I've been a Steemian for about a month!
Imagine that!
There have been a few times that I felt defeated and wanted to quit.
I worked hard on all of my posts and, had it not been for those running the minnow support initiatives, I may have picked up my toys and gone home.
It was very disheartening to pour my soul into producing good content only to receive a pittance for the effort. It seemed I was a speck of plankton that jumped into the pool to feed the big fish!
I saw post that were drawing huge amounts of revenue and I failed to see the value! What's going on here?
I needed to educate myself.
Where do I go if I need information on a topic? Yep! YouTube!
I poured over how-to videos until I found some real winners. I picked three that I learned the most from, @jerrybanfield, @joeparys, and @brandonfrye.
The number one thing all of these individuals stressed is the necessity to produce good content.
Whatever your genre is, strive to be the best! Take time to put together good post and edit, edit, edit until it is as perfect as you can make it.
If you consistently produce great content, you will be discovered. I'm still working on this.
Then there is self promotion.
The most disheartening thing I saw when I first started posting was my work appearing at the top of the new list and then getting
b
u
r
i
e
d
in the volume of new post entering the blockchain.
I'll never be discovered this way! "There has to be a way to at least get on the trending list for a short period of time," I thought.
"Ha!" the promotion tab, "I'll do that!"
That was expensive and I quickly found that I didn't get many upvotes or comments for the money spent.
Then I discovered voting bots. Is this ethical??? Whales selling their votes to the highest bidder?
Consider for a moment the number of individuals begging the big fish to at least read one of their post. I envisioned that scene in Finding Nemo , of the gulls saying, "mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!" Except I imagined a bunch of minnows leaping from the pool screaming "pick me, pick me!"
That had to have been annoying for the whales.
Thus, voting bots were invented and Steem Bot Tracker was born!
Now minnows can risk their funds to self promote their content and have it stay at the top of the trending, and hot list long enough for a few people to notice. They just have to have the opportunity to see it first!
And it is a considerable risk, if you happen to bid on votes that aren't profitable, and fail to attract votes from your peers to compensate for your loss, then you lose money.
If you happen to post crap for content then you will lose money! Or will you?
Enter the opportunist, abusing the reward pool! It didn't take long for a few unscrupulous individuals to catch on that they could post garbage, wait until the eleventh hour and bid up this spam for a profit.
The more conscientious voting bot operators decided to limit accepting bids for post older than a certain time. I think the consensus is a post older than 3.5 days old shouldn't be allowed to bid for votes. This, at least gives people the opportunity to down vote crap.
This is also why, when you find something that is obvious garbage you should VOTE IT DOWN! Too many people don't take this responsibility seriously and allow crap to continue without repercussions. Do the right thing and take a stand against spammers.
There are many voting bot operators that care more for profit than protecting the integrity of the platform. This has angered a certain disgruntled cat (@grumpycat). This guy/gal/group has taken it upon itself to force them out.
Unfortunately his tactics are unjust. I know, I had one of my best earning post clobbered by his considerable down vote because I happened to use a voting bot that allowed a posting age of more than 3.5 days.
The post in question was only minutes old when I bid it up, but the cat doesn't care about that. He can't fight the bot operators directly because of their power so he targets their customers.
He must have read The Art of War because his tactics are very successful! If you can't fight the power, fight the power base, in this case the minnows whose bids support these bots.
Still, losing that money hurt. I no longer use bots that aren't limited to 3.5 days, on account of I work hard on producing good content and don't want to steal from the reward pool. I don't want the attention of this bully cat again either!
Then there is curation, or upvoting and making comments on other's post!
This is where I try to build a rapport with those folks that were kind enough to drop in and read my post and upvote or comment!
If someone took the time to drop in and make a meaningful comment about my post, then I'm going to upvote that comment! All it cost me is a smidgen of voting power that recuperates over time!
I'm not talking spamming either. Like this guy:
hotpacks (14) · 3 days ago
Upvoted ☝ Have a great day!
$0.00
1 vote
Reply
I did a quick check of steemd.com and found that he hadn't upvoted my post at all.
A look at the comments tab on his blog page. It showed that he had made the exact comment, claiming he had upvoted content, for about fifty other post!
By the way, that one vote showing up there was mine...a down vote from me for spamming! Instant flag.
If someone takes the time to leave you an intelligent reply, for gosh sakes, upvote that comment...encourage them to leave more comments! That's how you build a relationship with other steemians. And upvoters and commenters get 25% of the final payout distributed among the curators.
I take the time to look at those who comment or upvote my blog page and review their content! Most of the time I find some great stuff.
I will leave a comment on their blog thanking them for visiting my post, with a hyperlink to the article of mine they commented on.
Back on my page I will respond to their comment and leave a hyperlink to the post they wrote with a short remark about why I enjoyed it!
Others looking at my post, will get a heads up on someone that is worthy of their attention!
It's all about helping each other out!
It will build your reputation fast! Look for ways to help others....you will be rewarded!
Be generous with your success and it will come back to you.
Consider delegating some of your steem power to a reputable voting bot or use MinnowBoosters Steem Voter to vote for your favorite Steemians automatically. You earn rewards for this.
Support initiatives that encourage new users on Steemit.
Focus on providing value to the community and let the rewards take care of themselves.
Steemit has a steep learning curve! As of this post I haven't found a Steemit for Dummies book anywhere. Youtube and more often now DTube is my first source of information.
If you use "steemit" in your search string, you can dig up countless articles on how to boost your votes and followers.
NEVER, never, never, beg for upvotes or a resteem or followers on other people's blog pages.
It is acceptable to promote your own work at the end of your post. Why not? If you can't believe in yourself enough to promote it then who will?
Try using a neat gif like the one at the bottom of this one.
I learn something new every day, but these are a few of the things I've discovered. I hope you find them useful too.
Very useful post, thank you, I've bookmarked it (in case I forget about it). I was considering re-steeming but I fear the topic might appear awkward in the list of my posts. Anyway, I've been here much longer than one month and I still have a lot to learn and a lot of digging to do. I've only today learned about the grumpy cat and only today I've discovered the very detailed infographic of Julian Gonzalez aka @jga about how the rewards get channeled and split between the author and the curators depending on the time ... and he has other very instructive posts
I checked that out! Thanks for letting us know! Good stuff. Carry On!
This article arrived in time ! I have been thinking to start a new line of blog .. and I was thinking to read about how to promote my posts to get initial attention base. Then this post popped out to me :) it is very informative as a beginners guide as its title suggests , however, I would like to ask your help appointing the best top bots you recommend if you arevable to do . I appreciate 🙏🏼
I don't know if there is a best....you just need to get on Steembottracker.com and watch for the best opportunities...I like boomerang and the others that limit post to younger than 3.5 days.
Thank you 🙏🏼 I didn’t know about this suite I started exploring there :)
It seems like mr. @grumpycat noticed this post, good thing he upvoted AND resteemed it AND luckily didn't flag this hahahah. BTW you've stated the matter very well. Since steemit is decentralized the community should take the issue in its hands, although the early bird will always get the worm if you know what I mean. Happy steeming bro!
Day-um! He did! I donno if I want his attention...good or not! LOL! Good points there my man! CARRY ON!
On a side note - there are bots that don't operate on bids, they just upvote you when you send them sbd :) and usually the profit is guaranteed to be like 200% or more. Bots like these are @minnowbooster, @tipu or @randowhale.
Usually you can also invest in those bots for income :)
Thanks for that useful information! I've seen them listed at the bottom of steem bot tracker, I think. I delegated to minnowbooster a few days ago. I'm planning a future post about how to delegate SP to boost income......just starting to research that.
So it seems bots may be the ticket to treading water and staying alive as a minnow, will keep in mind the 3.5 days old post bots only as it does make sense. Got to give those whales a chance to down vote if they choose.
How do you add GIFs to the bottom of your post ?
Well, first, make sure it is free. then you can right click on it, do a copy image then paste it in your editor. Example this image:
Will look like this as code when pasted into your editor:
https://steemitimages.com/DQmXmdadCYFMH2MEcHc92CYHHhVCUyCzqEUw4V3GXxWUosF/bar1.PNG
There are many great post on using the Steemit editor. A couple favorites of mine are this one buy @thinkagain and this one by @itadakimasu there are tons of others. I usually enter a search like... "how to center a picture in steemit markdown editor?
I hope this helps..Thanks for the comment! CARRY ON!
thanks for the detailed reply, really appreciate it. :-)
I love this:
Some keep begging. But thanks for this post. It was very imformative.
Please, keep doing what you do. It is beneficial to many.
Yeah, annoying, right?
I didn't know upvoters and commenters get 25% of the total payout distributed among the curators. I thought it was just the curators getting 25% of the author's payout. Thanks for this post @beekerst! Indeed its a steep learning curve for newbies on this platform. To think I enrolled in @joeparys' course on how to blog on steemit.
Yeah, well....this is what I found in the FAQ :
How is the reward pool split between authors and curators?
Up to 25% of a post's payout is awarded to curators (the people who upvoted the post) as a reward for discovering the content. The other 75% is awarded to the author.
If curators vote for a post within the first 30 minutes of it being created, a portion of their curation reward is added to the author payout. This portion is linear to the age of the post between 0 and 30 minutes. As an example: upvoting at 15 minutes will donate half of your potential curation reward to the author.
And if your comment is upvoted, and it should be if it's brilliant, not spam you get a share too like it says here from the FAQ:
Yes, comments that are upvoted can earn rewards just like posts!
Source: Steemit FAQ
Any would-be guitar players here should check out @deeherald 's post ---->here great opportunity!
I didn't check the FAQ. Hahaha! My bad! And thank you for promoting my post. I didn't see that coming.
WOW! excellent your explanation and totally agree it is about helping each other, I invite you to go through my new drawing Here and Thanks for your support
Hey hey! My talented friend! Hey guys if you want to see an awesome artist at her best, check out this girl! She is the BEST! Click her link above to see how she did this!
Friend is incredible the support you give me, thank you very much!
Dude we should have more people like you over here.
Really nice post :)
Thanks for the kind comment!
How do u know what bot to use and can u use more than one bot ? Just curious. Appreciate your post thanks
Check out this web site it has a list of all the bots and shows which ones adhere to the max post age.....use only those with max age of 3.5 if you don't want to be hammered by the cat, I always wait for bots that have a profitable bid....they will show up as green and I try for those with a 5 minute window before the payout. It doesn't take long to catch on. If you wait long enough a profitable opportunity will come around. I liked your photo of the boat in the water.
You can use as many bots as you want.
"Focus on providing value to the community and let the rewards take care of themselves". love this statement in your article ... and therein lies the key to growing anf\d getting results. Sticking to the fundamental principles of life... they always win.. thank you.
No, thank you my friend, for such a kind comment! I love the wisdom you bring to the community.......great post right ----------> here! CARRY ON!
This is a very useful and informative post for minnows.
Thanks for your kind reply! HOLY BEJEEZUS! Guys if you want to see some awesome talent go here and read this little story!.....it is so moving...this girl has talent!
I am flattered.
This is a post that I needed to read. I agree that it is really hard to get noticed on Steemit. I guess the one thing to take away is that if you love what you're writing about keep writing. Readers will know its worth and it will get the attention that it needs.
It's great that we have a platform that is able to reward its users, however with these kind of rewards brings about a responsibility not to abuse them.
Keep up the awesome work @beekerst.
i wish you the best of luck
Hey hey, @biggordo! Thanks for the reply my man! I was just sifting through your post! Like this one! I'm thinking a guy could get rich following you! CARRY ON!
Lol Thank you. Thats what I looking for and I didnt find it anywhere. Please make another post like this with you vision for what all steemers are interest. I wish you luck friend.
The best source for leaning how to steemit effectively is the Terms and Conditions. Lots of people don't know the rules and as a result they down vote someone who has a lo more voting power. You can't get help if you don't know that this world is a form of anarchy, which means you have to be able to take care of yourself and knowledge is required to do so in a virtual world.
Here is an old post I wrote before losing my wfi as masnoncerritos: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@masoncerritos/the-steemit-model-as-masoncerritos-is-beginning-to-understand-tos-magic-lol
Your article contains a lot of information and guidance. Not only it is constructed in a good way but it is also easier to understand. Thank you for writing this. Us new steemians really need this.
Thanks for your kind comment...! You shall do well...stick with it and Carry On!
This post has received a 31.03% upvote from @msp-bidbot thanks to: @beekerst. Delegate SP to this public bot and get paid daily: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP Don't delegate so much that you have less than 50SP left on your account.
You got a 43.89% upvote from @inciter courtesy of @beekerst!
You have been resteemed by @resteemy, courtesy of @beekerst!
Want to increase your following? Read more about me here
Great info.
Thanks!
Thanks @beekerst
✔ Adding to my list of things to do while steemit surfing...
Yeah...it's a good cause but a drain on your voting power....perhaps the system can be tweaked to fix that flaw.
so a 100% downvote costs you 2% voting power?
I absolutely LOVE your authenticity and your Heart Consciousness. We indeed have a lot learn about how to help and support one another. Delighted to connect with you!
My pleasure! Delighted as well! CARRY ON!
Wow!
You did really well for yourself there, in relatively short time?! I can not wait to reach 50+ myself, 4 months in, slowly getting there hehe...
Anyway, thanks for all the tips, I will put some of them to good use 😊🤗
I'm glad you found value there....I've been working hard to get this thing rolling.....Just need all of us to get noticed! If we work together we'll get up there with the big fish!
Well of course no one is flagging bad stuff. You basically only lose doing that unless you know for certain that others do the same, only then you can all benefit from that.
As it stands now using your voting power to flag will leave you with less power to upvote, give you no chance to gain from the already sparse curation rewards and risk receiving flags in return. Unless you're the Steemcleaners or someone similar the chance to get recognition for your good intention is rather low and without others flagging trash and bad content you're for the most part just losing power that way, unless you're not voting much anyways.
What we'd need is a standardized way to reward people for justified flagging. If you report someone abusive to the Steemcleaners you get rewarded for that, it's actually a fairly decent way to contribute to the community while also getting fairly decent rewards for it. If the same could be said about normal flagging I'd assume a lot more people would do it. From what I can tell the Steemcleaners already have their hands full with work to do, so I can't really say everyone should just start reporting abuse to them from now on, as that would probably result in too many reports to handle all that well, but I might be wrong.
And about the bought upvotes, I really don't know what to think. I understand that there's a demand for bought promotion, however the risk you're talking about I'm not really seeing. I find it simply unfair, that it has basically become the norm to buy upvotes for money you're making back a week later due to the value of the upvote. Sure, everyone can do that, but the amount of mediocre or bad content which is listed way higher than actual good original content always makes me sad. I highly respect anyone who didn't bring a huge following and still managed to get attention here without the use of bought upvotes, because I think that's a really hard task actually. I'd go as far as saying I'd prefer people to use their own upvotes as promotion, because that would at least mean they had to buy enough Steem Power to have a noticeable stake in this system, which can help the currency a lot in the long run.
Good points right here ..... rewards for policing the system!!!! I can get behind that!
yes hotpacks he is active one a reported him to Steamcleaner a few days ago. wishing more people understand it with the importance and answers and voting up comments. Also when people comment, you must vote for the post.
then both parties are communicates things work. and am coming back.
Yeah, I think a down vote is as important as an upvote. If we don't police the platform they will get away with robbing the reward pool.
That's the problem with grumpycat, he flags indiscriminately without looking into a person's background. He puts shit posters and good posters in the same basket and doesn't care. It grinds my gears.
I noticed the post age times are all blank in Steembot tracker. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes?
I don't run that website. Maybe a temporary bug/maintenance.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to post that. I am brand new on here and trying to figure it all out still. Appreciate your tips and advice! Keep it up
You bet! I hope you do well here! Carry On!
Woah! Breathtaking it take me a minute reading your blog, hahaha😄
I enjoyed reading your beginners guide, it gives me a big help on how will i improve my post. Thank you for sharing😊
Interesting post. Thanks!
I hope it was helpful! Gorgeous picture right there! Carry On!
"If you can't believe in yourself enough to promote it then who will?" I love your words they are encouraging and inspiring. You left a powerful message for every steemians. It makes me believe that I can promote my work not begging anyone to resteem it. I've used bots before but also I stop bidding because Im no longer sure if its really helping me, I want my words to be heard as it is,not because it has a great value at its side but I want my words to be notice naturally. Bots are great sometimes for promoting blogs but if your words are noticed with the help of your followers because they found it nice then it is way greater.
I agree, but in the beginning, if you aren't seen then you will never be discovered!
Sometimes that is the hard part of a beginner. Being unnoticed. Anyway, every steemians started on that, before they got the attention of many. I think that is already part of being steemians.
very informative
Thanks
I don't know, I'm pretty wary of this Grumpy Cat character, especially after seeing so many people state they've been flagged by him despite following the 3.5 day rule.
As for the spammers, the problem with reporting them is the fact that many of them have higher reputation scores than the legitimate accounts do, and if we flag them, they can literally destroy our accounts by flagging all our posts to oblivion.
Only the biggest accounts have the power to bring those spammers down, you can't expect newer accounts to be able to do this. I wish I could just flag those spam posts, but I know I'm putting myself in the crossfire if I do.
Moving forward, I'm just going to report them to Steem Cleaners and let them handle it. Its better than starting a cat fight and being harassed endlessly.
Thx great info
Thanks!
Thank you for this post. Good to know someone else feels the same when starting at steemit.
I'm late to the party, but thanks so much for this. I thought I just hop on, write some of my travel stories, ideas, journal. Meet some cool people. Possibly make some money but wasn't sure about that. Now I'm finding there is a whole "behind-the-scenes" thing I had no idea about that is pretty confusing.
Thanks for breaking some of it down. For now I'm probably just going to focus on writing and editing, ease into this steempower stuff.
Nicely written article and worth a follow. Not only for the post, more because of your accounts about entries
good work! keep doing it
SPAMMER instant flag!
thanks for giving me TWO opportunities to flag you!
nice post! keep it up
Here is a classic spam example...go to this guys blog and check out his comments and then look at his replies...Cheetah bot tags him as a plagiarist he deserves all of our negative attention....he even commented twice here with spam...dumb ass!