I've asked myself the same questions and I've gotten many different responses. Upvoting is free indeed, but your amount of voting power is limited. Some people just upvote their own posts or delegate the majority of their voting power to someone/something else. That might explain why some authors don't upvote any comments on their posts.
You can check how much voting power you have on steemnow.com/@yourusername
Upvoting your own comments is frowned upon by some, but not everyone. I typically don't do it unless I feel my comment needs to be seen.
Good that you're not too focused on the monetary part, you should focus on writing about stuff you like first. You can definitely also make money without your posts hitting the 'Trending' section.
I am so happy to see someone calmy explain this to these entitled noobs! Thank you for letting them know that it is NOT exactly "free", at least not MONEY upvotes.
Sorry it is not free to give VALUE upvotes, upvotes that actually pay out money
you MUST have steempower to give money upvotes. PERIOD. So why should something so valuable be given out like a cheap Obamaphone to every homeless person with an EBT card?
These upvotes arent't free, maybe yours are, but mine cost me a lot of time and money to earn and buy. I don't give out BIGones to just anyone
But go LOOK at y Blog. I make SURE that EVERY last commenter on my Blogs gets at LEAST 1 cent in upvotes from me or my friend @tytran UNLESS they post spam or shit, then they get a warning and then instead of flags I let steemclaners flag em and pay me in steempower http://steemcleaners.org/report-abuse its VERY nice thank you @anyx for creatig that! (He also made @cheetah ) ANYWAY you can SEEth I give EVERYONE (Except pammers etc) a 1 cent or MORE upvot.
I usually reserve the 1to 4 cent upvotes for the LOW effort shitty 2 - 4 word cments like "Nice Post" because I want to give them a chance, I know they have no idea how bad their short comments seem, I just am happy these people are trying, they will lern
But if you leave a GOOD comment or a RELEVAT image or funny meme, AYTHIG of value, you will get atleast a 20 cent upvote and for REALLY good commens, DEPNDING on my vote power that day, youll get a $1 upvote, (and tha means atleast $2.50 in SBD~! )
SO I peronslay LOVE giving out comment upvotes, I see it as away o ensure that al my fans get to leae my blog with somethig real in their wallets
but no one has any right to be openly angry about expecting free money from whales jus because you commented n thir post... That's insane... Imgine if whales had to give 100% upvotes to every comment on their blogs, they would NEVER have any upvote power for QUALITY content!
Most comments are TRASH, thank GOD whales save their VP for actual quality content! But if you D leave a goodcomment, ill be the FIRST to reward you with a $1 upvote!
Now I apologize for my Ager all throughout this Blog, but IT MUST BE MADE CLEAR to the Noobs that the Reward pool I NOTTHEIR to fucking ARGUE over, they shoul dbe GRATEFUl for the crumbs they are gettig on this platform they had NOTHIG to do with until recently, Its like they walk into a restaurant they ddnt build, and demand a job and then demand they get a tip and get mad when they don't get a tip, and then they ask why the boss isn't giving them a dree bonus their fiurst day, because the Boss has all this extra money, and it would be "Free" to ut give you some money, it diesnt "cost " them anything to hand you some "extra: money they don need anyway rigt? Hahh fuckin communist bullshit I all I hear! And I won't stand for it!
There is NO SUCH THING as reward pool rape. You CANNOT steal from the reward pool
if you want more upvotes, buy or earn some steempower
Why do you sound so angry? Why the need to call us "entitled noobs?" Then since you are a whale, you should speak up to clarify the documentation of the steem platform. It is literally stated in the documentation that there is no cost associated with upvoting, posting, etc.
Without adoption, nobody will make money anyways soon will be worthless.
I might be a noob here, and I'm still learning, and I want to learn, and I want to improve the community in any way I can (I'm a software developer) and I'm already working in some applications that can help the community, but most of the greed I've seen around here is not by the new people, instead is by those with power, and fights between them for various reasons I've seen so far.
I want to see this platform thrive, and I hope I can help others once I become proficient with the system.
Kind Regards.
Very amazing answer. And no, this is not a begging for a vote and past that shit. but its rare to see such a good explanation on stuff that might be even really difficult to be understood even if its explained.
first i read "no such thing as reward pool rape," then this. Thanks for making it easier to understand.
@ackza I agree 100% with your comments. There is only 1 way to get steempower, and that’s hard effort. Whether you wrote good blogs and got up-voted or whether you got a day-job, saved some money and invested it in steem, it’s the same thing. Both require effort.
The second point is that no matter how good you are, you can’t just enter steemit and expect the whales to start following you and voting you. That takes a long time. It’s like when you join a company. You might be the brightest and best person in the entire company, but you still have to join at the bottom, and the directors at the top won’t know your name, or care much about how good you are. There is no fast-track.
Those who come here saying “I wrote brilliant high quality content, but everyone ignores me”, have the wrong motives, the wrong attitude, and are dooming themselves to failure.
In real life, rewards are not instant - like winning the lottery. They take a lifetime of effort.
In the virtual world rewards can come much faster. Six months of excellent blogging can turn you into a star. People still come here expecting to be a star on their first day. It’s like the losers on “Britain’s got Talent”, most of them won’t make it.
@ackza. I’d be careful with the use of capitals.
thanks for explain it