Would you please vote for me at steemit.com/~witnesses because of the story I share with you in this post explaining why we need witnesses, the challenges in getting new witnesses, and my journey in becoming a witness?
When I first joined Steemit and saw the word "witness" and authors asking to "vote for me as a witness" I did a quick look into it and concluded it was too technical for me along with mining and anything else requiring a bit of coding. I quickly dismissed the entire witness program because I assumed I could not participate or it would be over my head. For most of my first month on Steemit, I ignored any request to "vote for me as a witness" because I thought someone better qualified should be doing that.
About four weeks ago, @roelandp announced SteemFest² which I initially got excited about but then realized that me making a trip to Portugal at that time would probably not work. More about that in another post. The SteemFest² post got me curious to learn about @roelandp including looking all the way back through his posts and reading his post about becoming a witnesst at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@roelandp/witness-roelandp. I was surprised to find in his post that being a witness did not purely require technical experience but was also a position of service in our community. In the reasons to vote for him, @roelandp listed activities such as organizing SteemFest, promoting Steem, and even "adding a little humor" as reasons he would make a good witness. With this new way of looking at witnesses, I realized it was time for me to rethink whether I could actually be a witness!
Inspired to try to learn Ubuntu Linux and the commands I would need to use to become a witness, I began Googling and Googling and Googling about becoming a witness. One of my recent posts is entirely devoted to collecting the best of what I found at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/launch-a-steem-witness-today. Now empowered with knowing exactly what I did not know, I started realizing that I was just a few hours away from having the technical knowledge I needed to become a witness.
Reading all the guides I linked to in previous posts gave me courage to commit to becoming a witness and motivated me to share my enthusiasm before actually becoming a witness because that would be the best place to reach other potential witnesses from. At the end of June, I launched a course on the University of Jerry Banfield named #1 Cryptocurrency Mining Opportunity which basically pitched becoming a witness during about an hour of videos explaining why becoming a witness was awesome, how much witnesses earned, and links to all of my research about where to get started. The primary audience was people watching my videos on YouTube and Facebook that were interested in mining but were not aware of the opportunity to become a witness.
One student became a witness and posted the information I shared in the course on Steemit. This post motivated another witness to get online and share his guide criticizing me for having made and sold a course about becoming a witness because the information was already freely available on Google. I understand and accept the criticism because I borrowed over $50,000 and spent six years with hardly any income to get a bachelor's degree and a master's degree which gave me all information about criminal justice which was freely available online and at the library.
Fortunately this video course solidified my commitment to become a witness which was scary because I was not sure I could actually learn Ubuntu Linux good enough to get my servers secured and operational. Amazingly the students taking my course motivated me the most to get to work because several of them were online within 24 hours of enrolling. Meanwhile, it took me a month of research, server rentals, hype, errors, and a lot of great help especially from @someguy123 to finally get my servers online! Here are my specs.
Witness
Dedicated server
64GB DDR4 RAM
2x Intel Xeon E5-2630 V3
2x 240GB SSDs
1Gbit/s
Seed
Dedicated server at seed.jerrybanfield.com
64GB DDR4 RAM
2x Intel Xeon E5-2630 V3
2x 240GB SSDs
1Gbit/s
In choosing these servers, I asked @someguy123 what I would need to be a top 20 witness because I believe a backup witness should be prepared to step in during an emergency at a moment's notice and handle a top 20 workload until the top 20 are back online.
The two most helpful guides for me setting up my witness were
- Your guide to setting up a Witness Server (STEEM-in-a-box HF19) by @someguy123 at https://steemit.com/steem/@someguy123/your-guide-to-setting-up-a-witness-server-steem-in-a-box-hf19
- Complete Witness Installation Guide by @krnel at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@krnel/complete-witness-installation-guide.
The rest of the links I used are in my post at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/launch-a-steem-witness-today. I will do another post like this soon with the exact commands I used which I hope will make it easier if you are a total beginner to Linux like me!
Would you please vote for me now as a witness by typing my name in at https://steemit.com/~witnesses as jerrybanfield because then I will have the chance to be an effective backup witness for us!
Here are a few reasons not to vote for me!
- My posts are too long and you already stopped reading 5 minutes ago.
- I have less than a week of experience maintaining a Linux server.
- After the pump and dump I did with Dash, am I really planning to stay here on Steemit indefinitely?
- With all of the time I spend being an author on Steemit, do I really have time to make a good witness too?
What are a few reasons to vote for me?
- Steemit is what I do full time now. Steemit is the #1 activity on my to do list, the #1 community I participate in, and my top priority. After my health and family, Steemit is my number three priority in life.
- Willing to ask for help with any issues I have maintaining my servers and continuing to learn about Ubuntu Linux because I want to make tutorials here and an online video course for beginners.
- Planning a new witness guide soon for absolute Linux beginners with literally every single command needed to start from zero.
- This is the community and opportunity I have been looking for during the 5 years of my business online and I plan on staying here indefinitely!
- I am prepared to act as a top 20 witness at a moments notice and my friend @jo3potato has agreed to help me monitor my servers because he has more experience with Linux than I do and one of us is almost always awake 24/7 because we are in different time zones and on different sleeping schedules.
- In becoming a witness, I hope to encourage more readers to become witnesses because we need as many good witnesses as we can get! The attrition rate over time in the top 30+ is high! With over 14,000 witnesses having went online at some point, there are about one hundred that are online today with probably only 30 to 50 having the ability to handle the top 20 workload. As we grow, we need more depth to stand up to unexpected problems and attacks from hackers who currently would only need to take a small number of servers offline at once to bring the Steem blockchain to a halt. 40 seed nodes and about the same number of witnesses in fact. More witnesses = more resilience.
- You spent this long reading this post that it would only be logical to make it worth it by voting now because you might feel good every time knowing you voted when you see me asking for votes in the rest of my posts!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH for reading all the way to the end!
Would you please vote for me now as a witness at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because this will help me get my first block and start participating?
Love,
Jerry Banfield
Warning!!!
This user is buying votes to try to game the system. Should not be voted for. Witness are entrusted with maintaining the network and doing what is right. Someone that buys votes cannot be trusted to do what is right for the network and steemit.
WARNING!!!!!!!!!
steemcleaners running scams and helping flag bullying are not to be trusted!!!
running multiple accounts and giving themselves high paying votes.
notice only the steemcleaners team upvoting this post to game the system and maintain control.
Vote youu brother
@jerrybanfield just voted you in brother!
@inventor16 thank you very much for voting for me as a witness today because I am honored to be the first witness you have voted for!
Nice post
Hi Jerry, I did vote for you. Thanks a lot for helping us learning SteemIt
Voted :)
Thank you very much Robert it was great talking to you today!
Same here! I'll hit you up for any other cool deals in the future :) I'm looking forward to what we can do together in the future!
How does jerry do so much in one day?!?! Can you stop time mate?
Keep up the informative posts.
Sure, you can have my vote ;)
@fisch thank you very much!
Easy vote.
@gigafart thank you very much for voting on me today as a witness!
Voted for you! Wish you a good time being witness and blogger on Steemit!
Thank you very much @michiel!
@jerrybanfiel upvote resteeme and good luck
@steemornot thank you would you visit https://steemit.com/~witnesses to cast your vote as a witness for me?
@jerrybanfield
I have made my friend. #jerrybanfield first
Errrr... love your videos, just trying to work out how to vote for you...
ok. sorted it and voted. listening to your video whilst reading your (different) post didn't help
To vote for the witness, would you go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and then type in jerrybanfield in the box to vote?
I'd be more than happy to have you as a witness @jerrybanfield. Voting for you :)
Thank you very much @stevelou!
Voted good content 👍👍
You are very welcome!
Well done Jerry !!
Hi @jerrybanfield, I did vote for you before I read this post.
it is an investment worth taking. you are HERE for a long ride. A great leap for steemiankind.
Keep on steemit
Keep on STEEMIT
Thank you very much @pouchon for making me your first vote as a witness today!
Just voted for you! Hope it works out
I'm following all your advice and I'm doing great! Thanks for the time you take in creating all this great content @jerrybanfield
Thank you @jarib would you please vote for me as a witness at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because you will help me represent you in any future Steemit changes?
Absolutely @jerrybanfield
You know me @jerrybanfield, I just voted for ya!! 🙌🏼 You just bring to much value and hustle to the steemit community. My second vote ever! 😎
@stackin thank you very much!
No Problem Boss :)
You just got my vote, Jerry.
Outstanding thank you very much @arekwolf!
You're welcome, @jerrybanfield, and thank you likewise.
Voted for you my guy jerry!
@alainite honored to be one of the first two witnesses you voted for here!
Good luck @jerrybanfield hope you win! You deserve it!
Ps: I just voted for you =)
Thank you very much for being one of the first to vote for me @michiel!
Voted!
Awesome Joe thank you very much for making me your first witness vote and for the awesome article about how you bought Steem!
Just voted for you! Resteemed and Upvoted this too! Hope you reach you're goal. Your videos were some of the first I watched that lead me to join Steemit. I still don't quite understand how it all works but I'm learning little by little. Quick question: How does one benefit from being a witness if so chosen?
Thank you!
@coinquest thank you for making me your first vote as a witness and asking about the benefits of being a witness! All witnesses work on behalf of the community by maintaining servers which create the new blocks in the blockchain with the top 20 witnesses doing most of the work and the rest rotating in based on the number of votes. Witnesses get paid every time we work on a block and also help represent the interests of the community to Steemit in discussions about upcoming hardforks. The pay is about 0.9 Steem Power per block with newer witnesses lucky to get a block once daily! Witness servers often host additional services available to the community.
Thank you! That helps me understand it a little bit better! There are some other things in your reply that I'll have to look up, being new to Steemit, for example - "hardforks". Thanks for the reply!
@jerrybanfield - You are the number one reason I am on Steemit platform - I learnt about Steem and Steemit from your youtube videos. I regularly see you do so much to promote Steem and Steemit. Therefore, I am certainly going to vote for you as a witness. I do not know how much a vote from a minnow like me will mean but I am definitely going to vote. Thanks for all your efforts.
If you find time, I request you to visit my blogs sometime and leave a comment. It will be a pat on my back. Thanks
Thank you very much for voting for me @vm2904!
You are welcome Jerry. You are my hero. I request you to make my day by visiting my blogs. I posted a link on your Upvote post today. Wish you all the success in all your activities to promote Steemit. Thanks
Voted for you @jerrybanfield. Nice initiative and good luck.
@riseofth thank you very much for voting for me today! I followed!
You're doing the best of the best for steemit. YOu have been providing your audience the very thing they need that is value. So, automatically you are destined to grow. I really like your blog. So I wish you to be witness and I have already vote you for the same .
Thanls a lot @jerrybanfield
Thank you @cryptonet would you please vote for me as a witness at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because that is where the witness votes are counted?
Voted for you Jerry! Hope you get to the top. You absolutely deserve it! Good luck.
Thank you very much for voting for me as a witness today @etka!
Just voted for you as a witness. You bring so much enthusiasm and excitement to Steemit, I think you would make an outstanding witness. Thanks for all you do. Please keep it up as you are of great support and encouragement to many! Thank you!
Good luck @jerrybanfield! I think you'll make a great witness!
When i saw you investing 30000$ into steem i knew you were into the long game, and we all know you are trying to increase the community, because the more people join the more value Steem has, and it's beneficial for us all. Keep on doing the work you are good at: advertising marketing, aquiring attention on the Steem project
Thank you @alin89 would you please vote for me as a witness at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because that is where the witness votes are counted?
Ok I voted.. Good luck to you and keep up the good work
Just upvoted you ... You deserve it all buddy ..!!
Thank you very much for voting for me as a witness!
Hi @jerrybanfield, we've voted for you and upvoted the post! -dt
done. I hope you reach top soon.
Upvoted and Resteemed by the xx_Votes_Plus curation trail! Want more earnings? Follow @dropahead in Streemian https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing/396 and/or delegate some STEEM POWER to @dropahead! Keep up the good work!
I voted for you. Good luck, I know you'd do a great job!
I admit I was pretty triggered when I read you were selling courses on being a Steem witness despite not actually being a witness.
I really wish people would stop jumping on this that have zero technical experience with server management or graphene at all , or any insight into the economics, or any real drive to become a witness beyond wanting more money/steem.
Please choose your witnesses carefully people, they play a critical role in the daily operations and future direction of the network.
Best of lucky with your campaign Jerry. I expect you'll be top tier by next week judging by the whale support you get on your posts every day...
Wow. What a story. I haven't voted for a witness yet, so it looks like you will be my first. I just need to go figure out how to do that. :)
You have my vote too !
Wish you best. I already voted you. I believe you are best blogger in Steemit.
First of all I would like to say that I never tired of reading your post
Second your post always encourages everyone
Am really glad about you exposing me to this great innovation,Will definitly vote for you jerry...
voted <3
@jerrybanfield I just took your class on stackskills and am looking into getting into this! Thank you for introducing me to this world. Appreciate any help and support you can provide.
@jerrybanfield I also just voted you as a witness and @someguy123 I am looking to use them for my server setup as well!
You definitely have my vote for witness. There's very few people who is doing as much as you for the Steemit community.
@jerrybanfield Just voted for you.
Voted For you to Become a Witness . Hope you get into top 50 !
Voted @jerrybanfield
I will definitely vote you jerry...
Ok man wish you happy day
What a nice report that makes me understand well.
I hope you will be a good witness :)
Voted for you....