This article was written with new steemians in mind. The purpose is to educate others based on the misconceptions that I had when I first started on this platform.
I've seen others post about their achievements as they moved up the ranks and I wondered if it was something I should also do. I decided that posting about gaining 100 followers didn't really mean much unless those 100 followers were actively participating by commenting and voting on my articles so I didn't post anything about my milestones with followers. In fact, I haven't posted anything about any of my milestones until now.
I started out like everyone else at rank 25 and it was quite easy to move up a few ranks at first. Gradually, each rank took longer and longer to achieve. I figured rank 50 might be a good rank to celebrate, but that snuck up on me while I was too busy to write about it, so I missed that opportunity. I figured I should write something at rank 55 and that's what I'm doing now, but not to celebrate, but rather to clarify some of the misconceptions I had early on.
When I was a noob at rank 25 to 30, my votes were dust and didn't even register. At that time, I had no concept of what a whale was, other than that they had a lot of power here. Without anything to compare against, everyone was a whale or dolphin to me. I figured that by the time someone reached rank 50, they must surely be at least a dolphin! Boy was I wrong!!!
So here I am at rank 55 with a whopping 400 Steem Power, still don't have a vote slider and I'm not even a MINNOW yet! I'm still considered Plankton (I prefer the name Plankton) or a Redfish. My votes give close to 4 cents at full power.
I had been delegated 1,000 Steem for a week a short while ago and during that time my votes gave 13 cents each when at full power. From that I was able to conclude that for each 100 Steem at around $1/steem value, your vote is worth 1 cent (with 300+ Steem, I was giving 3 cents and with 1,300+ I was giving 13 cents). I am now just over 400 Steem, but my SP has not been at 100% full since, so I can't confirm if I'm able to give 4 cents now or not. In any case, that will vary with the price of Steem and I know I'm within fractions of actually being there.
Now I know that people with rank 55 are not necessarily even a minnow. Why "not necessarily"? Because RANK actually has nothing to do with your voting power. Rank is simply an indicator of how well a person is being received on this platform. Up-votes will increase your rank and flags will reduce your rank. The greater the vote-power of the person voting, the more it will affect your rank.
Your status in relation to vote-power is based upon how much Steem you have transferred to Steem Power. As I mentioned earlier, for each 100 Steem, you can expect 1 cent at current steem value. In order to drop a $1 vote, you would need 10,000 Steem. It is your vote-power (actually, 'vests', but close enough) that determines if you are a Plankton, Minnow, Dolphin, or whale.
I've read that people earn their vote sliders at close to 500 SP and assume that would also be the time one graduates into becoming an actual Minnow. Unless I get real lucky, that will still be a few months away for me, meaning it will have taken close to a year of daily activity just to become a Minnow. I have not purchased any Steem and I have not bought any votes, so my growth has been accomplished strictly by participation. I have entered and won a few contests and that has helped my growth tremendously.
I'm presenting this information for others to be able to make some assumptions about their own progress. If you have some influential friends, your growth will likely be quicker. If you don't participate much, your growth will be slower. At least this gives some kind of gauge by which you can compare against.
My next mission is to discover how long it takes to become a dolphin!
Good luck in your endeavours and keep on steeming!
I sincerely thank you for your interest!
In case you missed it, you can buy chain-link jewellery here using Steem!
Not easy. I am trying to move up the ranks myself but every steem earned is hard won. It will take a long time to get to 500sp.
Absolutely! And the more people that come to this platform, the more diluted the awards pool becomes. If I had joined last year, I'm sure I would be much farther ahead. The later people get involved, the harder it will be for them, unless the new Communities feature that is in the works helps to give greater visibility to them.
Thanks for your comment!
There are a few projects that are trying to help out the new guys. If we can get more people onto 1000 steem power or greater and who are then willing to push the new guys they might have a chance.
Also as the steem pool gets diluted the value will shoot up as there will be more demand and less supply.
I agree; that's why I wish more people would jump on board with my weekly contests and daily games in order to support each other and grow together as a community. The faster we grow, the better we can help each other.
True. It can be hard to connect with the right people on here. I'm sure there would be loads of people who would love to participate in your comps and games. The trouble is getting them to know they exist.
Hi @happyme ,
Congrats on your achievement in both rank (reputation score) and understanding of the steemit life.
My rank jumped overnight from 25 to 50 I think just because I was upvoted by pure chance and grace from a whale when I first joined.
Honestly, I thought that my post was great and that's why I received the upvote. It took me time and lots of pain and disappointments to understand that
1- The upvote was purely done by a chance of having a whale that felt generous at that min of time.
2- If I don't have connections it is very unlikely that I will ever have such generous upvote again
3- My posts may not be the top but they are not bad. So, not getting upvotes doesn't reflect my talents or abilities. Only social sucking status.
4- I need at least 500 SP to become a minnow. Meaning, being called a minnow was actually leveling up for me already and still is.
Anyway, I used bot votes but most of them (if not all) are garbage, especially the bidding bots. Not because they are inherently bad, but because people are greedy and selfish.
I tell all new people on steemit, welcome to a smaller version of real life!
Thanks for sharing and happy to know things are going well for you :)
Thanks to you for stopping by and adding such a nice reply! You and I have both experienced that miracle moment then. I think I had been randomly hit with a curation trail because the number of votes didn't match the number of views. Not only that, the votes came in on one of my zombie game posts! Not really a post I would expect such a large reward from (although that game does eat up a lot of my time each day). I think if someone had been secretly filming me when I saw the estimated reward amount, that video would have gone viral. I was dancing around and beaming for hours! It didn't bump my reputation up all that much, but nevertheless, it sure was a pleasant surprise! It just goes to show that if you stick around long enough, you could be the lucky recipient of one of those big vote-trails.
In response to your point #3: I've seen stuff posted that I believe wasn't worth even a nickel get $50 or more. Just a picture copied from the Internet and a few words (maybe 10 if that). Definitely not quality content! If I were to compare the time and effort, this post would be worth at least $5,000 then. Yet there it sits at just over 50 cents at this time. So yea... don't feel that your content is to blame for low earnings. You just haven't moved into the right circles yet. Or, your circle of friends just aren't big enough yet. I look at it this way: Today we give each other pennies; in a few months we give each other nickels. Those nickels will eventually turn to dimes and one day to dollars. It's just a matter of being patient but persistent.
Congrats on reaching rank 55. The reason why it takes longer to move up the ranks is because your reputation rank is a logarithmic function of your reputation points. More specifically, you need to increase your reputation points tenfold to see your rank increase by 9. I believe (but am not quite 100% positive) the rank table works like this:
(EDIT: Just checked and found exact numbers.) A new account begins with zero reputation points.
Yes, reputation works logarithmically as far as I know. Wouldn't it be nice if the developers actually published all this stuff somewhere so that we could all find it easily and know that this is actually how it works and not just what someone believes how it is? You know... an official document!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
You think you have problems to grouth? TRY TO POST IN SPANISH! Is hell.
I suppose it all depends on how many other Spanish-speaking users there are with lots of SP. If they are all dust, then, yes, you will struggle a lot.
There is actually one big curation community exclusive for spanish, but not strong as other english communities (at least is my perception), i think also there is a few multilanguage curators, but not much active on other things than english content (sry about my sucky english, but i hate to use translator LOL)
Translator doesn't work all that well anyway. I can understand you just fine.
Glad to hear, also writing by myself im improving my skills. Ill use it sometimes just to know how he does what i do =P
Actually ill enter to your post cuz the tittle sounds funny. I feel like a god with my 48.
I cant even imagine my ego at 55, my selfsteem rockets to the moon
Yes dear! that has been my case too. SP accumulated only by writing, posting and sharing stuff and accomplished strictly by unremitting participation within our community interacting through the content of other steemians.
Great post @happyme. Very revealing and useful info for everyone to check, read and easily digest. :)
And congratulations for your smoking new and well-deserved 55 Rep rank babe. And don't worry dear, you've been doing everything wonderfully well. As you can see, I'm barely one digit above you in the Rep rank. And yet, I have half of your accumulated SP and almost triple the time you have since joining this great platform. Therefore, you must be doing things much better than me. :)
So, even though I may continue being here some sort of weird abyssal sea anemone resting at the bottom of this platform regarding my SP figures. I will still gonna insist in perceive me and see myself merely like a tusked barracuda able to give scarcely 0.02 cents at full 100% VP. }:)
And of course dear, this post has been upvoted and resteemed by me in a jointly effort to contribute to disseminate accurate knowledge through a well-documented education and observations product of vivid live experiences.
Cheers!! :)
Thank-you for your enjoyable comment. You always bring a smile to my lips and / or a chuckle. Your support has been and continues to be appreciated and when I'm a whale I will remember those who helped me get there. (Do you think I will live long enough to reach whale status?) Ah... what the heck... I'll just give you an up-vote now and be done with it! (LOL) I feel your pain my friend and support you as much as I can. I must admit that it sure felt good to be able to drop 13 cent votes while it lasted.
Oh ¡Yeah! definitely yeah dear. Without a doubt, you'll live long enough to become into the Bluest, Strongest & Largest Balaenoptera Musculus that the steemit community has never met. :)
Thank you for your explanation! I am new(ish) to Steem so information like this of how the platform works is always interesting:-) And an upvote as well!
Thank-you. This is exactly why I wrote the piece. Unless you have a friend that already knows what is going on here, it takes a while to figure things out. I spent the first 3 weeks just reading as much as I could in order to learn what I should or should not be doing. That helped a lot, but I still had no clue about what to actually expect. I'm still learning and by passing on my own experiences, I hope to help others avoid suffering through their own education.