Thanks for the thoughtful comment @fullcoverbetting! Voting power is a little low these days due to the slumping crypto markets; I used to be a lot more active when I had a 100% upvote worth almost $2.00... but those are the breaks, I guess.
I built this account 100% "organically," with the only exceptions being upvotes I bought on warning messages concerning scams/phishing (I think I've posted about 4-5 in my time here) on which I just wanted wide distribution, quickly. Back in the earliest days of vote bots I also used randowhale sporadically, but stopped after a month or so.
In 15 months, I think I've had 10-12 posts make it to "Hot" on their own; 2 or 3 to "Trending." It's not something I set as an ambition, mind you. My personal ambitions (in part derived from 20 years of playing with groups/social media online) relate to the level of engagement any given post reaches. For example, I consider this a "successful" post for having a large number of comments, and pageviews being more than double the number of upvotes; that tells me the post succeeded in the sense that people actually read and interacted with the topic.
Steemit is really an interesting "hybrid" in the sense that it draws both "content creators" and "income opportunity seekers" and they are really very different fish with very different objectives.
My primary objective-- ABOVE ALL OTHERS -- Is that I still want to be here, doing this, five years, ten years from now. Whether I will be making 5c or $50 a post by then is really not a big factor. I just had my 12th anniversary on Facebook. Made me ponder... will I HAVE a 12th Anniversary on Steemit?
Yes, I think we're on a similar track!
~Peter (as well)
Wouldn't it be great to be able to give "a 12 year on Steemit party". This requires a lot more effort than being on Facebook.
I can only dream about being on the Hot or Trending page. While it is not an ambition of me, it still would be great.
Have some SP now, you I gave the post the much deserved upvote!