Okay first of all, I get it. If you have high Rep and have Contributed in so many valuable ways at Steemit..well many times you will have higher payouts on blog posts compared to others. Regardless of the quality of the Content. I get that is just part of the nature of Steemit and the social media platform it is.
But...
We really should strive to lessen this disparity with payouts in comparable content whenever possible. Not saying it can be easily accomplished and I do not have any specific solutions. But we need start a dialogue about this. Maybe there is one going on but we really need to focus on it in an ongoing basis for the future.
This is What I saw when I first Came Here
Well, when I first came here 6 weeks ago I saw the trending page where some people were making thousands of dollars. .I read some of the articles and a lot of them talked about Crytpo prices and strategies in buying them, There were also some ones with pretty elaborate contests, talking about the direction of Steemit, charities etc... I thought well I am new here so there must be some really redeeming value with these articles that I cannot understand ( because I'm..well new lol)
Case and Point...
But recently I saw an article written by a Steemian with a very high Rep who wrote a Review of a recent Movie. Now first of all I think this Author did write a very sound and very good Review on a popular recent Movie. He provided some good insight and information that many might not know about. Mainly concerning some of the characters in the movie and the facts behind them. Like I said a well written Article. Also I realize this highly reputable Steemian has done a great deal to help others and help the platform grow. I totally get that. And I'm sure he has worked his butt off to get where he is at . Probably might even be doing side projects to help Steemit and does need financing to accomplish that. Which is totally commendable and understandable.
I am a pretty experienced writer and content producer. Based on my experience and just going on the merit of his content alone , I would have give him a nice $15 to $20 for the article , np .
But here is another article by a Steemian who doesn't have quite the Rep and influence as the one above.
Let me disclose , I personally know this Steemian. But whether I consider him a friend or not is moot. The fact is the quality of his Content and the work he put into it was very impressive. Hell, I don't care an ounce of interest in maritime events like this... ordinarily. But I decided to read it and was totally captivated by the Article and what it was about and the way Chris wrote it. Just excellent, imho!
The Punchline Here ?
- Payout for the first article of a satisfactory movie review....$435 and change
- Payout for the second excellent article on a maritime tragedy.... $2 and change
Conclusion
Now I am not necessarily saying the author of the movie review doesn't deserve to be well paid( although over $400 for a movie review is a bit over inflated??) but somehow as a Community we should be very concerned about this. Chris, the author of the $2 article, has pretty much quit Steemit and is not coming back because of this payout disparity.
You all might say big deal, one person ? Well, I will tell you it's a huge deal. Because this will continue happening more and more. We will continue losing great talent like Chris here because of this disparity in content payout.
I think for Steemit to continue to grow in a healthy way we have to find ways to make sure we try to rectify this and keep the talent here thriving. I understand because of the nature of a social media as well as Community Influence here... well we will NEVER be rid of this disparity completely. But we still need to talk about it, call it out, and at least STRIVE to make it better or more equitable for top quality content ( no matter who the author is).
Bottom line : Good content is good content !!
And quite frankly, I think our future depends on recognizing this more consistently down the line !!
(End of semi- rant !! )
Cheers,
Robert
!
It is a rough situation and it was actually was worse mid 2016 but it will continue to be a problem or appear to be an issue for new users coming in. At this point some users have enough power to just paraphrase CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph articles and earn hundreds of dollars. Or the guys doing some of the BS technical analysis getting paid a ton. But in reality the same thing occurs out on YouTube. Some YouTubers get promoted forward and there stuff shows up all the time and they gain huge followings.
In a lot of ways it comes down to determining if it is worth powering up enough to gain more influence and doing the best to get traction and building out a cluster of community members around you. You are already doing a great job because you are gaining followers .....etc. It takes awhile and I have been so frustrated with STEEMIT at certain points I have wanted to punch my computer screens.
Thank you Brian @brianphobos. Interesting and very sad that they are just paraphrasing those articles and getting those kind of payouts.
I know there are some quality bloggers we are losing :(
Yeah in a lot of ways it makes sense that that would happen though because as people become more powerful they are going to recoup their monetary and time investment and I'm not so sure they should feel guilty about it.
It is almost like a person has to realize what the game is here and to to succeed at it the best they can. It is hard to not get pissed off though when you spend a lot of time on a post and it doesn't get a good payout. It is the same way on YouTube. Some of my best videos got 1/20th the views as stuff that was just drama related BS about Bitconnect.
I hear you man. I do get frustrated .But like you say it is part of the game so I know for me to bitch and moan is futile. I just soon put my nose to the grindstone and move forward.
I do think we need to call stuff out about some of these inequities. The more we do it the more people will rethink about doing it. I mean when you see a certain 'cat" here putting up a meme to congratulate another Steemian for using a bad Bot ( and penalizing them) but in the process Upvotes himself and gets $95 for a simple comment....well that is a huge problem and plain abuse, imho.
I know when I reach a certain level I am going to make it my Cause and mission to hang out with some plankton/minnows who have lots of potential and some talent and support them. And always try to do the right thing to make it better for everyone !!
Btw, I appreciate you Brian in helping me out and supporting me as well as a few others have. It does not go unnoticed....thank you. I will pay it forward :)
I feel like as we go forward in time we will have schools of fish clustered together moving in unison. It will will work out for us!
Yep, I agree Brian :)
The sad thing is that I see alot of higher Rep people talking about steemit saying. "You get paid for delivering quality content!" But thats definetely not the case!
The only thing what you need is a follower with a great deal of steem power vote you up and get into trending because you have high payout in short term and you get to trending. Some other higher steempower accounts hit you a like. And you are in the game.
Also I see the higher rep person pooling together upvoting and linking eachother to keep the reward pool cluttered up at one place.
It has nothing to do with quality content but having high user voting you. Wich means centralization in an decentralized network..
If things like this dont improve. Steem will never work.
I think without real world identity connected to accounts, you cannot get real uniqueness of users. For example, Dan Larimer has two accounts @dan and @dantheman. He is open about this. One person has thousands of accounts. Having someone to verfiy a user gets only one account could help but it is againt the principal of decentralized blockchains😥
Without real world identity it is whoever signs up to more accounts would have more power.
I do agree desparity is a real problem.
I think the disparity is made worse by the fact that steemians from countries where lower incomes are the norm are the ones who are really getting screwed. The way to make a lot of money on steemit is to dump a lot of money into buying SP for a bunch of accounts and have them upvote all your posts. I don't think it's fair to expect a person living in Cambodia or Bangladesh to power up their accounts to the extent that someone from the U.K. or Western Europe might.
Totally true. But if we invent a competing chain that gives every participating human being some fixed amount to start, then we need a 100% premine and a KyC process for those who want to participate. How can this be done in a decentralized fashion?
I would like to hear more ideas.
I don't think that it requires creating another competing chain, just changing how rewards are gained and distributed. For example, you could create a scaling factor so that SP earned from posts and comments is 10x more valuable than SP that you purchase. While it certainly wouldn't eliminate the problem completely, it would decrease the power of those who have used their personal wealth to buy influence instead of earning it by participating in the community. Other factors could be your reputation, how frequently/consistently you create new content or comment on others' content, etc.
I don't like the fact that I see 1-day-old accounts on here with zero posts and 2,500 SP, which were obviously created to game the system and essentially price minnows out of the market. I don't think a 1-day-old account with no posts and 2,500 SP should have the same voting power as a 1-year-old account with daily posts and 2,500 SP.
this is very disheartening to hear. I am working to be an active member of this community and enjoying the time, but was under the impression if I worked hard to provide useful and interesting content, I could possibly make real money doing this. Is the big secret to buy steem? how are so many other people making it to that point to get $400 for a movie review? They had to start somewhere right? Or did they already have a list of followers that they could advertise to come join the network? ty for your time...
Some had deep pockets to begin with. Some did have Followers they brought over from Youtube and other places. Some have started from practically nothing and built a large Following through interaction with the Community here at Steemit.
I think the latter can be done it just takes some time and work.
Thanks @thewayiseeit for your Comment
ty for responding to me! this is so exciting. Looking forward to more posts.
Thank you @thewayiseeit for adding to the discussion here 😊 👍.gif)
and also ...
This is fact indeed....thanks for sharing
Indeed! We need people to go vote for quality content not just people with a huge reputation
I agree with what you are saying, good content that takes time and effort does deserve to be rewarded. I've written articles that have taken a number of hours of continuous work to compile and have only seen a few dollars in reward. I've also written something that took a matter of few minutes and seen twice the reward.
It will take the users of steemit to see the value of good quality content and move away from simply upvoting stuff from users that they are accustomed to supporting regardless of what they pump out.
I've even heard whales say that they grew tired of producing good quality content and just started intentionally pumping crap out to ensure they maintained their earnings. This was disappointing to hear as I'd expect them to be the ones to lead by example.
Anyway, all we can do is consistently pump out good quality material, and actively reward and comment on the posts that we enjoy. Hopefully this will be a trend that will picked up by those that follow us.
Thank you @mazzle for your input. I agree with you
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Also I see you blog about beer so...
Haha thanks Robert. Appreciate the follow. And I do love my beer.
Its time to bring back the whale experiment.
Good whales downvoting bad whales that vote more than 80mv.
Interesting @freebornsociety . Thanks for your input :)
You are so right. It was one of the best articles I've seen.
I had a friend looking over the site, considering joining, who said at first it didn't look like anything she'd like, it all looked like crypto trading at first, but found that article and we have her now waiting on the email confirmation.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to vote on it. We were on a computer that didn't have an account loged in.
First of all, before commenting anything, I wanna make clear you have a valid point and I don't wanna disrespect or disqualify what you said.
Being an entrepreneur for some years now, I have realized, for many years now that life doesn't usually reward talent.
after reading that last sentence you might say "WHAT", "What about soccer players, MLB or even e-gamers" that all earn due to their skills, also chefs, painters, designers what about them?
with that in mind, I bring you math logic into the topic to make this more clear, the type of logic that reads if a equals b, then b equals c, then a equals c.
if my statement wasn't true why are there thousand (if not millions) performers, artist, dancers and in this case writers that earn almost nothing with their careers and passions?
That's because when money enters the subject, all that matters are numbers. Numbers are the name of the game. It's obvious that there is gonna be a huge difference in payments due to the number of viewers that a person has here on Steemit.
To have those numbers other people don't have a clue on what did this person with high rewards to have those eyeballs on their posts.
To make things more clear if a "normal" person with 50 followers on Instagram takes a selfie and then Will Smith takes a selfie, obviously, there is no question who is gonna receive more likes and comments. It doesn't matter at all the quality of the selfies its just numbers. So many people love will smith, know and like him.
This also applies to writing. If I start writing today on Steemit and does Stephen King also start writing his rewards are going the hell up way faster than me even if I do perfect posts (don't know if that's possible)
Life is not fair neither Steemit is, many whales have explained this before, with numbers, with drawings, and with videos.
So what is my advice to your friend or the people with small payments? keep the hell going.
life is not fair, but when discipline, consistency, hard work, unbreakable will, vision, focus and two hundred more qualities come into play, then you have a chance.
Upvoted you post =).
Hey @neri0x you really make some very valid and sound points. Yeah I do agree. It's not necessarily fair but Life is just not sometimes fair. For instance, you see the best human beings die in their twenties or even young kids die from cancer at 5 yrs. ol. And then you see some low life scum like Charlie Manson live til 84 yrs.old.
Crazy.
I know I will take that advice to keep the hell going. I don't think Chris will. But maybe I can convince him.
Again thank you for your thorough,well thought out reply
You wanna convince him? show him results. Not words. You making 200$ by each of your posts like @haejin, then he will come begging you to teach him. =)
Take care. Thanks for your kind upvote.
I think that one major problem with both cryptocurrencies in general and steemit in specific is that market prices are too easily manipulated.
I think you will find that if you dig down into the upvotes for the movie review, you will find that most of the money that the post generated came from a bot farm of steemit accounts created and loaded up with a huge amount of SP specifically for the purpose of generating a lot of rshares for mediocre posts.
Thanks @sc0ut for the good insight :)
I couldn't agree more!!! Things are not adding up!!
I disagree that $400 is a lot for a movie review. A good movie reviewer in the papers would expect that or more.
But your point still stands. New users face an uphill battle to make anything. I have been on this service about 5 months now. The first 2 or 3 months I made pennies. Now, for the exact same posts type of posts I have done since the beginning, I may make anywhere from 2 to 5 bucks for a post. Still not a lot, but there is improvement there. I've had to network like hell thru comments here and on Discord to get this far.
I actually think this isn't anything new tho. It's always been this way. Steemit is better than the old way, actually.
Look at novels. Stephen King could shit on 1000 pages and publish it and it would instantly sell out and probably make the New York Times best seller list. Why? Is it because he has bought influence in the industry? While I'm sure there are plenty of brownnosers trying to hope he'll notice them, it is more due to him building up a certain reputation over his career. People see his name on the cover and they have some trust they will get a quality book, so they instantly buy without even reading what it's about or flipping thru a few pages. Whereas new authors might work like hell and publish a novel so good that quality-wise it is one of the best novels of the year. Yet no one knows who they are. Risk 5 bucks (or 30 for a hardback) on an unknown? Most people won't risk it. He/she sells nothing.
This is a bit like the high rep Steemit user who almost instantly gets $400 in upvotes to any post he/she makes and the newer steemit user who only makes pennies on a great post.
But Stephen King had to work long and hard to get to the point where he has the rep to instantly sell books.
Steemit is both better and worse. Better because to even get to the point where you can start to gain a reputation, like Stephen King, required a lucky break in the old world. You had to be noticed. You had to be lucky and have that talent scout see you, or have the right editor notice your manuscript when he happened to be in a good mood, and so on. You had to be lucky to get that break, after which you had to work like hell to take advantage of the situation you found yourself in. Steemit gets rid of the luck to some degree. Being noticed, resteemed, and going viral is still a bit of a lucky break, but you can build up without that and many have.
Where Steemit is worse is there are a lot more brownnosers and they have more influence. So some will just look for lists of people with high reps and/or high SP and upvote/comment on everything they do, hoping to suckup enough to gain something.
So better and worse, but I think overall Steemit is working well.
But I agree, it is disheartening to make so little in the beginning. I made it thru those first few months by just posting what I loved and not caring if I got any money at all. As the old saying goes, money comes when you do what you love, but it rarely comes when you chase it. I hope your friend doesn't give up and pushes thru the tough time! It'll be worth it on here.
I think that is Key. To really enjoy it. That's the only reason I would keep going here. It's something I love to do when I am NOT working lol. And get paid to do it...well that's hard to beat.
Thank you @dbooster for your in depth reply :)