Greetings Steemians,
HF21 is now live and this post is a quick update what has changed in regards to Smartsteem.com promotion services (for the detailed post click here):
ROI Calculation both for @smartsteem and vote-sellers have been increased in response to 50/50.
We've also increased the ROI buffer for @smartmarket to 20% for a limited time period, as compensation for some promotion buyers earning a minus ROI due to the changes on author rewards after HF21, where a post was promoted before HF21 hit the blockchain, which wasn't anticipated.
Minimum promotion amount has been changed to 2.5 SBD & 10 STEEM. This will change in the near future, where the fixed STEEM amount will be kept and a dynamic SBD amount added, depending on the SBD dollar price.
Minimum post-age has been decreased to 5 minutes from previously 15 minutes.
Delegator payouts will be changed to 110% very soon, once we've monitored how the HF21 unfolds. For more information about this and the future payouts, please read the detailed post - the important passage is at the end of the post.
We will be even more strict with the blacklisting of people on Steem who are trying to promote low-quality content in excess.
In case the voting power is idling at 100%, we're trying to utilize it as much as possible to reward people who are increasing the value of Steem.
Downvotes, especially the free downvoting power, is also going to be utilized to clean up the social trending page on Steem.
Last but not least, please be mindful about what you're promoting, so you're not losing money through downvotes. #NewSteem
Team Smartsteem
Change is the way forward.
Good write-up, great that you'll be more strict with the blacklist!
I still have a pretty sound use case for SmartSteem, I tend to use it for getting my posts over the threshold to get links turned into dofollow links. It's something that I absolutely need when writing articles for clients.
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STOPVote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
You definitely need to lower the price for promotion for smartmarket... It's bullshit to have it that high. You're only giving vote sells to people with ridiculous stakes. I used to get a few hundred votes from different people that would not only boost my post, but help them out to earn a bit as well by giving them some vote sells as opposed to large stakeholders who I don't care to sell my votes to. Now you've changed it and I received less than 10 votes from very large stakeholders and not only is that bullshit to me because I specifically chose the "Give priority to smaller votes" or whatever option on your platform(Which clearly doesn't seem to work.), but also because I do not want to help the rich get richer. I don't want to sell my votes to large stakeholders, at all. I want to help the little people grow. Fix this shit, please.
On top of all of that, you're giving your users even less value than before by doing this, because not only did I get a small amount of votes from large stakeholders... They did not have any Steem Engine tokens powered up, so I did not get any bonus tokens through promotion. (An added reason that I and a LOT of other users use your service for.)
I get that you need to adjust to the changing climate, but you need to consider your users in this matter. Rising the price only hurts your bottom line and it hurts your users and vote sellers/delegators. With a price that high, I don't see myself ever purchasing promotion from you again, unless I have a major post I want visibility on. (Once in a blue moon.) I use your service basically daily and I love it, but to change it to this is just horrifying to me.
Consider this as well:
You claim you want to "fight against over promotion" or whatever you said, but now in order to promote my posts with you, I HAVE to spend 10 steem. That defeats the purpose of what you just said. You're requiring people to spend a ridiculous amount of steem in order to promote their content, when some of us don't want to and regularly don't promote our content that high because we don't believe it's worth that much. People like my still want to use your service though, it helps, a fucking lot.
EX: I have posts where I share music I like and write a little bit about why I like it or something about the artist/etc... I promote that with 0.8-1.2 steem on purpose because I do not want to over-promote it to where I feel as though I've promoted it more than I should have. Some content is meant to only be promoted a little bit and for specific reasons and the idea that you've made the cost for a collective vote-selling platform 10 steem is absolutely ridiculous. Not only are you prioritizing larger stakeholders by doing this, you are going to cost yourself a lot of users (And by result, supporters/vote sellers.) if you keep things as they are. If I can only get a few votes from some large stakeholders out of smartmarket, that means I no longer have the option to sell to the little guys... Meaning I might as well go elsewhere where my promotions will profit me more, instead of use your service that no longer helps the little people.
Please, consider the people who are trying to grow, who don't have very much in life and would like to have a little bit more. Also consider that people like me purposely don't want large stakeholders voting on my content. I'd rather have that payment be divided among the small ones. I checked the box for giving small people vote priority, why was that not applied to my promoted post? Why was I given votes from people with 80k+ SP? Please explain this...
Do I need to figure out who uses the market and blacklist all large stake holders from being allowed to vote on my posts? Is that possible? Idk... but you need to consider how many people use your services who don't have large stakes. Collectively, we do have a large stake and we matter too. Through this transition, I feel as though we've been neglected entirely. :(
Hello @lookplz,
we appreciate your feedback.
The changes in the minimum promotion amount was actually to protect users like you, who normally would buy small quantities. The vote value is not linear anymore, which means it's lower if the total post value is below 20 STEEM payout.
If you're buying votes for 1 STEEM and you're expecting 0.2 STU as a reward, you might just get 0.15 STU due to the non-linear rewards curve. That way we can't promise the ROI, because we can't just increase the ROI for small promotion buyers.
However, with this in mind, we've changed the minimum promotion amount to:
Vote-Bidding: 1 SBD / 5 STEEM
Vote-Buying: 0.5 SBD / 2 STEEM
That way, you're able to buy many more votes from smaller voters, as you're able to send a lower amount. We can't promise this of course, due to the current market conditions, but we'll do our best.
Team Smartsteem
I'm sorry if I came off a bit rash. I was just a bit frustrated at the time. I appreciate your reply though and taking the time to explain things a bit more clearly for me.
I do think that Steem Engine tokens contribute a great deal of value to having voting diversity, so if you can make it to where smaller people have more of an impact, it's always going to be greatly appreciated by people like myself. Those, in unison with steem directly, and SMTs when they arrive, I believe, will rapidly increase the value of steem and in turn, all of our stakes. Being able to earn them through voting diversity (As many different voters as possible.) would keep you at the top of the list as far as value of promotion goes. (In my opinion. :P)
I think that it would be better for even small users to use a fraction of their voting power btw. I feel that it would increase their curation return when using your vote selling feature by allowing them (And me, I sell votes with you!) to be able to vote on a larger variety of posts. I believe this would maximize the returns because say they vote 100% on a post that doesn't promote beyond say $1. Then, in the time they are recovering power, assuming they are voting at a 25% rate instead of 100% which is generally the current when selling a vote with your service, they miss 3 posts that are promoted above $20-40 range that they would have otherwise voted 25% on each of and received a larger chunk of curation from. (In theory.)
Just some things to think about. I am definitely satisfied so far, so I apologize again if my frustration came off aggressively. That was not my intention. I guess I can't expect things to work perfectly as I personally expect them to. lol.
The one thing I want to pat you on the back about, is how you've formed the ability to send one amount and receive multiple votes from it. Having to send many many different transactions seems a bit spammy on the blockchain, so the fact that you've consolidated the need for transaction sending, while still providing a large number of upvotes, is incredible! It's the main reason I've been drawn to your service since I started out here. I love it! As I said before, it also allows me to help the little people like myself grow. (Something I really enjoy being able to do.)
I suppose for the time being, maybe I just need to write posts that are of higher value, so that I feel I am justified in spending 10 steem to promote them. ;)
Cheers to the future! :)
Is it intended that users with less than 2k SP cannot (or have a very hard time to) sell their vote currently?
hm ... forgetting the outright positivity about downvoting and it being quite too early this friday vs. last friday seems to get 57% today of what i got last week from delegation ... in case you needed numbers for calibration. I know it's too early, but 43% raises eyebrows. I hope all of this debacle in favour of the rich can be fixed soon. I'll leave it as it is until i see the calibration and the changes but im gonna hold on building up the delegation for a while there, i'm sure you understand
is it just me or does the vote-selling not work anymore?