Thank you. After all the stuff I had to read today, your recognition is most welcome.
My videos are hosted at Vimeo. My hubby and I share a professional subscription there. This is exactly why I wrote "video hosting costs money." If you want your video delivered as an embedded quality stream that really works, you have to pay for it. I have tried other platforms, and there are problems with all of them. Vimeo I can recommend without reservation.
For political reasons, I refuse to give the censorial f.cks at Google/Youtube even one minute of video to further their profits. But I have to admit, YT also works well in conjunction with Steem.
You could use the actual Dtube service you tagged, for free, and get paid. Using incorrect tags like that will get you downvoted as well. I know, I know, you hate me and know everything. Just trying to help ;)
a) I don't hate you, especially not for lousy 37 cents :-)
b) I tried dTube, with other accounts. Several times. And it sucked, bigtime. Videos wouldn't play, the quality was horrible, etc.. And for the privilege, dTube took 25% of the profits as beneficiary. Which, BTW, kills the tiny profit of any paid promotion.
c) I have been using this "incorrect" tag for a long time, and never a downvote. It would have been easy for the mighty "dtube"-account to downvote every last penny of my profit. Apparently, they're not that petty.
Besides, people see #dtube, they expect a video, and that's exactly what they get, in good quality. So, "incorrect?" Not really.
Dtube does have those downsides, at times, but I thought they improved? I don't know.
Also, thanks for being honest with this noob who said:
In the past I've seen so many buy votes then pretend to be popular. That was sickening. Good to see some honesty.
I don't know either. It's been several months. However, that still doesn't solve the problem that old videos get buried and aren't accessible anymore. It's also a major disadvantage that one gives up control of the content. What if somebody runs into legal trouble and needs to take down a vid? Here in Europe it's very easy to film the wrong person on the street and - presto - legal hot water.
It's not about being popular. It's about getting there.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen too many get there by promoting every post. Usually the opposite happens. They go nowhere. Look at Jerry. Over 30000 followers, lucky to make a buck organically now. That's typical. Eyes are important, indeed. So is an invested following. That's quite different than a following and unique to this platform. Old ways don't work well here. I won't drag this out though. Good luck.
I promote every post, heavy. Success could be better, but beats disappearing within minutes.
...is a bit of a special case, wouldn't you agree?
Exactly why I'm not following anybody. Follow me because you like the content, and for no other reason.
Agree. The new ones will work even less, I can see that already, so I will probably leave.
This HF21 is a death knell for Steem. Perhaps not the 50/50 split, but the free downvotes for sure. I just caught a 100% $5 DV from @smooth which pretty much killed this post. Where was @smooth in the past, curating? Had it been his money he wouldn't have wasted a downvote on me...
I'm here out of nostalgic idealism. It used to be great, full of promise. But people always have to f.ck with a good thing and fix stuff that isn't broken. I detest FB and Youtube, but fact is, I can monetize my vids and sell my paintings better than here, with about the same effort and much more reach. Idealism doesn't last forever.
Good luck to you as well.
Quite a few more like Jerry. For the longest time, about two years, people would promote to trending, then amass a large following of noobs who thought the posts were popular and the creators were rich, hence all of those disingenuous comments I'd see under posts. "Nice post!" and the rest of that drivel. Those new member followers weren't interested in curating, they wanted to get noticed so their posts would get votes, so they could cash out for pennies. Eventually that gets boring, so they leave, and the one who promoted heavy is left with a following who abandoned them. So then, after months and months of promoting, the producer is right back where they started. Happens to nearly everyone. Those who promote think they'll get noticed by those with valuable votes, but those with valuable votes are the ones selling votes, not voting for free. The culture turned into those who were willing to vote for free would usually only vote for those who do not promote. So they all built up invested followings and started to grow, while those promoting eventually quit. True story, my friend.
Since so much SP was locked away in paid votes, there simply wasn't enough free SP to go around. Many left because they weren't earning.
With these changes in effect, the plan is to make curating for free just as if not more appealing than selling votes, by offering incentives such as higher curation rewards. 50/50 is the going rate. Youtubers have to forfeit 45% of their revenue and that piece of the pie only makes a few wealthy, whereas here it's more of a cooperative and the money stays with the people who can then decide what they want to do with it. I think being paid to be entertained is an easy sell, compared to get paid to produce content which can be done anywhere.
I too produce content that can make money outside of the platform. I can put the words on paper and sell the art as prints, and that's part of the plan.
How did it kill the post? You wanted eyes, not money. That's why you promoted. Promotion costs money. My approach is organic so after the curator cut, that money is mine. Since I held majority of what I earned here, I can make up for the 50% I lose, by curating others and helping them succeed.
Maybe smooth was selling votes to you folks and earning more from your work than you folks do. I'm not sure but I did see his name on a couple of my posts early on. I've seen him downvote before, quite often. I still can't see why it's more appealing to pay people for votes though, so they can earn far more than they would under a 50/50 model, when to get them to vote, all you folks needed to do was stop paying them to not vote. I'll never be able to understand that logic. You want votes, so you pay people to not vote, and they earn more for not voting, than they would for voting. Classic case of shooting yourself in the foot.
I don't really think you were cut out for this anyway. Where did you see yourself under the old model, in three years? Still buying votes and earning tiny percentages? How much quality can you produce? I have to work sometimes 12 hour days or more to be able to produce one post here per day. I do take breaks though, and the followers don't seem to mind.
That's too bad you're quitting. I have a feeling that would have happened eventually anyway since that's usually the path of the consistent promotion road.