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.