Last week I made 1 whole month since I registered and started using Steemit, so I have posted a list of things that I have managed to achieve in those first 4 weeks, so this week I'll be posting a short update on my stats and compare how things have changed just 1 week later. My focus in this post however is to also share some thought about Steemit based my personal observations and experience after spending quite a lot of time here already...
The Important Stats
Current Reputation Level: 59 (+1)
Number of Followers: 189 (+35)
Total Number of Posts: 1034 (+143)
Number of Blog posts: 141 (+21)
Data provided by Steemit and Steemdb
The Not So Important Stats
Rank by Estimated Account Value: 989 (9 down)
Rank by Reputation: 353 (3749 up)
Rank by Total Posts: 80 (2 up)
Rank by Number of Followers: 208 (17 up)
Rank by Posting Rewards: 834 (71 up)
Rank by Curation Rewards: 299 (12 down)
Rank by Steem Power: 933 (106 up)
Ranking data provided by SteemWhales
Lately I'm seeing that I'm kind of losing my willingness to write a more than one or two posts per day, used to have no problem writing four to five decent one per day in the first month, now I'm not so encouraged to spend that much time writing for Steemit every day. I've also not been very active in curating posts like I used to do, feeling a bit discouraged in that as well, though I've been working on bots that should help hopefully. Generally I have been spending less time on Steemit and that is why probably some of my stats lost ranks instead of gaining some...
Some More About Promoted Posts
Two days ago I have posted some thoughts about the new Promoted Content feature as well as my concerns that it is still not functioning as it should. I need to add a bit more about it since I actually had some success using it, but not the kind I had expected. My first experience was based on spending a few dollars and that pretty much did not work well. Then I have decided that I can spend a bit more to test, so I have boosted this post How to Get a Better Sleep When Using a Computer Late at Night with a little over $36 SBD. The post was good and deserved to get the attention of more readers as it could be useful for people that spend a lot of time on Steemit, especially late at night. So it was the perfect candidate for testing with a good and useful post getting promoted with a larger amount of SBD...
I wanted to have the post in the top 20 promoted posts and the boost amount was enough to keep it at around the 20th place, so that it would be easy to be seen by everyone without having to go through a specific category. The post did not have a popular tag, so otherwise finding it by category would be very hard, though I don't like to abuse tags just to make a post more visible as you can see from my posts' tags. Guess what happened? The post did do pretty good finishing with a total of $106.75 SBD reward ($82.93 SBD for the author or 41.463 SBD and 45.402 STEEM POWER). So it essentially has managed to just cover the SBD used for promoting it from what it has earned, while being pretty visible to anyone checking the Promoted page, but that is not what is important here.
What is important is the fact that while the post scored some Whale votes, as apparently they do check the Promoted page, it didn't get a lot of attention from regular users past the first hour after its publication at about which time it was promoted. Sure, Whales voted for it, but apart from them not more than a few votes from other users... not to mention getting more comments or actually gaining new followers. If a post goes trending maybe there will be much more good results, but how can that happen unless a lot of Whales upvote it believing it deserves to go trending which will hardly happen for the normal average user on Steemit. Since there are not much regular users, besides maybe others who actually also use the Promoted feature, but at the moment that page looks more like a place where people brag how much they can spend on promoting their posts...
So again, the only usability for the Promoted page at this moment seems to be for gaining some extra Whale votes for good posts in order to aim for the Trending page. That would however require a really good post and spending at least 30-40 SBD just to be sure that more people (Whales) will see it. Other than that there does not seem to be much point using the Promoted page for the moment, or at least based on my experience with it so far.
Some Observations About Tags
Another big disappointment on Steemit is regarding the usability of tags... it seems that unless you use and actually abuse some of the popular tags you risk a lot in not getting your post seen by many people after the first 30-60 minutes. Even if it is a good and interesting post, if you just set some tags related to the post itself without looking for the popular tags or even thinking about adding any of them it will most likely be buried and not seen by many people after the initial period after posting it. Go figure why people abuse popular tags and use them on posts that have nothing to do with the content of their posts...
This is really a discouraging thing, especially when it happens with a post that you just planned to start a Blog post series with... really does not help you in motivating you to even write a second post. I have previously written on series of 10 blog posts exploring 3D Printers and 3D Printing that had moderate success, but I have temporary stopped it as although some posts did Ok on terms of rewards my goal was to find more people that would be interested in what I'm writing about and there were just too few. So I decided to continue with the 11th post of the series at a later time. Meanwhile I have decided to try and start a series about RC models as they are one of my many hobbies, guess what, I may need to postpone that for a later as well even after the first post I made...
I really don't like writing for a few Whales that may or may not like what they see (if they manage to see it at all) to give you an encouraging vote. This has already happened to me a few times and while it works well the first time it is not very encouraging when it happens often, but other than the Whale vote(s) nothing much else happens and when you to the next post that is better than the previous and even more interesting and it slips through the attention of Whales... that really acts much more discouraging than anything else.
What Really Needs to Change
People should not need Whale votes in order for their posts to be able to earn a decent reward, but more importantly to get more people to find and read what they write about... they should not need to promote their content or to write it in a way that may attract Whale attention. Whales certainly do have their place in the Steemit ecosystem, but we should not be needing them to get encouraged or get a decent reward for a good posts... maybe for going Trending for now it would still be Ok to rely on them, but just for now. I know Steemit is still way to small and it needs to grow and attract a lot more users, however if we expect these issues to resolve themselves by just waiting for more new users to come the problems may just as well get more serious instead.
Steemit needs to grow its middle-class of users fast, so that these people with decent Voting Power would be able to make a difference and significantly influence the way things are currently happening. How can that happen, I don't know, I don't have the right solution, but people should not stop giving ideas on how things might improve and the ones in charge should actually be listening more to the advice they get... I see a lot of users giving ideas, myself included, but I also get the feeling that nobody is listening and many of these just fall through the holes of getting unnoticed.
If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.
Did you like what you have just read? Check my other posts on steemit @cryptos
Dear @cryptos,
Your post has been selected by the @robinhoodwhale initiative as one of our top picks for curation today.
Learn more about the Robinhood Whale here!
The Steemit community looks forward to more amazing blogs from you. So, please keep on Steeming!
Goodluck!
~RHW~
Just take a look at the effect that the @robinhoodwhale initiative is having on this post, don't get me wrong I like the idea, though it seems to be half working at the moment. Yes, it raises some attention towards the bloggers and their posts it also brings up a decent reward, however did you see anything change much after the post got like a 100 more votes and a reward closer to 10 SBD a few hours after it was posted and got "hit" by the RHW?
Just take a look at the people that have voted - some of the celebrities on steemit, some of the witnesses and other popular authors... yes, they do support the initiative and that is nice. Have you seen a bunch of new comments, do you wonder how many of these people have actually read the post... I do. Probably not that much, they were brought by the @robinhoodwhale initiative and just did their part in voting (it could've even been automated voting for some). That is precisely I'm saying it half works, but still even half is better than nothing... Steemit however does need more and unless that happens it would continue to be a place that hardly retains new good authors...
The problem with the tags is they have hard-coded tags in the right-hand side bar on the front page. So a lot of tags are missing from there, even if you use search you can' find them, and unless they update them, they will never get seen.
P.S. You shouldn't write more than 4 posts in a 24 hour period - I think they did an update a while back where if you write more, you start to get penalised (don't see the monetary reward).
I know about that "24 hour posting rule" set to encourage better quality posts, but since I'm not in here just for the rewards, not do I believe that when I write 5 or even more posts per day they will be lower quality I just don't follow it! I have tried not to go over 4 posts per day (early on when I was spending way too much time on Steemit), but found it really very limiting for me personally. Now it just seems that I'm naturally following that as I haven’t been posting that much lately anyway...
Having to wait for a certain time just to post something is not encouraging, it is in fact discouraging. Sure that may help in preventing spam or at least limiting it somehow, but I would generally not recommend to anyone to care about that rule... most people don't earn much with their posts anyway.
I have written something about that a while ago actually: https://steemit.com/break-rules/@cryptos/don-t-follow-the-rules-on-steeamit-break-them
We need voice of the people sort post after 30minutes with high counts of high rep votes. Much of steemit is designed for whales. I think it's just the problems they see are the ones fixed first. We need more of the minnow problems addressed.
I think there's lots of potential for more features. I'd like to be able to follow the tags I'm interested in and get relevant posts in my feed. That would aid in discovering users. I'm promoting people with my 'followfriday' tag, but I know few will see that.
My Feed page is where I go first. I'm curating that to get the content I want rather than going to the main Trending page. The whales are irrelevant to me really as they are unlikely to vote on my posts. I get a few cents from votes by 'dolphins'. It looks like you need 1000SP+ to give someone 1c on a vote.
I'm here to read interesting posts. I'm following the progress of Steemit, but I have other interests too.
As you said, we do not need whales, but on the other hand we sould be able to write and know the writing is good even without whales.
Once whale noticed our post, but 2 posts later, just few people voted for our post without whale and get unnoticed... And this little uncourages us from writing more and more sophisticated.
Very well thought out and nicely written set of concerns. I agree with most of it and am feeling the same things although I have only been on board for 10 days.
Awesome writing and getting negligible rewards is a no no.
...People should not need Whale votes in order for their posts to be able to earn a decent reward, but more importantly to get more people to find and read what they write about... Agree with that 100%. Its the biggest issue Steemit have right at the moment. Good Stats by the way, youknow that i love stats :)
Great post @cryptos. Are you still going to post on crypto mining blog? I'm a big fan.
Yes, I was in vacation... :)
Great, can't wait.
@cryptos, thanks for sharing your experience. Your update on your results with the new promote feature was really helpful.
@steempowerwhale 🐳
🌞 upvoting your lifetime dreams!
a lot of good points here @cryptos. I wonder what discouraged you writing fewer posts per day?
Mostly lack of comments and feedback, people that just love to write do it so that somebody will actually read and find useful or interesting what they write about... they don't just do it for the money (or the reward here on Steemit). Sure, nobody would refuse to get something in return for the time spent writing, but a good post that you make that has 0 comments even with a few hundred SBD reward is really not that satisfying... at least for the people that don't do it for the money.
Here on Steemit you often get the feeling that not many people actually read your posts, I have discussed the need for Post Views functionality, other users as well talked about this, but it is starting to feel like such a feature is not being implemented intentionally... just because the numbers will be really low and discouraging and not very far from the number of votes our posts are getting (even when a vote does not necessarily mean somebody has actually read your post).
I agree. I think vying for the whale is not a good focus. Growing the middle class is good because it is achievable, and dolphins are more likely to vote minnows up because the minnows are who got them where they are. In the mean time, focusing on our own authenticity, writing what we are passionate about, and staying true to who we are and what we believe is the best way to make this a meaningful experience. You can be attached to what you write, and it will not feel like a waste of time. And if someone else appreciates it, then it will be all the better.
I have just Promoted the post with 20-some SBD to have it among the Top 20 promoted posts, the last in the list, to see what effect that will bring as a part of me checking out the new feature (also discussed here and in previous posts) and actually testing its usability. I mean, look at that post, it already has 142 people voted for it (my absolute record I think) and 15 comments, so it should be interesting and promoting it should attract more readers that maybe will engage in a conversation... Let us see what happens.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
About linkback bot.
The story is good,it is an interesting way to tell a story involving other people on Steemit :)
Thanks, fixed :)