If you click the dropdown next to the payout amount you'll see how much that post has spent on promotion :
I actually made a tool when the promotion mechanic first came out to help figure out what the days promo cost would be. The earnings column has apparently broken since I last used this, but it still works for a general idea of costs :
Each time I've tried this, I've been dissapointed. We need more incentives for people to view the promoted section, or to combine the promo spend + payout so paying for promotion lifts you up the trending page
Absolutely. What if instead of paying for the promotion, the author sacrificed a larger portion of rewards to the curators? A 50/50 split would incentivize more curators and the author wouldn't require the upfront cost.
Nice idea, but we'd still need a way to decide the display order of posts as well
Good point. Maybe a combination of $ spent, account reputation and post age could determine order. This would (allegedly) give more credibility to the list.
Yeah display order is already done in a obvious way, but it makes sense. I think it should be more about getting the Promoted content in front of more viewers. They say promoted section is the highest traffic area, but I don't see where the current numbers show that as correct??
Maybe a new featured post (Ad) headliner area, they would just need to figure out, which post get ad spot and cycle times. Maybe amount put into promotion equals an amount of time for your ad to be displayed over a span of days?
That would be interesting, but I think more difficult and costly to implement than the problem deserves.
Yeah would be nice is Promoted page was more of a Paid Feature page. Put them in front of everything.