I'm glad you chimed in. On Busy.org, I'm plankton.
I was still thinking of going back and upvoting some of my most recent posts just to earn something on them while reading this article.
Lately, I've been getting noticed by a couple whales, and that is encouraging. So I will keep plugging away. I see Steemit as a challenge and I'm willing to take it on.
Those whale votes are far more than you can give yourself, so spread it around
I agree with you. I have been using them to buy upvotes for more SP (going 50/50 here) as I can't think of a better investment. Direct power up seems like I'm losing money in the exchange from SBD to Steem and then to Steem Power. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that buying upvotes is a reasonable way to go with SBD earned from a bidbot.
Then I spend a lot of time curating other posts and upvoting them with Steem Power I've accumulated.
I'm not a fan on buying votes as you may have seen. It's enriching a few and distorting the trending page. From what I've heard the returns are not great
I'm still on the fence about it. I've seen numerous arguments for and against it. It just seems like one way to at least get something for the post.
I've also seen evidence that the developers are finding ways to flatten the distribution of the reward pool. I'm not exactly sure how they're doing that, but a couple of months ago, I saw an article that demonstrated the effect of the programming on Steemit.
Now I see that Ned is introducing a new token just for the purpose of allowing people to use an entirely different token and distribution system for voting. One account, one vote, same weight regardless of SP. Not sure how that is going to turn out, but it is clear that Steemit is still in beta. :)
Where did you see that about a new token Ned was talking about?
As far as buying votes I'm not into that at all. I'm not against it, per se, but it's like drugs. Once you go down that path you get hooked and still are not really building a loyal following. The only way to build a good following, in the long run, is to do the work and build it.
I think it was the Smart Media Token that Ned was talking about, but I did a search and found that it's pretty old story, so perhaps not news.
Anyway, I've been experimenting with bidbots and I've had mixed results with them. On the other hand, I have been building community and spending more time on Steemit, just commenting and curating. I've even happened upon some other ways to make Steem and SBD through curation as a service. BTW, I do try to work with bidbots that do curation to stamp plagiarists. I want manual curation when I work with them.
So I agree with your final point: building a good following requires working with people. People naturally vote for someone who is familiar, and I guess I have to accept that instead of calling it "nepotism".
There really is no shortcut to just doing the work.
I did a post about this about a year ago that seems to have helped a lot of people if you're interested.
The Most Valuable Steemit Post Begins In Your Head - Tips To Maximize Your Social Currency On Steemit --- by @luzcypher