What strategies can minnows use to enhance their ability to earn Steem? This post is a follow-up to my post about how Steemit is a giant game.
Vote for your fellow minnows
When you log in each day, go to the "New" tab and vote for at least five interesting new posts. Ideally, in order to get a curation award, you need to vote between the 15 minute mark and the 2 hour mark. After that, your chances of getting a curation award diminishes. You also need to vote before a whale or dolphin to benefit. If you vote after them, the $$ allocated to the post increases - but all the money goes to the early curators not you.
Spread your votes throughout the day - over-voting means that your power diminishes, which is not good if you haven't much power to start with!
Don't vote for any of the trending posts on the front page
The amount of Steem distributed in any 12 hour period is fixed, because only 800 Steem is produced a minute. The more money the people on the front page get, the less the people on the "new" page gets. The algorithm for upvoting is exponential for the author - so if you upvote a trending post, they get a higher % of the fixed Steem pot for that day, but as a minnow curator, you won't really benefit unless you have voted in the first two hours before a whale. Therefore upvoting trending posts actively takes away money from minnows. Many people upvote the front page thinking this is reddit - but understand that this is Steemit and the dynamics are different.
Don't upvote any post that has earned more than $1000
Again, because the Steem being distributed in a 12 hour period is fixed, if a few people get lots of $$s, by definition everyone else must get less. Think about it this way - the daily pot is worth about $200,000 at current prices - if 90% of it goes to a few people, then the rest must be content with pennies. I've seen so many people complain about whales - but thoughtless minnow voting is partly to blame, because it exaggerates the effect of the whales. If you actively vote for someone else to get a big percentage of the pot, and as a result you make hardly anything, whose fault is that?
Accept that the whales have their fixed favorites
Most whales will only vote for a fixed bunch of favorites. No amount of moaning will change this - it's their choice and they made their chosen list long before most of the minnows joined. The best strategy is to leave them to it. Don't fret about it and don't vote for whales or the people they favorite. Instead concentrate exclusively on voting for fellow minnows.
Conclusion
Minnows can succeed by supporting fellow minnows. With each tiny curation award, you get that bit stronger, and collectively will start to have an effect.
Great post! I like how many people are posting topics like this lately. Strength in numbers.
Join our Group On Gli.ph MinnowsUnite(80 members strong!)
https://gli.ph/g/mT205P/CbFybHevfa12pvgQqtZgt50coGG6ZTyxDzDyWSXQJ7s=
Great group I have joined on this gliph. Really easy and convenient way to swim with my fellow #minnows :)
I could use some Minnow Love on my past blog!
Something I've been doing that helped me tremendously...
First, as you said, stay away from the trending pages. If you're spending time there, you're not doing much more than drooling over all the best success stories going on right now. Those stories might represent about a total of 2-4% of all the activity on Steemit. Everything else gets so far buried on that page you'd never see it, and trying to make money there is equal to the survival rate of a pigeon against a 747.
Second, stay away from New, Hot, and Popular.
The place where it's hopping all day long is...
ACTIVE.
You'll see everything that's being ineracted with at any given moment, including all the popular stuff, the new stuff, trending, hot, etc. It's all in ACTIVE. Anytime something gets commented on or edited, it goes right to the top of the ACTIVE page. That place is like the stock ticker. Keep your eyes on it!
Such good information. Catching more pearls of wisdom, Thank you
Yes #MinnowsUnite all over steemit! We must come together to level the playing field. If this post does trend on the front page that will be a good thing. It is hard enough to get the message accross and we need to even things out against the bots that randomly upvote cat memes.
Being a minnow myself, this is very helpful advice! I must admit I've been doing two of your don'ts - upvoting the trending posts on the front page and upvoting posts with more than $1000. OOPSS! lol.
Anyway, minnows unite!!
But what if this post is trending on the front page? ;-)
If it gets to the front page, stop voting!
Great advice, thanks for the post!
**Make hay while the sun shines **
Your strategy is simply good from a systemic perspective.
A fun pic for the minnowsunite group :)
The author's post is here: https://steemit.com/art/@artist1989/custom-steem-and-steemit-art-and-instructions-on-how-to-create-your-very-own-steem-steemit-gear-t-shirts-coffee-mugs-etc