This morning, drinking my coffee, I'm thinking about one of the most important thing here on steemit. Yes, even if more of us love to say that we are here because steemit is a cozy community (and it's true, believe me!), we started to blog here for the same main reason: the upvotes who can give us some money. Yes, it's true and we can't forgive it.
There are some differences on the "approach" that we can have with the upvote and it depend on the user. Someone think that it can be useful simply begging an upvote (and it doesn't work!), someone think the only way is "just" write good contents (it's not enough, you have also work on create a "healty" net of people who read your contents), someone think engaging people is the best way (yes, it's really a good way, if you also write good contents), someone think to comment contents using nice words without upvote the content is a good "strategy" (alert, it's not a good strategy!), someone think we are all stupid and use the plagiarism to have upvotes (but we are not stupid!), etc etc
The same "objective" (earn more money), but different approaches, but the true is that behind every upvote there is a person! A person who can be very different: someone who lives in a different country, with a different culture, with a different way to live, different skills and/or different experiences, rich people or poor people, students and workers, younger or older. We can know just a little bit about their life, just what about they wrote on the contents (if they wrote it).
Maybe they are good people or maybe not, but we have just some words or some actions they do to think about they are good or bad people. So, it's more important (in my opinion) to think about our way to live this community.
For example, I love to read (and upvote) different contents from different authors and I also love to discover new authors to follow, but if someone beg my upvote in a rude way, wrote spam comments on my contents or wrote about something that I don't like (I'm a person, so I have my ideas and my way of life and there are some ideas and behaviour that I don't like, it's human!) I don't upvote/follow him/her, just ignore them.
It's my choice. Everyone here (like in the "real" world) has a choice. My choice is "motivate" people with my upvote just if they are working honestly, using a friendly approach to other people (I ate rude behaviour off and on line) and who knows that they can have more here working than begging.
It's my choice.
(While I'm writing this blackbird are watching me ^_^)
Sometimes behind an upvote there is a bot, but after the shut down of the bot of streemian there are less upvotes from bot.
I've never used a bot to upvote contents, but I'm not disagree with bots because they are usefull when you value some authors and you want to give them an upvote also even if you're not active all the day on steemit. It's also useful for the groups/projects here to improve and motivate the members.
My choise not to use bots it's just because I want to have all the control (maybe I'm a maniac of control ^_^) on the powerful of my upvotes, so everyday I watch my feed, I read the contents that I'm interesting in, I upvote the content that I like in different % (so I can upvote more contents) and I can enjoy the life of this community. It's a long work, yes. It's just my own choice, it's good for me but I'm pretty sure it's not so good for everyone.
For example, my hubby @paolobeneforti use a different approach: he use bot (ehm, not in these last 2 days because the bot that he used is closed) to upvote some authors/friends who loves so much + me and my daughter (the family is the family, isn't it? ^_^) and gives upvotes also manually reading his feed and others. He use a mixed approach and it's the right approach for him.
Different people, different approach.
It's our choice.
At the end, on steemit as in the real life, it's always a choice. ^_^
See ya soon
Silvia
Thank you for posting @silviabeneforte.
All so true......enjoyed reading your thoughts...quite agree with you.
Wishing you and yours all the best. ^__^
Ciao/Cheers.
Thanks so much, dear @bleujay ! All the best to you and yours ^_^
That's the thing I can never understand with the commenters who are spamming for upvotes. It's a terrible strategy and will not help them but they do it anyway. How stupid can they be?
Totally agree with you! I think it's one of the most stupid thing that someone can do here, but seems the mother of stupids is always pregnant (it's an italian way to speech ^^).
I have to say that more spam comments I read on my posts, more I appreciate people who don't spam and fortunately not-spammers are more than the spammers ^^
Hehe, I like that expression!!
Interesting post. I think people vote for different reasons. Some do it for attention, some for profit and others to show appreciation. I have used more automatic voting in the past with Steemvoter and Streemian, but I have cut right back on that. I even used to give myself an automatic vote, but I stopped that when I was doing much better from other people voting on my posts.
I have benefited from Paolo giving me an automatic vote. I'm grateful for that, but in general I think manual voting is best as it takes the quality of the post into consideration. I vary my vote according to what I think of the post. I also vote a lot on comments on my own posts and those of others. I think good comments need to be encouraged.
I don't worry about curation rewards as you need a lot of SP for that to be much. Okay, so I make something from curation, but I have no strategy and I make more from my own posts.
I think about bots since I started to blog here. Sure, they help to save time when you value an author or if you're an investor or other cases, at the end I think the difference is always on "how" we use a tool, not on the tool, but I've always prefer to search/read/upvote by myself from conte to content because so I feel myself more motivated to enjoy the community and to be a part of it and I can also "adjust" the % to try to value every content in the best way. Sure, I'm sorry to miss some nice contents from authors that I love, but I think is like an off line "community" where sometime we can meet our friends to drink something together and sometime we can't ^^
As you, I have no strategy for curation rewards and I make more from my own post (that it's also a more funny, interesting thing for me) ^^
Wow, powerful! I do agree with you on that we are all here for the same reason. I think that even if people do this for money, it can only be a motivation for them to write better content. I think there has never been a better time or place than steemit to encourage people to write their thoughts down and share them with the world. I like to think that even if no one reads my posts I'm giving out an idea or feeling that people can relate to or something to think about.
Great post! Thank you for sharing!
It reminds me my first months here. Just few views and upvotes on my posts, but I continued to publish my contents writing about my art and my life and I enjoyed to read contents of other authers and, at the end, it worked well. I met very interesting people here, I also improved some of my skills (at first my English ^_^) and I earned some money. Perfect! I think the best approach is to have patience and continue to write good contents and comments :D
I believe that too!
I also upvote quality content! keep going
I agree as well. All of us want to earn some money here, that is the main reason. But with the time everyone realize that steemit is much better then any other social community, so even if we don't earn we stay here (at least most of us). I upvote always almost every comment on every text I read.I don't expect from anyone to do the same for me. I do it because it can help someone a little bit and it doesn't take me any effort or time to do it. It is maybe not enough but its the best I can do for now at least. Great article my friend.
" I do it because it can help someone a little bit and it doesn't take me any effort or time to do it" I think your words are really the best words to describe the best way to stay here! Great!
Sorry for late replay I wasn't around here for some days. Thank you, glad that you think the same way.
Every word is true. In addition: we are here to know each other, to learn from each other and love each other. Money is a by-product :)))
I totally agree ^_^
Hello Silvia !
Long time no talk .. :-)
Your post is just what i needed this morning !
About having a choice and focus on what YOU (me) are here for!
And there are a lot more i agree on with you.. so thank You for putting it all together.. helping a bit to organize the chaos in my head! :-)
You're welcome, dear @agneslaczo ^_^
how beautiful and sincere it is .. you are very happy to write us your inner feelings. it's great to have good people like you and nice people :)
when I want to write something like this and the letter gave me courage.
Steemit is actually a very comfortable and beautiful site as you say. some people need the money including myself and they are trying very hard to earn more. they try every method that comes to mind. This is not true. we need to read the works produced by our friends and really learn something. I totally do it for this. but I need to work hard to be recognized on this platform. As far as I can find time, I read everyone's writing and I see them valuable. I see great intimate content like yours besides scientific writings. that makes me happy. I can not write long and really worth writing because english is not enough. I'm still trying to make a contribution. I will not hold it too long. Thank you.
I wish you a good day. Say hello to that bird! :D
"we need to read the works produced by our friends and really learn something" I totally agree! When I started here my post earned just few cents and just few people read/upvote my contents, so I started to work hard reading the works of other value authors, reading other source about some tips for a succesfully blog and, sure, I improved my English because it was very very poor ^^
Have a nice day and greetings from Italy ^^
Hi my dear! You are talking the truth ! Everyone has his way in this community! Some begging the vote, some give vote to get vote in return, but the good things in this platform is to build this community by helping the beginners bloggers, but me i heat the spammers, when i start first time never i beg someone to vote me, to see if the content which I post is intersting or not.but we are here to help each other by voting , commenting, but the one which deserves our votes.
Dear friend, you're doing really a great work here and I'm really proud to be one of your follower from your start!!! Hugs from Italy!! ^_^
I always do it manually, mostly because quite honestly I don't even understand how bots work?
I love steemit for both too, the community and the money, although I don't make very much on mine (but yesterday I got such a large number of votes and it was so exciting, it just makes me want to do even better posts!)
As someone who is pretty solitary by choice and I work at home AND I live in the country, it is not always easy to be around other artists. I did all the other social media but it was never like it is on here. On Steemit I really feel excited to see and connect and find new artists. It's great and of course add in the money and it's like a fun job you want to go to!
I always write probably too much in my comments. I comment quite a few times a day and usually it's pretty long. Sometimes I am just admiring a piece of art and I only need to say a few things, so I hope it doesn't come off as if I am just saying something short and fishing for upvotes back? I hope not as I truly just vote and comment on things I genuinely feel drawn too.
Wonderful reflections over your coffee. And I am sipping my coffee as I write this back, so it's like we are at a coffee clatch (that is a new england/usa term for chatting over coffee ;) )
I'm pretty sure we are very similar! I also work at home and even if I live in a city( a small city) is not simple to meet other artists (ok, my hubby IS another artist, but it's different ^^). I think steemit is the perfect place for an artist, sharing our works or our work in prgress we can earn some money and we can stay connected with artist all over the world! Great!! Have a nice day, dear friend ^^
We should start a my favorite spam comment list xD My favorite is this one : " Nice post.I respect you very much because you contribute to steemit.I will do activities like you.I would like to extend the steemit." I always try answer back to this spam with: "You seem to respect a lot of people my friend "
I also don't want to use bots to upvote people or to upvote my content, I try to make people see my content by commenting on other peoples posts and providing good information or being funny, I mostly upvote people at nighttime because i have low bandwidth and i can't upvote anything during daytime.
What i don't understand is how come some of this spam bots have more than 100 folowers... xD
PS- going to check your hubby posts, if they are the same quality as yours i will follow him too :D
The "best" spam comment that I received was on one of the few post that I wrote in my mother language (italian), the user wrote something like "Nice post, etc.." but sure, when I ask him if he can understand italian, he stay in silence ;) And what about spammers that call me "bro"? :P
hahaha, chill bro chill xD since i don't have many posts i haven't seen that many spammers, i actually saw 2 spam posts in the introduceyourself tag that were in the "hot" section, they were exactly alike, and both of them had 2$, more than most of my posts xD
Someone should do a automatic bot to downvote spammers, i'm 100% sure they would stop pretty quickly
Great points you made here @silviabeneforti. Every now and again it needs to be repeated because we always have newer people here trying to get rich quick, even tho I repeat it's a slow easy process. Take your time. Know your lane or passion. Be authentic and look to uphold a person not look for a hand out.
I have seen many people comment and wait for the comment to be upvoted by the post's author or those who also comment in a thread. And others still who don't vote for anyone except themselves.
I like your approach. I manually upvote too and it gives me a better chance at getting to know someone by engaging in comments and getting familiar with them so my comments will be more personal.
I too like your Italian speak = the mother of stupids is always pregnant. There truly is a fool born every minute :)
Thanks so much for stopping by, dear @countrygirl ! Yes, it needs to be repeated again, increasing the value of Steem also spam and/or rude behaviours are increasing and the message has to be clear: we don't love spammers, plagiarists or people who think to earn something doing nothing ^_^
It's totally true, behind every nickname there's a person, which person are we going to sustain with our upvote? An honest worker or what? An what kind of worker ar WE? This questions came to my mind after reading your article!
I personally started again to use voting bot, Steemvoter in my case. I just try to vote people I saw they work professionally, I love the content or I'm personally connected with. I think it's like being subscrited to a magazine: you like and you buy it, but probally you will not read every single article.... Good post btw!
I think you're right, it's like to buy a magazine. You buy a magazine because you like the contents that authors wrote inside of it, sometimes you read them immediatly, sometimes not. Also my hubby use the bot like to buy a magazine and he also received a sort of "summary" in the email so he could see what his favorite authors wrote in the previous days ;)
Forte! (sai che non mi ero nemmeno reso conto di aver scritto in inglese??). Che applicazione usa?
Its great to see that you have decided to take a more hands-on approach. I always hated the idea of voting bots. I had a few that were attached to my account a while back and no matter how good or bad my content was, I always got an upvote. For a while I stop posting regularly because I felt bad for this person, seeing I was getting 2 sbd for every single thing I posted from them. Most of the time, their bot was the only person to voted on my posts, besides me. Very discouraging.
I'm sorry you felt bad. I think write good contents, engage people in a friendly way reading and commenting their contents that you like (to engage people is very important), have patience (more patience ^^) and enjoy the community are the best ways to have "success" here. I hope success for you ^^
Thank you mam, best of luck to you in the future!!
Manual every single time. I personally think the bot use kind of goes against the ideals of the site, however, I guess it is the ultimate best option that each user has the choice whether to use add ons to this site or not.
Even if I prefer don't use bots, I think they are really useful if you're very sure of the value of an authors that you love and if you have just few time to stay on steemit every day . For example, my hubby used bot to upvote someone and he received a note with a list of the upvoted posts, so he could read the contents without search the in the sea of his feed) and he also manual upvote other contents. At the same time, there are some users that are not active here (they are just investors) and they use the bots to improve their investments and sure, it's an understandable choise for them because they are interested in their investment. My choice is different because when I started to blog here I had no money to invest (like many other users ^_^), so I was and I am more interested in the "life of the community" and to enjoy here than other things. Im sorry to miss some contents sometimes, but every vote that I give is a vote from a reader ;)
I agree with just about all your points. I also came into Steemit without investment capital so my view can only be my own and just understand that the platform is cool enough to work out in it's magical algorithmic ways some kind of "fairness" among all users of all types.
I´m new here and I´m not sure yet, what´s the best way to reach people who REALLY like what I´m doing. I´m glad to find here so many great artists I didn´t know yet, so I keep upvoting only stuff I REALLY like, not just everything to get some attention. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
@silviabeneforti, so much respect for expressing such a high-integrity voice! This post really makes me think about what I believe in and the choices I will make in the future! I personally like how you control your votes and don't leave it up to the bots. (although I have no idea how it works)