Hi guys and girls,
for the 3 5 SBD prizes on my post on A defence of the "Four Hour Workweek"
I am gladly paying out the following people for their very constructive comments.
@wealthy-easily
@centaurmystic
@somethingsubtle
@anarchospace
Many thanks for your stories and constructive comments! I hope my reward helps you build your steemit career!
(Ok, ok it was one more 5 SBD prize than announced, too hard to choose!)
Why am I being so generous?
I wrote about the New Rules for the new economy written by Kevin Kelly.
If you read that, you'll realise that the rules have changed! Steemit.com will turn out to be an example of how in the new economy, you can't use the old set of rules any more.
Check out the below rules of that article which contain my reasons for being generous (not that I am not a great guy anyway :) )
#2 Increasing returns,
#3 Plentitude not scarcity
#10 Opportunities before inefficiencies
I am learning about these new rules just like we all are and Steemit.com is a great laboratory for me to do apply these new rules and experiment with them.
To succeed, you need to first have a platform that succeeds, so instead of focussing at this stage on earning some SBD for myself, I gladly help other Steemians along in the hope of course to build a dedicated following.
I want to make it a no brainer for you to dedicate your time and attention to my posts, so you can justify it to yourself putting serious time and effort in commenting on my ideas and posts.
Why?
First, my ideas are rough (like anyone else's). My goals for my Steemit.com blog are best described in this post.
Writing my ideas down helps me to think they need to be sharpened against other ideas and other opinions.
Second, I want to build an engaged followership. The number of followers doesn't mean they are true fans!
I want to discover my 1000 true fans, in turn I hope to become one of your true fans and help you spread your ideas! In this link to Kevin Kelly's post you will find the reason why having true fans can be life altering!
Third. Seeing the quality of your comments is a great way for me to decide if it is worth it to follow you. The curation system in Steemit is still very young and too much good stuff get's buried.
I believe commenting on each others posts is a great way too to be found.
Have a great post yourself with similar ideas?
Please reply in mine with a link to yours, if it helps me and my audience discover relevant ideas, great! I will gladly re-steem your post myself
What did I learn so far with promising a 5 SBD reward?
Sustainability of giving prizes
Unfortunately the prizes for the most part were not attracting enough upvotes to self fund the prizes,
I don't mind in this case, since I got some great ideas and opinions through the comments, most the money I distributed was whale luck money anyway I got from a comment on the HF 19.
For future posts though I need to switch the model.
I like the idea of sharing the SBD author rewards with people who add valuable and insightful comments.
They add value to my posts and ultimately to the Steemit.com platform. But I can't keep subsidizing prizes.
I will Share ALL SBD's earned with re-steemers and commenters in July (See below.)
So the prize will vary, Sometimes that will be not much sometimes it will be BIG
Although it should be minimum a few SBD after @randowhale-ing.
Is Steemit.com allowing good content to rise?
Dunno, I have done a small scope experiment and there might be many reasons why it did not take off.
But from observations it seems the upvote system has its problems, it is too easily rigged by automated voting and today there are problems with "winner takes all" effects.
It's great that the dev's are experimenting with the algorithms to find an optimum solution, and some more experiments will be needed to achieve the goals set out in the white paper:
This is from the Steemit white paper:
The challenge faced by Steem is deriving an algorithm for scoring individual contributions
that most community members consider to be a fair assessment of the subjective value of
each contribution. In a perfect world, community members would cooperate to rate each
other's contribution and derive a fair compensation. In the real world, algorithms must be
designed in such a manner that they are resistant to intentional manipulation for profit. Any
widespread abuse of the scoring system could cause community members to lose faith in
the perceived fairness of the economic system
Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: everyone’s meaningful contribution
to the community should be recognized for the value it adds. When people are recognized
for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows.
Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the
givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community
Based on my limited experience so far, I'd say there is still a long way to go.
In my case a substantial prize does not provoke more engagement, there are several problems with steemit.com becoming the platform it wants to be.
The way it is set up, it is not generating a positive feedback loop for me (yet) that invites consumers to become producers (prosumers).
What I am trying to hack together is to create my own virtuous cycle where my content provokes interaction through comments and creates re-steeming which I can reward my followers for.
Both Steemit developers and myself will need to experiment more.
From Steemit.com I would really like to see a system that calculates post earnings not just on upvotes but on comments as well:
It would need a hybrid where upvotes still count of course but are weighted by comments that generate sub-comments.
This is a better signal that a conversation is taking place and will be less easy to manipulate. (of course multiple accounts etc. but robo-comments should attract flagging)
Cute cat videos and pictures are not bringing value to the platform and should not get a snowball effect simply because of robo-voting and already established popularity. It is great that an established writer gets this automatic boost, but it should not be the only reason for post earnings, there should be a quality element too.
( my point of view, please correct me if I am wrong)
If there are a lot of upvotes without a relative increase in comments, there is a strong possibility that the system is being gamed and that the content is not truly valuable enough to discuss.
In my opinion the algorithm should favor organic upvoting over pile on effects to achieve long term quality content contributions.
Otherwise the incentive will become too large for established authors to "ride the system" and just self-vote junk content which will gather upvotes regardless of quality.
Ultimately I think it will go against the long term interest of everyone on the platform and will start to pollute the content to the point of putting off new users which will kill growth.
Follower engagement and follower numbers
I have well over 190 followers, which is great, but I am starting to doubt the value of this metric.
Despite several times announcing a decent prize, it did not seem to reach these followers or spark their engagement.
In the end I would prefer to see half the followers and double the comments.
There were posts where there was only commenter won 5 SBD by default.
This leads to several potential conclusions:
Steemit.com is still growing up, people are playing it like a lottery with the upvoting and commenting focussed on the "classic" Steemit topics of mostly which is where most of the whale upvoting seems to happen.
but not yet really engaging with comments outside of the steemit focussed content
I am sure the scope of profitable topics will grow over time, but it will need to break out of this belly button gazing before it can break through to the mainstream.the visibility of content of people you are following is too low because of the speed of the feed (the twitter feed problem)
By the way a much better way to find good content is https://beta.chainbb.com/ It is a forum outlay of the Steem blockchain and has the same content as Steemit.com but much better organised by topics and tags.
Getting visibility and long form content
Picture source: www.glynlowe.com free to share
Sometimes steemit.com seems like this picture... Being "found" in a sea of rubber duckies...
I put a lot of effort in most of my posts so far but they are lacking visibility.
Don't me wrong, I think this platform is great and results are fantastic so far but it feels it has potential for more, and I'd like to realize my blog's full potential.
We are in the hockey stick segment of the growth curve and being established now will have huge pay-off later.
As anyone, I want people to read my content, aside from the money aspect, I need the feedback to improve my writing.
Long term, I do have the ambition to generate enough income from this platform to make it self sustainable.
Meaning that I earn a decent amount per hour dedicated to Steemit.com potentially even generating a majority of my income. That would be the ultimate leverage
So I will keep experimenting to increase visibility to grow my audience and especially to encourage engagement. The follower number does not mean much if those are "empty" followers. They do not help your profile.
Promoting posts with PROMOTION button
I did it 2 times with 1 SBD each as an experiment, no noticeable result.
@Adil did an experiment with 30 SBD, not much results either.
https://steemit.com/steem/@adil/1st-day-promoted-post-test-results
@arabebtc gave a good write up about promoting posts here
https://steemit.com/steemit/@arabebtc/are-steemit-promoting-system-useful
Boosting earnings through @Randowhale ?
Excellent tool SteemVP.com, it allows you to see the stats per upvoter and follower.
Looking at the experiment I did with @Randowhale:
Using it for 8 times, I found that although initially it seems to boost earnings, those drop over time ( got 4% + upvotes which seemed to gain me 6 SBD at the time, but by the time of payout, this almost disappeared.
Total payout for 8 votes was 13.60 SBD .
Even though I got several 4% + upvotes OVERALL I LOST MONEY WITH @RANDOWHALE
That said, it can be useful initially to "seed the pot" and get the snowball rolling. So it has it's use, but don't expect to get rich.
I am still @randowhale -ing this post for the pot-seeding effect .
Solutions?
I want to get that snowball rolling and see how far and big it can go!
So I think it is time for a new experiment:
For the moment, unless you are well established, long form content is putting too many eggs in one basket.
I am going to switch strategies and create more and shorter posts for a while.
(let me know in the comments how you think about that!).
Also I want to keep rewarding commenters so on select posts I will keep sharing my SBD's earned with top commenters.
I can't keep guaranteeing min 5 SBD payouts but I am going to experiment with sharing ALL earnings of certain posts with commenters, regardless of how high the SBD share gets.
That means if you see a "hit" post of mine, you might get a BIG payout for a resteem or a comment!
As a control there will be other posts I will leave "organic" to see the difference in comments and visibility.
I will experiment in July with following format: ALL SBD's earned will be spilt between:
1 follower who resteemed it and let me know in a comment why (best reason wins)
1 follower for best value comment (measured by either (in priority) most sub-comments by other people, most upvotes or comment length) This means that a good question can also win, you don't need to make huge comments to be eligible!
If you follow me and engage, I'll happily share my rewards, keep an eye out for my posts, re-steem and comment and you will have a good chance to do well! I will announce the winners in the post itself through a replay rather than a separate post.
Questions FOR YOU!
Questions for you my followers (eligible for rewards of course :) )
- Do you think rewarding for comments is constructive?
- Do you think I should do something different?
- How else can I increase my visibility? (remember not upvotes but finding more followers who are willing to engage)
- What other incentives would you like me to see experiment with? (willling to try anything as long as it is self sustainable)
This post is about writing on steemit, and has some great resources in the comments for better writing, also ALL SBD's earned to be split amongst re-steemers and commenters.
If you liked the Tim Ferriss Article, I made a follow up you might like which I will apply the new comment reward system on:
This post is about leverage in your life and why it is so important:
Of course ALL the SBD's I earn from THIS post will also go to
1 re-steemer with a good reason in the comments why you re-steemed it
1 commenter who has a constructive (positive or negative) answer to my logic or questions in this post.
I UPVOTE good commenters too!
I am seeding the pot with @randowhale to get a good start!
This post received a 3.4% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @the-traveller! For more information, click here!
great example to document the @Randowhale effect
I just launched it and the upvote was worth 6.56 SBD right after the vote. I found that over time this goes down...
check payouts through steemvp.com great site to track upvotes etc.
I agree with adding comments to the payout algo. There are too many popular authors that are essentially guaranteed rewards, regardless of what they put up, due to the fact that they have a trail or two that autovotes them.
I also agree that having 1000 engaged followers would be the key to success on the platform. I have over 600 followers, yet there appears to only be 50 or so that can be bothered upvoting or commenting on my posts. Plenty of non following followers.
I have tried engaging minnow support's discord chatroom to meet more engageable members, but it appears to be time spent clowning around rather than discussing anything meaningful. At this point, I'm at a loss as how to find the engagement that both you and I seek.
I think that the algo, if you believe the white paper, should stimulate quality content and discussions.
A lot of comments is a more reliable signal that a valuable conversation is taking place. Obviously it needs also to be tweaked for # of unique commenters, sub comments etc. so that it is not easily gamed.
But posts with hundreds of upvotes and 3 comments? Is that really a trustworthy signal that it is worth your time?
My posts go one of two ways, decent payout - limited comments or limited payout - tons of comments. I have yet figured out why it happens that way, but I much prefer the engagement for it leads to growth of a healthy following.
The posts that had the most comments should've made the most money, not the one's that luckily ran into a trail full of upvotes. It's upside down right now. I'm sure the algo will be tweaked again and again till the devs get it right, but how much damage is being done to new subs right now?
Yes I agree it is not healthy, there should be a predictable ratio between the work you put in and the return it creates.
Everything that makes it look like a lottery is going to negatively affect engagement.
I feel that comments should be a better indicator of the quality of the post. Honestly, what excites the most people to Steemit is the concept of "free money." Of course, with financial motivation, who wouldn't want to maximize their payout with the least effort.
Find a popular post with no substance, upvote it, bam you get curation reward
Find an intellectual post where you have to actually have to think hard on a good comment, upvote it, and bam you get penalized with no reward at all.
Unless something is made to the algorithm, there will always be people looking to "game" the system to maximize their welfare, which is of course not much different from the centralized power we have in most government structure.
Some will benefit and others will cry foul.
The best way to play this game is to be in it for the long haul. Keep true to yourself and keep posting insightful articles to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
The posts that you create speaks a lot about your personality as well as the "brand" you intend to personify. Your true fans will stay. "Untrue" fans will unfollow you eventually.
I'm not sure how this will work out but I would say, give this a try for at least 5 months. If it doesn't work, you can always switch strategy and try some new. Eventually something will stick and that's when you should capitalize on your new found knowledge. :D
I hope I answered your questions. Btw, I've resteemed your post ;)
Awesome reply, already seems to be working ! I think indeed that long term quality will win out. If not on Steemit.com it will pay off in other ways.
For me writing on Steemit.com is a system not a goal. (need to write a post about that) It is a great concept from Scott Adams.
For me, even if the earnings don't materialize, (although I already made an infinite amount more than on say cough Face* Cough Boo Cough ) I will still win because I am refining ideas and getting valuable feedback. Those Ideas I can apply in my coaching, maybe online courses, ... there are ever more ways to monetize ideas.
Check out Scott Adams on goals vs Systems, it's really worthwhile
Exactly. We can think about Steemit as an investment. I don't think Warren Buffet made his billions by being a short term trader. Obviously, think about writing on Steemit as "buying the Steemit" stocks.
There's so many strategies and tactics before you run out of ideas. You can do contests, give out free SBDs, videos, and etc but I believe at the end of the day, people don't need to feel warm and fuzzy inside.
It's just plain O good content.
Then again, I might just be wrong since the world doesn't work the way I perceive it. If I'm wrong, let's just call it learning. :D
Yeah i have almost 400 followers after several months and i average 15 to 20 votes and only about 5 people actively engage through comments. Is it a strategy or politics? Id say its both.
I think it's a lot of factors all at the same time. One of the failings of #hardfork19 was the increase in minnow voting power without giving them the sliding scale for % of vote. This cut the number of upvotes down by a % that I'm not sure of, I felt a large change after the fork.
By voting less, I think it disengaged the population greatly. If you are out of votes, you will likely stop reading and commenting, for you don't plan on upvoting any more posts that day. People's strategies were changed by the HF in a decidedly negative fashion.
Noticeably so, I have people that engage but cant vote and I'm atleast thankful for that. They probably save their upvotes for their whale or dolphin steemians for reciprocation. I cant lie though, i enjoy having more "power".
The power is nice and the HF bonus payout gave me enough SP to get the sliding scale, so it doesn't affect me the way it does smaller fish. I think the threshold to get the slider should be lowered to 100SP, so people would have some greater control. I like setting my strength to 30-40% and I can give out dimes all day.
Firstly, thank you for the payout. It was greatly appreciated.
Secondly, did it make a difference? I commented because we had been talking in the other room. That I think is part of the need for Steem. More interaction outside of following the front page on Steemit.
The Slack rooms can be both informative and useful for following up posts. Perhaps this needs a better merge of tools. Obviously the steem chat wasn't so good.
My final point, which after making a few times now in the hopes that someone up top might run with it, is comments to me are the key.
Why are simple upvotes consider of more value than the time and effort of a comment?
THat part makes absolutely no sense. Once a comment is made, usually it is responded to by the original poster. This can escalate. I had a recent post of maybe 20 comments yet the post raised a massive 13cents. That's just plain Irish logic there.
The comment section should be the driver for the rewards not upvotes.
So back to the first point, no, I commented because I like your posts. If I comment in future it wont be because of the money, though I appreciate it.
hi @centaurmystic,
In the end it yours was one of the comments that answered most to the spec's of the prize so I could not leave yours out ;) .
the whole steemit.com ecology needs to grow still and develop. There are good tools, and no doubt others that will die off. I think the feed system is one of those.
There should be a way to filter the feed to your preferences, say for tags, keywords, author combinations etc.
https://beta.chainbb.com is better for finding good content I believe.
I think that quality will win out in the end. So I am not too worried that the cat video type posts are winning the battle at the moment, that is a bit of an anomaly of the beginning.
I see a lot of willingness from the dev's to pull the various levers at their disposal and see what happens.
One aspect an author on steemit.com should also keep in mind is google juice. Once the platform breaks through, a portfolio of quality posts I think should help a lot to build a following.
Since steemit.com's rank as a website is higher ranked, posts on it will have better SEO.
If you are gaming the system with posts that game the upvoting system, yeah that might gather a few bucks but long-term it will be (hopefully) easily be drowned out.
Well my steemed @the-traveller, I took the time to read with full attention from tail to tail this article, the links in it and also this specific comment you did on @neoxian post which I think is simply splendid and masterfully exposed with overwhelming coherence and very well thought out eloquence with serious vestiges of plain clairvoyance. And certainly I agree with all the points that you've highlighted in this post also. So, congratulations about that. :)
Therefore, I confirm that your true intentions for the benefit of all the steemians and the entire steemit community as a whole, rings true with the same goodwill spirit in which I also feel involved by denouncing publicly the current pitfalls and contribute to try to correct the errors and deficiencies of the platform until now and ultimately also try to do ourselves something useful and healthy to continue to keep it alive and vibrant as this community really deserves.
That's why without thinking twice I've upvoted and resteemed this post to spread massive awareness about this issue asap with my few followers & hopefully soon also across all over steemit.
Btw, the excerpt that you've selected from the Steemit white Paper in your article is definitely a strong nudge to keep people on the clearest sight of the philosophy that we all must conserve and preach all over the place.
Finally, just invite you to check my last and most recent post to confirm if we both are on the same boat here Paddling In The Same Direction. Cheers!!
Lol! Thanks for your most eloquent support! Will be checking out yours with hopefully equal attention!
I am discovering almost exactly the same conclusions that you have posted. What I see is that for minnows, the slow and steady method of earning rewards by commenting may be the best way to grow. It also grows your following at the same time.
Great conclusions! Keep on Steeming! And good luck.
Cheers! Will be checking out your profile!
Thanks. Feel free to enter the contests and play the games too.
i think like most things you can have data and try and work out what your remote audience wants but the truth is people change, adapt, get caught up in the distraction economy and end up into other things, life gets in the way, i'm happy if people still comment, people click to follow or even if they just lurk and say hello when i'm at an event -- sometimes just writing get's things off my chest, why not do it somewhere you can get a few cents! :)
i remember getting into twitter in 2006, really early days, like now a decade later with 10,000 followers, only 2/3000 engaged people but i get little traction there now, audiences change and move into other things but the data robot engines still use it to cross reference, brands too, especially when you want to be a brand advocate, being searchable across the web has benefits! :)
Thats why you use randowhale 6 days and 12 hours after you post :) It wont lose much value
I think it is useful to attract attention for the pot - seeding effect. But yeah if you just want to increase payout maybe that is the way to go...
Slight correction. 6 days and before 12 hours not after 12 hours as upvotes are not allowed by the system from 12 hours before payout.
You do it just before it hits the 6 days 21 hours mark. Yes you are correct
I think this is a really interesting experiment to preform. I also value the fact that you've taken the opportunity and risk to try out randowhale and promoting your posts. I did catch the post adil did about his promotion experiment and thought that it was real interesting that even that much $ (around $60usd for 30sbd at the time) didn't garner any reasonable reward. You'd think it would!
There's definitely something to be said about engaging comments. It's unfortunate when people don't comment. I wish they did more often because that tells me that the content I am working hard on has some sort of value for them.
I feel like what I post is interesting and I hope to some day reach the people that find it interesting as well. And hopefully get more true followers someday!
As for your questions, I don't know if rewarding comments will be successful because people seem to lack the want or need for interaction, or they think it's a waste of time? I'm not sure. This is why it's a valuable experiment in my eyes. I am eager to learn of the results.
I think one of the best ways to increase visibility is taking the time to comment on other people's blogs that you are interested in. For me, when someone actually takes the time to comment on my blog in a constructive manner, it makes me want to take a look at their own blog. If it's not a valuable comment in my eyes (like "Great post!"), I say "Thanks!" and have absolutely no urge to go look at their blog. To me, it seems like if they don't have anything great to say to me, why would they have something great on their own blog?
I am really torn on the idea of resteems. I love sharing content that I think is awesome, but then again, I really dislike that it clogs up my own blog feed. This is something I believe that the developers need to work on - being able to filter your feed for people's original content.
For your last question, what to you makes an incentive self sustainable?
PS. I have resteemed this post because I think that the idea you're rolling with is a good one. Your post here has made me take a minute to think about what you're talking about and I hope that it will make others take the time to think about whether or not their creating a good interaction with their followers. It's making me think about how I can create in a way that makes people want to comment.
Thanks Adrienne!
I think re the visibility you are right, leaving well considered and relevant comments on other peoples post are really the way to go. I do it often and in fact in commenting I find the seeds for new posts on my own. (some comments of mine get out of hand and really should be posts)
re the sustainability:
As long as I don't have to put in money extra, I can keep on going
indefinitely.
Say I randowhale the post for initial visibility.
If it earns me say 12 SBD total through upvotes, - 2 SBd for the Randowhale
10 SBD left:
I'd be more than happy all day long to split up the remainder with constructive commenters.
Because all the while my SP is growing and will build my profile.
So my bet is that this way I will still make out better than keeping the SBD for myself... if it attracts attention enough of course. Can't lose really
That makes sense!
I hope nothing but positivity for you, your experiments and content!!
@the-traveller I'm getting started on Steemit. I'm curious to know if you find more results my sharing things with people or telling things to people. I've read good articles but most are written with the author being an authority.
I just posted a blog sharing an amazing crypto-currency drama that I think most people will never know about and its free if they know about it on the app Crackle. I used my Steem Dollars to Promote it but since I am just working on generating Steem Power I'm not certain if anyone will discover it.
https://steemit.com/startup/@realestatecoach/amazing-crypto-currency-tv-series
So far I have to conclude that Promotion does not work. Prizes also seem to have limited effect. Check out #Curie or voting trails.
On here you need a collaboration mindset. The most valuable is commenting on other posts adjacent to your topic and only after establishing meaningful connections mention your post if it seems to be interesting to the author and readers. If it is good people will re steem it...
I think the best time to use randowhale is on the last day right before the payout...try it and see.
Thank you for the 5SBD, it is much appreciated. I will transfer it to my steem power to help myself grow.
I have also had problems trying to figure out how to get my own stuff out there, so to say. Despite writing a quality post about 7 times a week on average, they seem to get lost in the buzz. I also don't always notice when people who I like following post. So I miss posts I would like to read. Not everything from people I follow are things I want to read and that is probably the problem.
I'm also wondering if the 7 day rule is good for post payout, I feel that it limits the lifespan of quality stuff to 7 days and then it doesn't matter anymore. Unless someone googles it sometime and gets something from it. But it kind of discourages even going through peoples older posts, because if you upvote them, they will still not get anything from it. Navigating posts is another problem.
Ok went a bit off topic maybe. :)
go wild with it :) try @randowhale a bit, it is still fun! Reward your own quality commenters and pay it forward! Whatever you want!
Thank you for this, Jan!
It's an amazing feeling to be acknowledged by someone as having added value, however small. I can't tell you how energized I am by people like you and this growing, amazing platform we are on.
Btw, I used @randowhale services as soon as I saw "unexpected money" in my balance :) and I got two upvotes that have brought in, as of this moment, around $15. So, that's cool!
As for your questions, I think rewarding comments could become bad if the emphasis is on the reward, but as long as your mission and intention is in the number one spot, the energy of that will make it a beneficial experience.
We're in the wild west here, figuring out the world we inhabit and building it as we go along...exciting stuff!!!
Cool! Great multiplier effect. Keep in mind that it is useful apparently at the extremes:
very early to seed the pot a little and start your snowball or as they remarked here in the comments very late so the amount doesn't drop too much!
yeah, as long as I keep it manual I should be able to avoid the gaming aspect, I don't want to do random awards since I don't think it reflects recognition for effort.
If it gets really huge maybe it is worth considering splitting it up amongst various people, although it would be awesome to be able to award two prizes of say 500 SBD, imaging the PR value ;)
Yeah, I see the payout dropping, cent by cent, but luckily, the two posts are in their last day or so.
That would be great PR, it would reverberate through Steemit. I think what you're doing is awesome & I am very excited to see the results of your efforts. I'm cheering for you!
OK, I like what you are trying to do here @the-traveller you really have some valid points.
I agree that true value (not only monetary) comes through meaningful interactions. I'm not sure if your approach to this is the right one though (it could be).
You say it yourself, that Steemit seems rigged in some ways, so content without value gets upvoted. However I personally don't encourage people to make great comments in exchange for rewards. It's not a concept for me.
I think that people here should make content and comments by them selves without any monetary rewards in mind.
The main reason to post and comment on Steemit should be to create, share knowledge and have fun.
With that being said, I think it's great to see people like you experimenting with the concept and trying different approaches to help this community grow.
So I encourage you to keep doing what you do because I'm not even sure that my approach is the right one. Different people just have different objectives and things that motivate them.
I hope my input has at least some value to you.
Keep Steeming my friend :)
Absolutely. I might be totally wrong and this might be totally backfire. That is why it is an experiment for July which I think is worth having. Is it wrong to pay some people for their honest efforts?
Dunno, does not seem more wrong to me than the current upvote incentives, they seem to be totally rigged against worthwhile comment by new writers.
If the maximum curation reward comes from "discovering" a post that is guaranteed to go big through pile on effects because the author already is a high earner something is profoundly wrong. I say "don't play games you can't win (yet)"
Mind you I would not complain if I generated such a pile on effect myself , but say I get a 2000 SBD payout , I would find it awesome I pay out 500 SBD to a few constructive people EACH.
I think steemit.com operates on different rules, true generosity is what gets you ahead in the end, because there is no ceiling. It is not a Zero sum game, I'm pretty sure that what I give away today will come back to me tomorrow... I know that this sounds pretty hippie but it B a consequence of the properties of steemit as a platform : because it is frictionless and because the SBD i give away is matched with SP I keep accumulating. So my account grows while giving away half. It is basically like affiliate marketing, give up some percent to grow the whole thing exponentially.
I base this mostly on Kevin Kelly's new rules for the new economy
But l might be totally wrong, hence the experiment. It's gonna be fun finding out though !
You have some good arguments my friend, and I don't think it will backfire at you. It's just that we have two different approaches lol :)
Your comments have made me think about some stuff. It will take some days to think it through :)
This is a good and constructive way to exchange ideas, so I appreciate hearing your thoghts on this :)
Promotion wise you have to put at least $150-200 to get a top five ranking of visibility so thats why you didn't get any traction with $1.
Another thing like you said it is very frustrating to produce awesome long form content and then no one reads it. You just have to realize it is all part of the process and building credibility and showing you can provide value to the audience.
I would start networking more with Steemians larger than you, become part of niche communities surrounding things that interest you, and keep consistency producing content and eventually it will catch.
Keep doing great things buddy, looking forward to more content from you :)
Thanks for that, did not realize that you needed to spend so much on promotion for it to pay off.
I am overall not complaining, it is kind of mindblowing what you can achieve, my wife just had a post that went over 600 USD, for talking about an issue which she feels really deeply about:
It will no doubt have its ups and downs, but we are both taking this seriously and are willing to put time and effort into it. Rewards might take a while but the payoff in interaction and the improvement of your ideas already is motivating in itself.
I think networking is indeed the way to go, not just with people with larger profiles, things are going so fast that looking out for your peers who are coming up with you will also have big payoffs. That is why I appreciate @steemitBC, a great group of people who are very constructive!
O wow I did not know about them thank you for letting me know about them And I can definitely tell you arent complaining, I am just passing on some info I've learned by failing on here. Sometimes that is the best way to learn.
I will take a look at her content and definitely looking forward to more content from yourself sir. Keep doing great things :)
Would be great to have you there!
Don't forget to join the slack channel that is where the action is
(the link is in the blog profile)
Thank you buddy appreciate that. Looking into it :)
This post earned me 2.8 SBD so that will be split between 2 commenters:
@por500bolos for an awesomely eloquent re-steem
@farmstead for a good comment
They get 1.4 SBD each.
This is part of my JULY EXPERIMENT where I share ALL my SBD's earned with one commenter and one resteemer.
EVERY POST I MAKE IN JULY WILL SHARE ITS SBD's I EARN, even if that means I make 1000 SBD, I´ll GLADLY share that with people who make constructive comments.
I explain why here