First, let's get this out of the way, "what's in it for me?" right? That's what you're asking. Well, a lot, perhaps.
- If you help promote this project, you're blog will be promoted right along with it.
- You will gain followers and upvotes
- You could win a big fat chunk of $BD, if we succeed.
I'll explain it all in a minute. First, let's talk about how this goes down, shalll we?
Right off the bat to show you you are not alone, here are the users that have already agreed to support the project! As promised, I'll promote them all I can!
@joannereid
@focusnow
@simplymike
@cmbugua
@lahvista
@honeydue
@vincent848
@tibra
@simms50
@liketimmy
@kachee
@ironshield
@rayaa
@outtheshellvlog
@debbietiyan
@brayias
@davemccoy
@cryptojade
@lil-mich
@derasmo
@jan23com
I want to conduct an experiment. Can we, the plankton and minnows of steemit, put a post at the top of trending? I've been working to prove it's possible for some time now, without seeing it happen in quite some time. There are several challenges we'll have to overcome to get there.
To set this up, first, let me say we'll be using a plankton account, @dolphinschool as our launching pad. The entire platform there is designed around helping plankton become minnows and minnows become dolphins. I'd teach you to become a whale, but I haven't done that yet, so I'll do it when I get there!
- I want to do it from bottom, that way you can see how you might accomplish the same thing.
- I'm looking to launch a new bootcamp at the end of this, and those that help will get first preference to be on board!
- If I do it from this account,we might pick up whale support, and kind of skew the results.
It's going to be an uphill climb, can we make it?
I'm not sure. That's part of what it makes it so exciting! I think we can, if everyone will really do what they can to help. With a few hundred of us working together, surely we gain the attention to get more votes on board and carry it the rest of the way.
- Hitting a meaningful spot on trending will require at least $50-75 in upvotes. Without buying this could be one vote, or hundreds.
- Keeping it on trending will require sustained promotion once it's up and running. I'll take any help with that I can get.
- The price for entry is steep, but the rewards could be big too!
I promise you this, if @dolphinschool wins, we all win, because I've dedicated that profile to helping as many Plankton survive to become minnows and then dolphins as possible!
So, what kind of post should it be?
I've got ideas, as you know, but, I want your input here. I'm thinking we just go straight for the jugular, like, "Here's How This Post Got on Trending Without Buying Votes!" But, would it work? I'm not really sure.
The post itself will be a declaration of the power of the little guy. It will include a list of links to any blog that helps support the project, with your best post front and center! If that means 200 links, or 400 links, then so beit! I'll keep editing the new ones in as people sign on! If I have to edit it ten times a day, I'll do it!
I'm going to run a series of these articles through some friendly accounts that will gladly help promote us and see how much attention we can get over the next several days, then on Sunday, the article will be launched from @dolphinschool.
Once the article is in place, we will promote the heck out of it! I'll be using Steemit Facebook groups, Steemit chat and I'm working on getting into Discord more. But, again, here I'm open to suggestions.
- If every person also resteemed the post, it would help to spread it.
- If we are offering a portion of proceeds to participants, @moneyinfant can add it to the contest list they run, there are probably others.
- Promote it to curation services and others that share content.
Whatever else you can think of to help make it go, leave me a comment. I'll take as much input as I can. Not all of the ideas will probably get put to use, but this is brainstorming people, share!
Great, good feels, altruism, blah, blah, blah, show me the money!
I said I'd explain and here it is. By joining this project, you'll get the following, provided you help do the heavy lifting (promoting, upvoting, etc)
- Your name in every post related to this project
- A chance to promote your blog and your best post linked from the project post, which we hope goes viral!
- A chance to win half of the $BD the project post earns. There's no way to know how much that will be.
But, wait, Mark, what's in it for you?
As always, I have my own motives. I'm not trying to hide it. I'll be keeping half of the payout to further my work here. But, beyond that, I'm hoping to get the following.
- I want to prove we can do it. Just because. That's kind of who I am.
- I hope to gain more followers throughout this process. Always.
- Promotion for @dolphinschool. I haven't put as much time into it as I want, but it's hard to do when the audience is small and the payouts are not enough to cover the time.
- I want to see some of you gain exposure through this project. It's going to be a seven day push, and I'll promote as many of you as I can!
So, where do we start?
We're starting at the bottom, so, let's have a conversation. Got an idea of how to make this work? Great! Add it in the comments. Want to "sign up" to help? Great! I'll be making a list of everyone that says they're in over the next couple of days, I'll add it to ALL posts on the topic. Let's call it #projectminnowvote and use that hashtag as one of your tags if you want to share about it!
As a part of this, I want to encourage as much interaction between all of you as possible. So, go, follow each other, upvote each other's posts, comment, resteem, whatever! Let's start some buzz!
If this works, people, we could build a network capable of making this a regular thing!
I'm not a huge fan of automated curation, or renting votes. You know that, but a weekly post, with comment links to any posts deserving a boost, could be huge! Imagine a weekly post that got 500, or 600 upvotes, with 100 comments, all saying, hey, take a look at what this account over here is doing that's not getting attention!
Then, what if the highest voted comment/link got our attention for a few days? Could we change trending? Maybe. I think it's worth a try.
Here's what inspired this.
Last night I was looking over my posts and feeling pretty good about the interaction, but I got stupid and clicked into Trending. I started looking at the posts sucking so much of the reward pool up. And you know what I found? They're not special.
In fact, the one thing they all had in common? Paid votes and a LOT of them. Some of them paid more than $200 SBD to get there, something many of us cannot afford to do.
The bigger problem for me, though, is the poor quality of the content. And it's what visitors are attracted to first. It's the pattern that's being set for success here on Steemit. Is that what we want? I don't, so this is my response.
SO, are you with me? I can't do this without you. Leave your name in the comments if you'd like to be tagged in future posts on this topic. There will be no minimum requirement for participation, other than an upvote on the final project post. So, what do you say?
*If you're in here are some ways you could help promote it!
- upvote this post,
- resteem it,
- write a review of it on your blog,
- make a promo image and put a link to it on Steepshot, or Dmania.
- Make a video about it and post it to DTube.
- Tag your friends in this post to encourage them to get on board!
- Write your own posts about the idea and gather more ideas and attention!
Some of you will want to watch and see what happens. That's great! Could you do me one favor? Please, please, please, don't do anything negative. Encourage each other. If you don't want to participate, at least don't stand in our way, please? Thanks! That includes negative comments, pointing out problems, being unhelpful, or otherwise distracting. Just go do your own thing, we promise not to rain on your parade!
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
You got my vote. We need more people taking the time to give support to those that are making giod content, but still getting lost in the sea of "vote for me" posts.
Think this will be hard to accomplish with our small votes, but will sure help with the upvoting. Can promote your project in D-A-CH discord too.
I think posting this on sunday might not be the best way to get a lot of attention. IMHO most people tend to be more active during the weakend. But maybe that only means less competition.
Actually, Sunday is very low competition, leaving the trending slot open in many categories, and if we do it right, we'll still be there come Monday. It's all an experiment anyway. We don't have anything to lose.
You misspelled me by the way.
Maybe you could change that next time you edit the post anyway.
;)
I changed it on the master list. I probably won't re-edit this post again. I'll do something new each day to catch more attention.Sorry about that. I'll fix it.
@conradsuperb is in on this, I like the idea and have been thinking about this as well. How to get noticed, how to reach trending, it has been nearly impossible without buying votes. I was able to do it once with my post from a while back about a traditional Japanese bath experience:
https://steemit.com/travel/@conradsuperb/a-traditional-japanese-bath-experience-rules-and-etiquette-to-follow
Yeah, it happens when a whale grabs you and puts you there, but rarely. I'd like to be able to do a post a week with a free-to-play post that just took nominations, then offered the winner up for upvotes.
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
cool, thanks for the invite! I would be happy to join. I will tune in later on tonight after work to see what's going on
See u around
Let's get it done! RESTEEMED!
Great, glad to have you on board!
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
ok Thanks @markmorrisjr .. will join now ..
ok...I have joined up!
Let's do this! Resteemed! Made a post about this!
https://steemit.com/blog/@basicstoliving/want-to-get-good-content-to-the-trending-page-check-this-out
Hey, that's awesome! Thanks!
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
Too tired cant focus...going to read this later
In your own time my friend. Operating on a global clock makes it difficult to connect in real time sometimes.
Lets give it a try.. i support.
Great! added you to the list!
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
I'm definitely on board. I learned very quickly that trending is the last place to go to find content one enjoys, and it's very discouraging for newbies to read the kind of content that's trending when most of it is, like you say, low quality. I'm all for organic growth.
Well, we shall see what we can do about it.
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
Hey, It'll be interesting to see how this experiment turns out. Count me in! It's high time we the little guys work together to get more visibility for our good quality posts.
I like the idea of "Here's How This Post Got on Trending Without Buying Votes!" because that would grab the most attention and send a meaningful message to the community.
Thanks for the input on the post! I'll add your name to the list.
there is a channel for discussion of the minnow votes project on the dolphin school discord server. Would love to have you join. https://discord.gg/RrUyccN
Though this won't be easy, I love the zeal and passion behind it and I'm in support. I will do as much as possible to support it.
Its so painful to work hard to generate good content and find it difficult to get upvotes or even comments, while 'trending' is controlled by the 'elite'.
Hence this is a welcome project. Let's do this
I fully support this! RESTEEMED!
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 15 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 35 SBD worth and should receive 80 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePig