Oh wow! Thank you for this very detailed reply! I've read it through a couple of times, but will have to do so a few times more, to fully get my head around it all.
Just my background story here: Steem is actually the only cryptocurency I never actually bought. I've been blogging on Steemit for about a year, and my $3000 or so account value is a result of dong what I love: writing about the things I love. Anyway, what I love here is the community aspect. As you can see on the banners at the end of my posts, I like to support the articles I find interesting. (Yes, steemians too, in general, but I decide on each individual post whether it gets my upvote, or if I really like it, a resteem.) I don't expect anyone to vote for my posts just because I'm in their group, nor do I do the same. But it's nice to see them share their posts on discord channels and facebook pages, as you can chat and stuff, although I rarely get so engaged these days. It's only the bike-related topics that don't really fit into any of these communities, and neither thankyoubicycle nor cycling4steemit has a facebook or discord channel or anything similar.
Most of my SP I have delegated out, to individuals from these communities. The idea is that since I don't spend enough time on-line to really use all my SP, I leave that up to these trusted steemians. Though by now I've got close to another grand of SP accumulated, so it may be time to delegate again. I'm thinking 500 SP should be good...
I really like the idea of getting whitelisted by invitation, and so I think I would be interested in trying MinnowBooster for now. As I'm typing this I'm reading through their options: delegating, leasing, buying upvotes, etc. The way I understand, leasing is done with Steem, delegating with SP, and buying upvotes with SBD. Since I barely have any Steem, leasing is less interesting for me. I think I've tried buying upvotes before, and it didn't seem like it was worth it. Now delegating... I assume that is what you've been doing, though I couldn't find any mention on white-listing. Also, I'm still trying to understand whether DLM or delegating to the bot is a better option.
But in any case, if you could have me whitelisted by invitation, that would be awesome. Please let me know which steps to take. And also, please bear with me. At the moment my connectivity is not the best, so it might take me a good few days to actually read your reply. But that would also give me a good few nights to sleep over this decision.
Thanks a bunch!
Minnowbooster has a system for people to review content. So if they approve you, someone should let you know. The paid upvotes work out better for people on the whitelist than for users that have not been approved for it. I delegate a little bit to give something back for the upvotes. I really like to retain my SP as I want to do everything I can to build a bike community here. I also try to upvote good film reviews.
And ideally, someday this stuff should work out so we all can get plenty of upvotes without paying.
Okay, so if I understand correctly, what you recommend is sending a SBD to minnowbooster each time I publish a post, to give me upvotes on that post. Is that correct? I just published two posts, so I may give it a chance with one of them. Let's see what happens. Thanks for the info, btw!
Yes, but use the interface on the website to see what SBD to send. You can deposit it, then buy votes. Sometimes you need to wait for bigger votes to be available. With the drop in SBD and steem price this past week, it may not be as profitable. I'm still trying to get an understanding of that. Also, they will only upvote posts less than 2.5 days old.
It seems that with the lower SBD/Steem price that I basically broke even after curation. That's not a big deal I guess. It gains exposure and followers. But when the prices are higher, it basically is more like 10% more than I paid once I factor in the higher value of Steem to SBD.
Edit: My last calculation was from using Smartsteem actually. I just used Minnowbooster on my newest post and it works out to a 10% ROI. Basically you get your SBD back plus some Steem Power. But keep in mind, this might be lower if you haven't made the whitelist yet.