I’m not very good at selling myself, and normally I would skip a post like this, but today I thought I’d give it a go anyway.

To be honest, it is frustration that drives me to write this comments. Frustration about not being able to reward people for the efforts they are putting in to keep others safe.

But let me start at the beginning. A little over a month ago, I was one of the first victims of the ongoing series of phishing scams. It was my own fault: I didn’t educate myself enough to use this platform responsibly. Thanks to the effort of a whole lot of people, I managed to get my account and reputation back.
Ever since, I’ve been following up on the phishing scam, and I’m trying to raise awareness.
Since there seems to be no way to stop the scammers from stealing people’s money, I’m trying to educate people on how they can protect their accounts and stay safe. I’ve written a couple of guides that have already been buried in the dungeons of SteemIt, where all posts go after they’ve reached post-payout, but I’m trying to keep them alive by linking to them over and over again. I actively go out and search for victims and show them how to minimize the damage.

But my reach is limited. Having only 700 followers, I can’t really make a huge difference. So 5 days ago, I came up with an idea for a contest: I asked people to write their own post about the phishing scam and to tell their followers which protection measures they can take to stay safe. This way, the message would reach far more people than just my 700 followers. I promised to reward the best three with a prize. I’m paying the prize money from my own pocket - 20SBD is a lot for a minnow like me. But I think spreading the message is more important than the money.

Now, I’ve got quite some people who took the time and made the effort to write a post. And, except for the best three, all I can reward them with is a vote of max $0.14 - if I’m able to vote at 100%, which is like seldom, since it is as @abh12345 states in his comment, I am spreading my upvotes to 200 different authors every week.

I could give them a bigger reward if I would have kept my SP to myself, but I’m delegating most of it to the @newbieresteemday and @asapers initiatives, which both exist to help newcomers find their way here. I also delegate a small amount of SP to 5 newcomers, just to get them out of the bandwidth error zone.

In 2 days, the contest to raise awareness will end. But I’m not giving up. I will keep on taking initiatives to make sure the message keeps reaching more and more people.

It would be great if I could reward the people that are helping me do this with a little more than my tiny upvote, even if it is only for a week.

A delegation would allow me to both reward those people, and keep on doing what I do every day: help and motivate promising newcomers to find their way on the platform, and to encourage them not to give up, in spite of all the negatives. I like to think that generousity and a helping hand go a long way, and that a whole new generation of Steemians with the right mindset can grow on this platform, and maybe prevent it from going down because of its flaws.

I invite you to follow up on @abh12345’s comment and check out the people he nominated. Every single one of them is devoting his time here to make sure SteemIt has a future. They honestly care about the platform, they’re dedicated and think high of engagement.
Maybe they deserve it even more than I do, because I have a lot more SP than they have, mainly because I started on here with a different account, made the switch and I am now delegating the SP I earned with that account to myself.
At least I have an upvote worth $0.14, so I don’t think I have anything to complain about - lol