Sure, HF19 has given us minnow a new sense of power, seeing our wallets instantly swell with rewards from post that have been upvoted before the fork, and our upvotes having more value after the fork.
No more free votes!!!
On the flipside, everyone seems to be holding onto their first 10 (100%) upvotes until something really draws them in and induces a click. Those with enough SP to have the slider have throttled their upvote percentages way down to conserve their power. Posts and comments after HF19 don't seem to be getting as many upvotes as they would have, and comment upvotes have all but dried up completely. Steemians aren't sharing the love as freely anymore... we've gone away from the free-love movement of the 60's and 70's, to the capitalism and "hold onto your wealth" 80's so to speak. Why is this? Perhaps because we all like to feel powerful, and if we spend our votes too quickly we have to stop voting and wait a long time for our power to regenerate.
So, while we have seen a brief benefit of a few more SBD in our wallets, we have also seen fewer upvotes. This means that it is more difficult to grow you reputation, and reputation is a very valuable commodity to have. It makes other steemians more willing to follow you, and in so doing creates a higher probability of more upvotes. It's the circle of Steem life!!!
What can we Minnows do about this?
- Keep posting. Keep posting high quality content, and don't make any compromises. Attract followers with your quality and honesty in your posts, not just the quanitity. Don't chase around looking for followers who don't share your interests, and won't upvote you.
- Make valueable comments in others' posts. "Great job" won't ( or shouldn't) get you an upvote. Add some personal insight of real encouragement relevant to the post topic. You're more likely to gain an upvote or follower that way. You may get an upvote if someone is feeling the love.
- Follow Steemians who attract your interest, upvote and resteem their blogs if you enjoyed them.
- Be generous with your upvotes. Support your fellow Minnows while your upvote is only worth a few cents. Your voting power doesn't really matter if you're a 3 cent upvoter like me. You can't go much lower anyway, so why hold onto it.
One day I will be a $50 voter, and perhaps then I will be more careful with my votes, and throttle back my up vote percentage to spread the love a bit further, but for now I'll continue upvoting on the basis of helping my fellow Minnow gain reputation, because I want them to grow, and I need their help for me to grow.
Minnows who swim together grow together!!!
That's my opinion at this point in time. Agree? Disagree? I'm here to learn, and am learning every day. Have your say and help me learn. Thanks for reading.
Until next time..
I absolutely agree! I've noticed less votes today looking at my feed. I did enjoy the free love 60's feel from before, but it is what it is. I'm just going to keep posting and upvoting.
Not much to lose here as a minnow anyway.
I appreciate your post!
Thanks for the positive feedback @isaria. Much appreciated!!
I can only agree with you @bmj as the Hardfork really brought a new level of this great opportunity to earn money on Steemit. It's definitely a whole new chapter for all us minnows and I guess in case we all stick together we might sooner or later really have the power of a 50$ upvote 😉 Let's keep on going & upvoting at full Steem 😊
Just gotta keep steeming the Steem!!! We can all get there if we work together.
Oh I'll definitely keep on steeming as it's just an amazing Community and the content on this social media is as well ways better than the one on facebook or twitter. Here people are really putting some effort into their posts so that it's just awesome to read some of the stories 😊
Great job
Just kidding. I think you're right. People don't like wasting their precious upvotes in the first thing they see. I think it happens because we fear regret.
We might fear regret if we're looking at it from a business (profit) perspective, true.
But, IMO, there's something more rewarding than financial profits: the pleasure of giving. Whether or not the recipient is significantly impacted by receiving the gift, it feels good to know that you did the right thing, came from the right place.
I have a clear memory of how daunting Steemit was for me during my first week on it. Posts were getting in excess of $10K on the trending page (this was when Steem reached $4 back in July of 2016) and I felt like I needed to get a piece of that action. Fast forward ten or so posts and about a $0.02 payout later and I was about ready to quit (I figure the pay worked out to fractions of a peso per hour).
This makes it an easy decision for me to give away big up-votes to minnows, especially those that demonstrate the type of doubt(s) that I once had. I'm not insinuating that this applies to you, btw.
That said, have a big up-vote anyways, just cuz :)
Thank you for sharing your story @jamesbrown. Some inspiration from someone who has already walked this road is fantastic!!
You're welcome, @bmj.
I just try to be the influence that I wish I had when I started out on here.
Aaaah now why did you have do go and do that!! Throwing yo upvotes around like you're James Brown or summin'!! I feel Good!! No more ..please!!! Thanks for stopping by!! Back on The Night Train with you!!! Seriously... now go and help some other struggling Minnows...
You get one more for the excellent puns, then I'll be on my way, I promise :)
Have a good one and gl on your Steemit endeavors.
You described what I'm feeling (I started today). As I always like to say: money is just a tool - some people use it well, some don't. Thank you so much.
Yes, money is only a tool, and it's not even the most valuable tool. We've each got two tools that are infinitely more valuable: our minds and our hearts. Those that come to realize this are the people who'll extract the most value from life...and Steemit, for that matter.
You're welcome.
Haha!! I just had to upvote that, couldn't resist!! I fear I may regret it though.... oh well. More seriously, yes, people fear that they will upvote something now, and have reduced power to upvote something better which comes along. A bit like not buying this year's car model because next year's will be a better one. With my voting power, I received 0.001SP for upvoting a $550+ post, so the money doesn't even register at my level. I would rather gain reputation by posting quality content ( I hope this one was a good starting point).
You're too kind!! Thanks for the resteem. Much appreciated!!
NO PROB !
I ALSO FOLLOWED YOU!
AND MAYBE IF YOU LIKE SPORTS AND "FUNNY" STUFF,
FILL FREE TO FOLLOW BACK ;)
CHEERS! (wait a sec)
This really is a game changer!!
I love having to really get a lot of value out of a post before committing to liking it now!
Absolutely, if you're not getting value out of something, there's no reason to promote it or follow the author. Thanks for your vote, I'm glad you got some value out of my post...
I'd rather have it this way than the old way. It gives you a much better shot of getting something this way. Before the change there were posts with dozens of upvotes and only a couple of cents in earnings.
Hi @purplerose. Thanks for yourvote!!. Yes, it does give us a better chance of financial gain. It will still take a lot of Minnow upvotes (which build reputation) to make a big gain, but it also encourages creating quality content to attract those bigger votes, which were previously just thrown at almost anything. Reward is more closely related to quality and you striking a chord with someone. Your reputation also becomes a better reflection of the quality and value you are contributing to the Steemit community.
You got my Upvote friend. I can't agree more.
I can't wait to be swimming with the Whales.
One day you will be a Whale amoungst Whales, but always remember you were a Minnow first, like me and everybody else.
This post received a 2.2% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @bmj! For more information, click here!
that's absolutely true