You may know that I launched the #TenKMinnows project earlier this year. The intention was to try and boost the number of minnow accounts (500SP) on Steem as they did not seem to be increasing. It was actually @pennsif who encouraged me to do this after I commented on one of his daily posts that include the stats. You can also see them on the Steem Statistics posts by @arcange.
Image from Wikimedia.
The good news is that we have seen an increase from under 9,200 minnows to over 9,300. That may not seem much, but over this period a lot of people have powered down their accounts. Some will see that we should help to make dolphins (5000SP) too, but that is a harder task. In any case we have gained a few dolphins recently and we may exceed 2,000 very soon.
I still want to concentrate on making more minnows for now. I feel we could get to 10,000 this year if we concentrate a little effort on it. We had a push in March to try to get another 250 people to minnow status and we exceeded that target, if you discount those who powered down. Maybe we need another concerted effort to boost the numbers again.
My idea for this is #MayBeAMinnow that should run through next month, although I would like to see it continue well beyond that. I am not one for setting strict rules and I know Steemians tend to rebel against that, so I am going to set out some suggestions on how you can help.
This is really aimed at those who have a few thousand SP, but everyone is very welcome to participate. I can only give up to around 20c in a vote if I am very careful with my voting power, so there is not much I can do alone.
- Find a community to support. I plan to support the OpenMic and RunningProject groups as music and running are two of my passions. I think you need to look to what you enjoy so it is more fun. This should not feel like work.
- Follow some specific people who are close to being a minnow. Give them votes and comments to encourage them. Re-steem a few posts to get them more support.
- Delegate to small accounts. This increases what they can make from curation and allows them to give more support to others. I am okay with them self-voting their posts. Over half my SP is currently delegated to various people and projects.
- Buy them some @SteemBasicIncome shares that will get them extra votes for life. You benefit from that too. I must have bought about 100 shares so far and others have bought them for me.
- Reduce your own self-voting and support of bigger accounts to free up more voting power for the smaller accounts. Circumstances vary, but many of us can afford to earn a little less for a few months to help build the Steem community.
- Do what you can to encourage others to join in with this effort. We all benefit in the long run if the Steem community grows.
You are free to support who you like, but I will be sharing some suggestions in coming weeks. Feel free to propose candidates in the comments or do your own #MayBeAMinnow post. I will try to check those out. We should celebrate when we get someone to the target. I have really enjoyed seeing people announce when they get there. I am announcing this project a little before May starts to try and get things going. I am loath to set specific targets, but getting to 9.500 minnows by the end of next month would be great.
My time is limited and I have other things I need to be doing, but I will try to do at least weekly posts about how the project is going.
There are various other projects going on that have similar aims to me. You can support them too:
- @hitmeasap is doing the Minnow-ASAP project to support a group of redfish for a couple of weeks in various ways.
- @paulag runs the Redfish Power UP League to incentivise them to keep growing.
- I am not sure of the exact criteria, but @msp-makeaminnow are supporting potential and/or current minnows.
- @thedarkhorse is giving away delegations to small accounts.
- @minismallholding is giving away delegation and SBI to selected redfish.
I control the @tenkminnows account too, but I may not have time to do much with it. It has some nice delegations, so it may just be set up to hand out some auto-votes to deserving accounts.
I acknowledge that I am not setting out the specifics that some people may want to see, but I want it to be based on what each person wants to do. This is not about me making money or gaining fame. It is about making Steem bigger and better.
Steem on!
The geeky guitarist and facilitator of the 10K Minnows Project.
- I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
- Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
- Get some passive income with Mannabase
- Get paid to search at Presearch
- Battle for cards on Steem Monsters or drugs in Drug Wars
- I have Steem accounts to give away to worthy people!
I'm still running my month's delegation contest for redfish and am currently on round 6. Runners up get SBI shares. Sponsorship from @mattclarke and @simplymike means that I can run it fortnightly and have doubled the delegation to 200 SP.
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Cool. I've added you to the post.
I think that the minnow power up league is a great place to focus. You can see where everybody is sitting on SP and how active they are on a weekly basis. It should be easy to find a few to support weekly and get them over the line. Once you get that going the people a little lower on the list will push to get up higher to make the cut.
I shall have a look and see who I want to follow. Having them in my feed means they are more likely to get votes
Same for me. If they are there i will read and vote them. If not i don't see their work.
I think it is fantastic you are putting so much work into supporting and growing smaller accounts. There is definitely a lot of work needed on improving retention and supporting accounts through upvotes and comments to show appreciation of their work.
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I do what I can. I want to inspire others to do something.
Great idea and I like the focus on communities. I'm going to have a look at what's happening in the @needleworkmonday community and perhaps we could do something around UK steemians and SteemCampUK.
Thanks @steevc for the tips to help out. I’ll do what I can with upvotes and encouragement. SBI shares is a great idea.
Please give your votes to the small accounts rather than me. I want to see more rewards going that way. Also, let me know of any people who deserve more support.
I alway like to leave an upvote when I comment but will save my VP for the smaller a/cs.
One who deserves more support is @cosmiccrimes. He is close to the goal. Calvin upvotes and resteems a lot of posts. I would like to see him reach minnow status.
@myjob is another one who deserves more support. She posts faithfully with #freewrite and others. She is further from the goal of 500 sp.
@cosmiccrimes does not seem to have anything current to vote on. That makes him hard to support. For now I am going to support some runners and maybe some musicians too.
That’s too bad as @cosmiccrimes is generous at resteeming posts.
@fruityexplorer could use help to Minnow status. He posts in Chinese and English. https://steemit.com/@fruityexplorer
Thanks for the shout out. 😊How could I help?
Welcome @fruityexplorer. Just keep posting quality work and being social and commenting like @steevc mentioned. I will keep checking your page and support as much as I can. The goal is to get you to Minnow Status re: 500 sp. You need to power up as much as possible.
With your limited sp you cannot give big votes, but keep posting and supporting small accounts.
It just amazes me how influential @pennsif is. I think he has encouraged so many of us to our best to help the new people get there. I know he sure influenced me and got me (as @xcountytravelers) to create @heyhaveyamet and introduce the new people.
Good job and keep it on.
Ren
I'm convinced @pennsif is actually at least 3 people as he seems to do more than one could
I know right! It amazes how much he gets done.
Thank you Steve. It's only me and Simon.
Thank you Ren 😃
Always most welcome!
I may be a dolphin by the end of the year.
If I’m not disgusted by Steem by that point. Lol
Hope you stick around that long. I find it helps to concentrate on positive stuff for a while.
This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News in 10 posts - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.
I believe the #tenkminnows project is exactly on the right track @steevc.
Sure, one could make the case that we should be "making dolphins," but that misses an important point: If you're already close to dolphinhood, chances are you already have the posting and contribution habits to get there on your own.
When the focus is on Redfish — let's say people with 200SP and up who've at least committed to giving Steem a serious go — it's not just about getting someone across the 500SP finish line, it's about teaching the community interaction and engagement skills that will make them continued active members.
Including, for example, encouragement to become part of Asher's leagues, encouragement to join Paula's "power up leagues" and perhaps a willingness to pay forward the help they were offered by giving an occasional 50SP delegation to a struggling newcomer trying to deal with the RC issue.
Oh... and people will always end up giving you an upvote... because you're doing something postive for the community... it's reciprocity; it's a form of paying it forward, I doubt you can "retrain" people from that... so if I may; when you make these "community posts" why not just say that "the liquid part of the rewards from the post will be used to buy SBI units for promising redfish." That way nobody ends up feeling awkward because they either forgot to not vote, or just want to help out.
Well, I've babbled on enough! As you can probably tell, I have a very positive feeling about all this.
=^..^=
We seem to be on the same wavelength. I'm not always good at expressing myself, but the feedback I get is very gratifying. We're definitely making progress with the minnows. One made a big leap yesterday as I didn't realise that he should be powering everything up and now he's almost a minnow
I need to dig back into my delegations some more and see what I can do to free some of that up. I have been trying to help out some projects that have been mutually beneficial, but I know that I am not really getting the return I could be...
There have been times times month that my VP was destroyed as I am trailing the account but I think it is a great cause so I will not move that. I also like the idea of helping with SBI and engagement as it feels more like community! Great progress so far!
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Good tips which I will share.
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Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
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Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Manually curated by @niallon11.
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Have a ganja pick! When I'm famous I'll send you one 😂
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Ooh, I've not got one of those!
Great opportunity for young bills. Let me mention your article in the Czech community.
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