of gas because you need injection from the outside community.
Another very well written post about how things work here on steemit. Thank you @shayne
I've found it very helpful and informative.
You are very welcome. I'm glad it was helpful :D
I didn't know you can self vote your own comments, thanks for the info.
Amazing post honestly it help us to understand how upvotes work, good job
hope to see more
So should i wait 29 minutes to upvote? Thanks for sharing.
I don't know exactly when, but I think 30 minutes is the sweet spot.
Thanks for the reminder, upvoted!
Thank you it was very helpfull
thanks for sharing.
I believe this is right now if you are the author then you get 100% of the value of what the curation would have been.
I was worried about this prior to HF19. I have actually but expressing this for weeks now. It turned out to work out just like that. But i think the change to 4x power and the linear rewards did help the minnows too. How i do it is I do auto upvote my post but then spend a lot of time voting other people who are deserving. Like yours. I upvote up to 700 times a day. I range from 7% to 100% depending on if they are a minnow and deserve a lil extra nudge or if the content is just that amazing. Thanks for the post.. Good topic and conetent and info.
Oh, so are you saying that you get 100% curation rewards for upvoting your own post no mater when you do it?
yea the author of the post would get all the curation, no matter who the voter is, if voted on right after a post is submitted. So this would be as the curator you would get 0% but as the author you would get 100%. I hope that makes sense and I hope i am still right in this.
great post! thank you. I myself do not go upvoting my own posts. But thank you for the timing to vote a post. i m new here and have still a lot to learn.
i like posts that teach me stuff. thanks =D
I'm a fairly new user, more likely to comment than post. I don't usually up-vote myself but my vote has so little value it really doesn't matter. If I had more power, I think I would use it mainly to show appreciation to creators of great content and thank those who comment on my posts. The tip jar effect is a very interesting idea and I'm sure you are right that it gives a boost. Thanks for posting.
A new user who spends their time commenting rather than posting.
Smart ;)
Yes great information! i think that option should be deactivated :/ I'm always forgetting that and vote my self..
If you just check the box you can deactivate it yourself. It will stay that way until you check it back on. :)
Hum.. Ok, i will try it!
No problem with self voting, I don't like when people upvote their own comment to waaay more than the post is currently making.
About the 30 minute time:
At 0 minutes, the author gets all the curation from the vote.
At 3 minutes, the author get 90% of the curation from the vote.
...
At 30 minutes, the author get 0% of the curation from the vote.
But, the first person who votes gets lots more curation than the 10th person who votes, etc...
I have always not voted for myself (in the first 30 minutes) to allow other people to get the curation reward. But, I have always voted for myself. I had 40 votes/day, and I would feel a shmuck for not voting for myself. I put lots of effort into the post, I should acknowledge it, sort of thing
Now that I have 10 votes/day, I am unsure what I will do.
Are you saying I got it backwards?
Not really... I would say you got it right for the wrong reason.
It is that before 30 minutes the author gets a portion of the curation.
At 0 minutes, the voter gets 0% of the curation vote.
At 3 minutes, the voter gets 10% of the curation vote.
At 30 minutes, the voter gets 100% of the curation vote.
But, if you could get 100 Steem * 10% for voting at 3 minutes
as opposed to
Getting 2 Steem * 100% at 30 minutes, which would you do?
This was implemented to "give humans time to read the post"
So that bots wouldn't vote at 0.001 seconds after posting.
Not sure if that worked out all that well.
My opinion is that it is ok to upvote yourself as long as you are also supporting the community by upvoting other quality posts or comments. Supporting just yourself to me isn't what this community is all about. At least not in my opinion.
Gotta support this community. It's such a good one :D
It really is, I mean, even the trolls are at least amusing. None of the racist, sexist, religious bullshit everywhere else, and by religious I mean the hate speech stuff.
I can see that there's an increase in that sort of stuff here, too... but even those folks for some reason are more amiable here than on, say, Twitter of Facebook.
Thanks for the helpful information , I'm going to give it a try
Love the post man keep it up!
I don't see nothing bad in upvoting your own comments. Especially if you want to say something really important this is a good chance to be on top of the list.
Solid reasoning in here. I'm gonna bookmark this post for reference.
Just wanted to say thanks for the info. Good analysis. 👍🏻
Great read. I am still new to Steemit. When I first read the upvote your own post I unchecked it and thought "that seems lame to upvote my own stuff". But, then I realized that most people do leave it checked.
Great information here @shayne. I didn't know about the 30 minute sweet spot, which I find interesting. A post can go a long way down the feed in 30 minutes, so those first few minutes are still important to start getting upvotes.
I also forget to untick the upvote option in new posts. Is there a setting to keep it off by default?
Being new in these parts I didn't realize at first that you even could upvote your own post. Then I realized you could and thought it was kind of egotistical to do it. Now, thanks to this, I realize why people do, or don't, do it. So much to learn. Thank you for being one of my many teachers.
Great information! Thanks for sharing! @oklaprepper @weetreebonsai @volcanosquad @raincountry
I actually though that it just a way to get your post a head start (especially for newbies) since it is picked by default.
Fantastic info. Good help to all. Will apply accordingly.
It's only my opinion that self voting stuff--it seems that in case the maturation date of 7 days had made your article/s no upvote, means it never get any profit then your self vote will place as basis for you to a get bit of reward for the article. Hope someone in the admin will clear this matter to us. Why they put an option there for self voting? Thanks :)
and what about upvoting others?