Hi Steemians,

This post is full of disclosures, admissions and openness about my voting priorities and habits. I have been constantly rethinking about my voting pattern and the improvements it needed to come in line with my Steemit vision; which holds benevolence at its core. My opinion on use and abuse of voting bots and the subsequent community input has also affected the way I see my voting habits.

Image designed via Canva.com and background image is free to use from the inbuilt gallery.

I think it is important for me to share my voting habits, cleanse my practices and be a part of the solution instead of adopting a path which leads to further frustration across the platform. So, here is what I am doing with my voting weight and power.

On Curation

Maximum of my voting power has been consumed on curating comments primarily on my blog. It also includes flagging some copy-paste or spam comments to refine the comment hierarchy. But a significant portion has also been consumed on curating content outside my blog. I have regularly, and on a daily basis, voted for newbies or minnows who put in good effort.

What helps me look at content outside my blog—and this is not the only way—is when my content or username are mentioned by other users. Thanks to Ginabot by @neander-squirrel, I almost invariably check the posts I am mentioned in. However, the chance to vote or comment on that post entirely depends upon the quality I perceive it to contain.

Most Probable Plan

I should maintain my voting power above 77 % at all times and above 80 % preferably. Any content that I find worth voting for will be voted with appropriate weight such that the VP does not fall below 77 %.

On Auto Voting

I started using SteemVoter for auto voting some of my favorite authors. Most of them are newbies or minnows who I wish to support for their hardwork. A couple of people are very close to me and I wish to help them find their feet on Steemit.

However, I stopped using SteemVoter until its new version is launched. I am using an alternative for auto voting and it is working fine for me. It's an incredible service and I will soon share a detailed guide on how to use it. There are three things I am using autovote for:-

1. Autovoting at least 10 authors with different voting weights. They do not post daily and certainly not at the same time so the actual consumption of my votes is far less than the number of authors supported. One of the accounts I am voting for is @youarehope which is a charity initiative by @sircork (who is a friend, a witness and beneficiary of my autovote as well).

2. Autovoting comments by people who regular show up on my blog. You can call it a loyalty reward or something like that. I call it rewarding proof of effort. I do vote comments manually but these special people will get a vote automatically because I wish to reward their contribution whether I am online or not. The list will expand.

3. I have joined the @utopian-1up curation trail which votes on accepted @utopian-io contributions just before the big votes. It's an experiment to see how much curation reward can be earned. I've contributed my half vote to be used only once per day. Let's see.

These are the three of the uses of autovoting service that I am using. Tutorial soon, I promise!

Auto Voting Strategy

*I have set 85 % VP as the baseline to start autovoting, meaning that an autovote will be cast only when my VP is higher than 85 %. Which means than I can curate other people's blog posts/comments from 77 % to any percentage above that where as autovotes will be cast only if VP is 85 % or higher.

On Selling Vote

I have been selling vote through MinnowBooster and SmartSteem for a few months now (click links to know how). It's a profitable activity for me and a way to recover the cost of SP—exceeding 125 Steem—that I have leased so far. On average, I am getting 12-20 SBD per week from SmartSteem and MinnowBooster combined; mainly from the former.

However, selling my votes puts pressure on curation and autovoting (which is also curation). It's too much pressure to be ignored. Also, the thought of supporting people who are doing good work but not being noticed plays a vital role in deciding my selling priorities. I do wish to balance benevolence and profit, with preference given to benevolence.

Selling Conditions

My vote will be automattically sold to SmartSteem if VP crosses 89 % and to MinnowBooster if it crosses 92 %. Below 89 %, and till 77 %, all my votes will go to Steemians. Vote selling will happen only when I am inactive or sleeping.

On Self Voting

For the best part of my ealiest time on Steemit, I was strictly against self voting. I had recorded them in form of a post 8 months ago. I stopped self voting for a considerable period until I saw almost everyone doing it.

I won't self vote on comments unless visibility is of utmost important—and such a scenario has to very rare. Self voting on my posts is somethings I am thinking about. I did not vote on the last one but lately, almost all my posts have received selfvote (after the initial hour though).

Final Thoughts on Self Voting Posts

I think 3-5 self votes per week out of the 70 available votes isn't a big deal anyway. As long as I curate other properly, it is okay to vote on my posts.

Some Admissions to Make

I have been experimenting a lot with Steemit reward system and the various economic opportunities it presents. Because of this extensive experimentation, I have been able to teach thousands of people about different aspects of Steemit, as well as different services with economic benefits.

But there are some admissions that I wish to make.

• Lately, I made vote selling sort of a priority and tried to keep my VP near the threshold where my votes could be sold. I have been earning 5-7 SBD in three days.

• This vote selling meant that even if I still curated a lot of authors, I could not do it too generously or with high voting weights.

• I stopped autovoting for some days to preserve my VP for vote selling. Another reason was that I needed to get my voting plan sorted out. It is sorted out now.

• I am as concerned about making money as anyone else. I do wish to receive good rewards on all my posts. To make it just, I put great effort in all my posts and comments. Despite my wish to earn money, I cannot be unfair or abusive.

• I do not enjoy flagging. I do it only for the sake of this platform. Meanwhile, I am making more efforts to educate people on how not to get flagged.

• I started using voting bots in December. Like self voting, I avoided them for a long time unless it became a necessary evil. I use them on my best content and only for promotion purposes.

These are some of the things I wanted to share with you.

Conclusion

I don't know what my audience make of this post but I shared it to let people know about my voting habits and the reasons behind them. I am sure that people having trouble with managing their voting power will learn a thing or two from this post.

Luckily, I was able to capture this beautiful moment: 3333 followers.

As someone with a rising following and recognition, I feel it is important to be transparent. I also wanted to share the techniques and services that I use and the purpose behind their use. Now that my strategy is out, I would request you to give your feedback about it. If I need to change anything, please let me know.

Kindly extend generous support though your resteem and upvote.

Steem on!