My Paid Upvoting Experience
I know I’m not alone in having gone back and forward with the idea of paying for votes. On the one hand it seems totally against the spirit of the platform, on the other hand it’s hard to not get a certain sense of ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ when you see other users boosting their posts onto the trending page and earning big money as a result. Or seeing users who got in early posting throwaway content and reaping uber rewards every time. After a couple of months of slogging away with articles, putting in the hours on shoots and stacking on a heap more hours writing blog posts to accompany my images and bring the ideas and articles in my head to life. In fact in January I wrote an average of just over one large article every other day – when I say ‘large’ I mean over 2000 words, sometimes closer to 4000! By anyone’s standards 32,000+ words in a month on top of endless commenting and taking photos constitutes quite an investment in time.
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The turning point
I have to say, I was actually surprised how quickly I saw some return, with a few of my posts getting curation upvotes from some big users and a couple of them even taking me to the trending page. I was hooked! But, as you all know, it’s not a straight line up to becoming a super Steemian, and after a while the buzz of the curations faded as I saw post after post go unnoticed. It was around that time I saw a post from another user on, essentially, how to make it big on Steemit. At the time I rejected the idea, considering the article to be more of a justification of that users willingness to ‘cheat’ to get ahead, than a piece of useful content. But the figures and the words lingered with me, and as I continued to post what I considered to be underappreciated posts the idea reverberated around me. Amplified by time and my sense of injustice I found myself waking up to check how an article had done and deciding enough was enough, it was time to ‘play the game’.
The rules
It’s weird, I absolutely hate being told what to do, yet I have a thing about rules. I actually quite like them, especially when I’m setting them for myself. I didn’t want to sell out completely, and the last thing I’d want is to dilute the Steemit talent pool further by promoting shitposts all the way to the trending page. I decided that I would only pay for votes on bigger articles that I had spent a lot of hours on. Single images would have to fend for themselves and rely solely on their own merit and the strength of my growing Steemit audience. Oh and I would stop when it wasn’t fun anymore. Like a responsible gambler. I also decide I would measure my success of failure with paid voting, and use my wife as a basis for comparison. She started Steemit a few weeks after me, but puts in the same amount of time and effort as I do, so it felt like a fairly good point of reference. I also fully acknowledge that my rules aren’t by any means universally correct. They just felt right for me!
Maximising my ‘investment’
If I was going to do this you’d better believe I was damn well going to do it right! So I set about learning which bots would provide the biggest returns and went to the bot tracker online. I watched the bids and selected the bots based on return. Although I quickly found that those last few minutes of bidding are worse than the last few minutes in an eBay auction for a sold our kids toy at Christmas. The truth is my well prepared and reasoned approach kind of went to shit here. I realised that I was in the wild west of Steem where fairness and justice went out of the window. One thing I did quickly realise is that every penny spent on votes really does increase that divide between the plankton and the whales. Something that didn’t really sit right with me from the word go.
Round 1
The first week I felt pretty nervous as I sent my hard earned SBD away having done my best to pick the best bots to send my bids to. That morning I had made the decision to pay for votes, set my rules and done my research. I felt like I was doing something almost illicit, sneakily subverting the community based reward system that had drawn me to Steemit in the first place. But it was ok right, I was doing it for the greater good, I was promoting work that had been shaped by hours of thinking and creating. I satisfied the nervous voice in my head until the votes started coming in, then felt my nervousness turn to excitement as the numbers racked up. I posted two articles that week, we’ll call them post 1 and post 2, original right! Wait, that feels a little too easy, we’ll call them Nigel and Phil instead.
Nigel and Phil – the Figures
So I spent a whopping 36 SBD on Nigel! I’d worked hard on him but I felt Phil was the finer specimen, so cleared out my wallet to spend a further 43.5 SBD on good old Phil. Not one to count my chickens I tried not to look at the potential payout too much until the posts cleared the 7 days. I do however obsessively check various Cryptocurrencies, SBD and Steem being my first two each time I turn on my phone. Seeing SBD surge from $5.60 to $8.50 a couple of days after my spending spree wasn’t the best feeling. A 50%+ increase is hard for anyone to ignore! At the end of the week my worries were somewhat abated when I realised my gamble had indeed proved profitable, if not as profitable as I’d have liked. The upvotes I’d paid for on Nigel pocketed me a not too shabby 41.2 SBD Payout, and a profit of 5.2 SBD or +14.4%. Turns out I was right about the sly dog that was Phil, my 43.5 SBD of votes earned me 51.3 SBD and a return of 7.8 SBD (+17.9%). For these figures I only counted the upvotes I’d paid for, not the ones the posts had on their own from the followers I had already gained.
Round 2
By the time I posted my next article the shine of paid upvotes was already starting to fade. Not least because my control subject, AKA my Wife, was pretty much level pegging with me at this point, only she didn’t have the sleepless nights filled with self-loathing. Well, that’s a tad melodramatic, but I didn’t feel great about paying for my votes. Clicking ‘Redeem Rewards’ didn’t feel as good as when I had really earned those rewards. But, I was still in it, and as such all of my SBD Eggs went into the basket of my new post. We’ll call her Shirley as I was particularly proud of her. And obviously there’s nothing more imperious than the name Shirley.
Shirley – Facts and Figures
All in. All of the accumulated SBD I had gained from my previous posts, plus what I had earned through my single photo posts and news roundups. That was a colossal (for me) 97.3 SBD! This really did feel like pushing all my chips into the centre of the table. Those butterflies in my stomach turned to pterodactyls as I watched Steem and SBD plummet in the days that followed. I’d known this was always possible and my worst fears were coming to life before my eyes. When it came to the payout Shirley staggered home with just 79.13 SBD, a loss of just over 18 SBD and 19%. Of course SBD its-self had plummeted too, but the problem is there was no HODLing when all of my SBD had been spent. 
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Quitters never win
I’ll be the first to admit that two weeks and isn’t exactly the most thorough testing, but at the end of my second week I was done. I’d felt crappy upvoting my own posts and it had taken the fun out of posting, I was posting less because I knew I was just going to pay for the big ones anyway. I’d ignored my followers and my feed because that wasn’t what was going to pay, my own SBD investment was what was going to pay out!
Hitting the ground running
When I made the decision to give up on paid upvotes I decided I was going to do things the old fashioned way. The one way I know is guaranteed to succeed. Perseverance. I started waking up to check my feed, comment on as the users I was following and interact to the max. I was going to make myself as valuable as possible in as many ways as possible, not just my articles and pictures.
Lets talk about the elephant
I know, I’m skipping a couple of big advantages to bidding for votes, and in the interest of fairness I’ll address those here. The first is the followers that getting on, or close to, the trending page earns. I can tell you, from obsessive fact and figure keeping, that the impact of upvoting my posts was absolutely ZERO on my total followers. I gained followers sure, but I gained approximately 7 new followers per day, exactly the same as I was gaining before I started paying for upvotes. There’s also the Steem Power issue. This one there’s not too much to argue with, even if you break even in terms of SBD, you gain in Steem Power. I will put a couple of counter points to you though, first of all we’re ignoring the value of liquid currency. If I had kept the SBD in my wallet, and spent traded when SBD was over $8 in that first week, and buying my own SP, I would have earned a hell of a lot more SP than I gained by paying for votes. Ok, this involved trading which may or may not be in your skillset, but even for a crypto newbie like me, there were trades to be made that nobody would have missed.
Control Subject
Oh yeah, my control subject, my beautiful wifey. Well once you take out the money I spent on upvotes I netted 150 SBD during that 30 day period, while my wife earned (unlike me, fully legitimately) 179.29 SBD. She also earned SP, roughly 75% of what I did during the same period. Not bad considering she had the added spring to her step that comes with a good nights sleep, not to mention the feeling of clicking ‘redeem rewards’ and feeling like she’d earned it!
It’s not for me. Was that obvious?
I know, I’ve probably come off a little sour. I’m honestly not at all, totally the opposite in fact. This whole experiment has completely put to bed any ‘grass is greener’ thoughts I was having. I’m still confident that the posts I put out have value, and I know that the time I’m investing in this platform is time well spent. Not least because the people I’m getting to know are pretty bloody fantastic. And that’s the other reason that I feel better in myself going it alone, that is to say without the upvote bots. Rightly or wrongly I feel that by paying for votes I was mocking all of those users who were in the same boat as me, but carried on paddling away, creating content and making friends regardless of the attention they received.
There IS a guaranteed results method
I’ve already said it. Perseverance. This is a universal truth, be it sports, careers or just interests. Those who persevere succeed. I know this in my everyday life, where I my wife and I started shooting weddings with a goal of being known worldwide in the industry. It seemed ridiculous, and many people told us as much, yet we found ourselves speaking at one of our industries biggest conferences on the other side of the Atlantic. It seemed too hard to imagine, but we kept shooting and working and eventually a magazine came through the post that we had been waiting for, the worlds biggest Portrait magazine with an article naming US as two of the worlds best wedding photographers. None of that’s intended as a brag, we weren’t necessarily more naturally gifted than the hundreds of other wedding photographers who start out each week, we were just more stubborn. So that’s what I’ll do here. I’ll stick at it, keep putting in the hours, creating content and pushing myself. Trying everything to make my mark on Steemit. I have no idea if it’s the fastest way, or the best way, but I know it will feel damn good to look back at this post and feel good about how I have made it happen. Be that in a year, two years, or a decade!
Thanks for sticking with me!
Anyway it's with that I give you the new me. Well, if I'm honest I made the decision shortly after upvoting Shirley. And since then I have made more effort than ever before to be of value in this incredible community. Thank you to everyone who's followed me so far and to all of the users I now consider friends. It's something pretty special we've got here!All Images are mine and copyright belongs to me.
Please RESTEEM if you like my work.
Please Upvote my work to help support my content on Steemit
You really did go all in, woah! It was good to read your whole experience. My upvote is not worth much but I hope the resteem brings you more followers, you’re worth every single one. If you keep up the good work and put in the time and effort, I’m sure you’re going to do good in here some day :)
Thank you so much @eveuncovered :) I think your resteem must be fairly responsible for the response this one has gotten and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it! When I logged on this morning I couldn't work out how I had gone up 20 followers, but now I get it! That's 3 days worth of followers for me!
I’m so glad that you got some well deserved attention :) So it seems that my resteem has some worth, I might need to use it for good more often :)
It definitely has some worth! I had more comments on this post than any I can remember!
I recently jumped in and tried the vote buying too. I didn't lose nearly as much as you (I didn't have as much to lose) but I still found myself losing. I might still do it occasionally just as a gambling thrill, but it's definitely not the way to make your way here.
Haha well I'm glad that at least you didn't lose as much as me! It's a tricky one for sure, for me it's a no go but fair enough if it floats your boat!
Thanks for spending the time and effort to do what I was dreading. I'm very new to Steemit, and the idea of buying votes was unclean. It felt a little scammy, the money pool is only so deep. After reading your excellent post, my thoughts have been reinforced and I will simply keep doing what I do--keep posting "good" content and keep investing in this idea. Thanks again. ~Cheers
Yeah, it's a really difficult one, like I said, there's no right or wrong answer, just the right or wrong answer for YOU!
very interesting your article. Congratulations!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it
Thank you for spending the time to write this...I am new to steem and this really speaks to me! Keep sharing and I am going to resteem this
Thanks @chrispike, really appreciate the resteem! Welcome to Steemit!
First time I've come across one of your writings. Very impressed. Thanks for your hard work. I will heed your advice. Hey at least you got one more follower out of this.
Peace
Thank you, it's always great to get a new follower and equally nice to hear you've enjoyed my writing!
Because of your effort you reach the unexpectable thing you had now, thank you for sharing your experience, I will make you as one of my inspirations, and I like your pictures and posts. :)
One thing that I learned about steemit is, do not use your sbd to promote your own posts. I spent hundreds of dollars doing so over the last 7 months, to get no where. Unless I am totally lost, I do not see the value added in doing so.
Absolutely, there's definitely no added value, my initial interest was the idea of added returns, but as you can see that didn't work out!
Chris,
I think the same things as you completely.
very nice, friendly writing. I wake up sleeping nights and check feed-in: D
I hope these efforts can reach some places in the end.
You and your wife are excellent photographers. be very happy.
Thank you for your support
Thank you @artizm! It's always so good to have your support! Yep, I do tend to spend a LOT of time on Steemit now, and I love it! I also take more photos when I'm not working professionally which is a huge bonus!
Good read. Thanks :)
Thank you!
Incredible collection of photographs here! Thanks for sharing @skiesandsports , I will follow your work !
Thank you so much, and for the follow!
As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race.
Yep, I think you - and the old saying - are right there!
Besides with your displayed talent, no need to rush, clearly your goals will be met and then some!
I know what you are talking about because I just went through the phase of paying for upvotes (I am still in this phase, this is the beginning of my second week) and it does not feel so right when collecting the rewards, this is true, but I am trying to promote the good posts only so things looks more ethical. Nice story!
It's a tricky one, I can definitely see both sides, but for me it just doesn't work ethically or otherwise! I hope your experience works out a little better!
By now it didn't, from your post I understand you had a positive ROI, in my case just a few posts did not lost money :))
welcome skiesandsports, nice to meet you!
Thanks!
This has got to be one of the best articles on steemit. Actually its incredible that you put so much effort! Thanks for sharing your experience. I can see you really put your heart and soul into your work. Perseverance! Following for sure!
Thank you so much! Feedback like that feels so much better than seeing a big number that I know I've paid for :) Thanks for the support!
I personally use them to give minnows a boost when they have something good and I think it is worth more than my .50 cent vote. I also like to use them to help my curators. It means they get a bigger piece. I get what you are saying. I also do not use a bunch when I use them. I might use one. to increase the curation rewards I am not doing it to benefit myself. When I want to benefit myself I use my sbd to by STEEM and Power Up. I get more SP that way than boosting posts, that only benefits curation rewards, in reality from my own little study.
I have a tendency of sending minnow boosters to others...
That's a really good way of doing it! I actually tried that last week but the gift tag didn't work with the bot I used so I wasted a couple of SBD. Will definitely be doing it with minnow booster in the future though, I always think my own upvote is pretty low, so its a great way of supporting others! Speaking of, thank you so much for the upvote!!
Minnowbooster is great so they know you have left it. just put the word gift in front of the url and it will leave a photo telling them they got an upgoat.
Awesome :) I'll be trying this out! (hopefully with more success than last time I tried to gift an upvote!!)
check minnowbooster.net before trying to send one to see at any given time the amounts being accepted.
Thanks! I keep doing it at the wrong time!!
Great story & beautiful images. I recognise the temptation of using all kinds of tricks and bots, but somehow it simply does not feel right using Steemit this way. All in all I think that Nigel and Phil and even Shirley must be proud of what you've learned going through the experience .
Thanks for sharing this :)
Thank you for your kind words :) It's definitely a learning experience!
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got a 68.0% @senseye upgoat, thanks to @tecnosgirl
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!
Very interesting post. As newbie I have a feeling that there are a lot more cheats than the one you tried. Which makes it quite difficult to earn something for the minnows.
Btw I prefer shorter posts, but that's just something personal 😀
That's true, I'm sure there's plenty of other 'cheats' out there! As far as posts go I think it really depends on the person, I love writing so I always feel that's a good way to give back to the community, but each to their own!
This was a great read. I've been experimenting with the bots as well, albeit on a much smaller level, but going through a lot of the same doubts that I've been experiencing with it also. I fully agree with your conclusion and I think I will follow your lead and stop trying to gain artificial exposure with the bots.
Thanks dude, it's definitely a personal call but hopefully the facts and figures can help people make their own judgement calls!
I don't know but somehow, after first mingling with the good, old entry in crypto known as "trading", I discovered steemit. I just started 2 weeks ago almost and I must say that I never bought the bots story. Didn't even turned my eye on it. I'm still baffled by the amounts of content people encourage one another to create. That's enough for me.
You were bold I must say :)
Thanks! yep, I figured if I was going to do it I would go All In!
inspring and educational. I am a newbie here. Don't know which way is up, but I hear all this talk about easy profits. I appreciate your story and its lesson. The light you shine will help me find my way. Thank you
Thanks! I'm not sure about easy profits, like most things you get back what you put in!
I'm glad I saw this post. I get annoyed when I see people posting a few words that are obviously just to log in a comment. I was curious about the bots, but had already decided to ignore a less righteous way to gain steem. Thanks for confirming that I'm on the right track and I'll just keep on keepin' on.
No worries! Good luck on your Steemit journey!
Good old slow honest growth. The numbers might be lower, but there is more than money. The satisfaction of earned reward and a guilt free sleep is priceless.
Yep, that's so true, and the followers you gain along the way will be better, more supportive, genuine followers rather then purely curation hunters!
Thx for sharing your great and honest story about buying upvote bots with us. I am thinking the same, it would feel like cheating and then steemit would loose all its fun 🔥
You're welcome! I'm so glad to hear I'm not alone!
Thank you for sharing your experience. I read all words of this article. I am newbie for a month. I am trying to contribute #goprophotography in steemit. I am thinking same as you were at the begin. I hope I will grow. Thanks for your tips.
If you have a time you can visit my page and check my works. It will make me happy.
Have a nice day...
Thank you for an honest account. It can be so discouraging to put effort into posts that take a couple of hours to write, but don't get noticed. Thank you for the age-old reminder that perseverance wins! I'm sure I'm missing it somewhere, but what is your photo business called? I wonder if we've ever crossed paths...unlikely but WPPI? Anyways, thanks for the good reminder.
You're welcome! No worries, we go by Sansom Photography, it's myself and my wife Verity. We were actually talking to Jason about pitching the talk we did in Mystic for WPPI but decided that going to America in January and March would be a bit much on top of the travel we already had booked in for shoots and talks. It sounds epic though, so many friends go each year it's always kind of gutting to see it from social media!
Hey Chris, I was just checking out your site! You guys have been all over! Singapore, Dubai...so cool! Your work has such a candid quality to it. WPPI is a blast but boy is it exhausting! Honestly I think I could go once every 3 or 4 years and be good.
What an interesting post. I admire your work and like how you write although I think Shirley should have been Gretchen. Fascinating experiment nicely elucidated and the photos are are amazing too!
Thanks @ilanaakoundi! I always appreciate your support, hmm, well she really did FEEL like a Shirley, but perhaps she came across as more of a Gretchen? Maybe a middle name?
Fantastic post Chris. You really laid it all out really well here to make it easy for people to decide whether to not to pursue this for themselves. I think based on your experince, i am going to try and stick to the tried and true method of quality and consistency. I am still trying to find my voice and I hope one day it will be heard. Until then, it's about trying hard (especially on the time aspect) and like you say, persevering. Your experiement and your writeup is very useful and I really appreciate it. Thank you as always for sharing Chris!
It's such a difficult one, especially for people like us who are still starting out, there's always low points where I can totally see why people get frustrated! Good luck dude, you'll be fine!
Today I discovered a few more things. People paying for upvotes can also be a bit annoying as they sometimes manage to make it into tending. You then think to read something interesting while it is...... 😩
I also think lots of users are paying more than they ever receive. I saw someone paying 260SBD for posts worth about $475. Guess this results in a$500+ loss. Or do I miss something?
It's difficult, but yes, lots of people do spend far more than they receive, each to their own I guess, everyone has to figure out their own way!
I think we should also try to become a voting bot. As those are the only ones that are 100% certain earning money 😁
Super impressed by the pictures! Perseverance is a skill that should be in everyones arsenal.
Wow I am impressed by your writing skills, you really caught me!
The last few days I also played with the thought of paying for votes, thanks a lot for sharing your experience!
I really wish you all the best and success in the way you are doing it. I will be happy following you :)
Greetings,
@Co-co
Btw: Will you tell us who your beautiful wife is? :D
Thanks! I much prefer doing it this way!
Course! My wife is @vtravels!
Great article . I like you also tried this for a week; and suffered the joy and despair as the price jumped up and down like a yo-yo. In the end it’s just an option to be excesised if it works for some people great. I am not sure the followers from the trending page are high quality anyway an no one who has been on Steemit for a while actually looks at the trending page; so that chance of finding anyone with value to their upvote there is slim. Thanks for perservering !
That's a good point, I think most of them are pretty empty followers that you gain from the paid upvotes. Having stopped a while back now I'm much happier this way!!
Hmmm didnt get to read this until now.... super interesting. And i like that you are even more wordy than me. Haha
Also bid bots are horrible return since you wrote this 13 days ago... not sure what changed. But i have not seen a good bid in ages
Haha I'll take that as a compliment! I get so into these they feel more like a ramble sometimes!
I'm much happier now I'm off them to be honest, I spend a lot of time on Steemit anyway without worrying about whether I'm getting a return on bid bots, I've been trying to split SBD between SP and trading recently and the returns are far better than the bots :)
Just trading with some other coins?
Yep, still fairly new to it but I’ve immersed myself over the past 8 weeks or so and feel a lot more comfortable with it now! I’m not sure I’d have the bottle if it wasn’t for the fact it’s coming from Steem so it kind of feels ok to take more risks!
Complete newbie here. Submitted my first entries yesterday night only. Fair to say I’m stilling trying to fully understand the platform. Nice read! Certainly encouraging in every possible way. It really does describe what I set to do here on Steemit. Thanks for sharing.