First off, thanks for the detailed reply, I was actually hoping you'd chime in since you seemed the most vocal on this. I know it takes time to write all that and I appreciate you giving me your honest feedback.
So a bit of context, after the whole episode here, I did look at your blog, your wallet, the whole nine. Saw your followers, payout history, etc. I also read the previous exchange you'd had with @abrockman(although not until after my post).
So I'm just going to use you vs abrockman because we're both familiar with this for example's sake. What I can observe is:
- You've been here a long time, he's fairly new
- You don't buy any votes, and he does
- Despite the time difference you guys have around the same amount of followers
- You're being upvoted by people with a lot of SP and his are from Minnows/Plankton
- In terms of profit you're typically making more than he is per post once you subtract what he spent promoting as of now, but he's gaining followers at a faster rate.
So then there are things that you're saying that I can't really observe like:
- The idea that you not paying for promotion is correlated to the fact that people upvoting your posts have more SP.
- The idea that all or most followers that you'd get from being on the Trending page will be worth very little.
The top section is observable and there's no need to comment on that, but the others I feel like you could be drawing false conclusions. Basically there are a lot more variables at play that could be influencing these things and there's not really any way to tie this to paying for promotion, at least not that I can see.
I think using the performance of this one post with 3 tags and no art might be premature to gauge whether the followers that abrockman received while promoting his posts will be composed of only people with low SP, but I sort of feel like that's not that important anyway.
Basically the way I see it, Steemit is in it's infancy and the VAST majority of people using it have low SP. So it makes sense that most of anyone's followers are going to have low SP, it also makes sense that for people that have been on here longer would have more exposure for people with more SP because they too have been here longer. But if this platform is going to grow that means people who are minnows now will eventually level up with the platform, so I don't see followers that have low value now as worthless. If I gain a loyal follower who is genuinely interested in my work, that's not a waste.
Also if the only way to make descent money here is to garner the favor of whales and dolphins I think the platform won't survive. I think the future of Steemit is the power being more distributed, and I think that might be one disconnect point for us. I'm not trying to get rich quick here. I think it has a lot of potential in the long run, but I think it still has a lot of growing up to do. I think the devs are on it so I'm still pretty optimistic though.
So I know I maybe just rambled a lot, but the main bullet point I'd want to communicate to you with that is for me, and I may be wrong, but I think with @abrockman my initial purpose here wouldn't be to make as much money as possible, I'd rather grow my audience as much as possible. I could be wrong in that thinking, but we won't know for a few years until things develop more. So with that I think promoting posts so that people can actually see them is not a waste.
I also want to comment on the idea that you personally think that using bid bots is morally not so great.
I of course respect your right to feel that way, but I don't.
I would need to see some real numbers and data to see just how malleable the reward pool is, but my hunch is that you can say when someone uses bid bots they're "moving the reward pool", but I think it's like saying when you drop a penny in a swimming pool you're "moving the water". While it's technically correct, at the micro level it's insignificant to the big picture. I know there are a ton of sites and apps for gathering analytics from Steemit, and if you have some actual numbers to validate that position, I'd love to check them out and learn more.
I couldn't find the stat I came across at one point but it basically showed that some ridiculous number like over 80% of the reward pools rewards were dished out by bid bots. If that's accurate and we as a community and the Steemit devs together don't want things to be that way, it has to be handled at the systemic level. ie Them designing a promotion system that works better than the current one.
Every platform that allows users to share content has a promotional system where you can get more exposure by paying. If I'm selfish for using that system, then so is a huge percentage of Steemit.
I think your advice to me about my posts are totally right. I'm not that great at it right now, but I'll be trying to get better. Looking at your blog I can see instantly that you're engaging people and that's obviously really valuable and more interesting than just posting a picture and a sentence or two. I hear you for sure.
So as I mentioned before, I'm still mostly experimenting with the bots, so for me what does that look like? I'm wondering what's the least amount I can spend and land on trending and how long will I be there for x amount of SBD, I'm wondering are there any cases where I will have a drastically low ROI, considering how many new followers I received and how many of them are real vs people trying to sell me resteem services etc. So to answer your question, no, what I've learned is that to make the promotion worth it, you have to spend more. As I mentioned, with a small promotion like that you don't really take a loss, but I've learned you don't really gain anything either since it's not enough to land you on trending. It did land on Hot though. It's all just experimentation at this point. I've been here less than a month so still feeling things out.
So with all that rambling you'd think I was a huge advocate for bid bots, but I'm actually not, but I'm also not super against them either, and I was just wondering why some people were.
Sorry this is so long, and thanks a lot if you've read all this!
So in closing, I've had 2 posts reach the trending page. One organically and one I bought, of course it's great to reach it organically but the only reason it did was because of one big upvote from a whale, and while of course I appreciate that support, I don't think that's sustainable for Steemit. If the platform grows to have tens of millions of users there won't be enough whales, the power will have to be more distributed and having more followers WILL matter. Or I could be totally wrong and fail utterly haha, but I have to follow my own thinking just like you're following yours. I think it's really awesome that you've done as well as you have on here and it's definitely an inspiration. If I fail to see results doing something a certain way I'll definitely change. We'll see how things go.
No, the people aren't worthless. Their votes simply don't amount to much. Not everyone grows either. It's not a waste, I never said a waste. You can have a look around someday. You might notice quite a few people with thousands of followers, no votes on their work, no views. You saw my blog, you noticed I don't treat my followers like a statistic. Majority of them leave with more money than they had when they arrived. I value those people. Using tricks and shortcuts doesn't work.
If a whale or dolphin enjoys your work, you'll get paid. I didn't kiss anyone's ass. Many of those who vote for me started with nothing as well. We built each other up. Even those votes on comments go a long way. It's teamwork. Find your people, hang out, we're allowed to have rich friends just as much as we can poor friends. We're all people. Bots aren't people. You're an artist. You need views. Bots can't see.
Distribution: If we have 10 bots and majority of the people pay 10 accounts and they're only breaking even that means you're not growing, but those 10 accounts are growing. They earn thousands of dollars per day. Just have a look at their wallets. You're placing that much potential SP into 10 accounts. How is that spreading out the wealth? That's paving the road for centralization.
Here's an easier way to promote something.
I didn't pay a dime. I'm on the internet using a combination of a publishing tool, words, and fun. Look at the numbers on that post. I took on the role of advertiser, I got paid like an advertiser. I suppose it's just easier to buy a vote or two, sit back, wait? Take action. It works better. Don't leave it up to someone else.
Also, get involved with the community. Look for artists. Some hold interesting competitions and contests or they collaborate. You have the ability to put your names wherever the hell you want. That's free advertising. Make friends. They'll vote for you. Do you use Facebook? Don't answer these questions. How many friends you got on there? How many out of that group actually support your status updates? How many do you actually talk to? If you do something crazy, notice how more people come out to play? Man, I got 265 views on that post where I mentioned Brockman. I watched his following grow while he was gone. All I did was mention his name. You can use your bots all you want but if you want solid results you get out there flyer the parking lot. Pretend you're a street artist in a park or a busker. They don't pay people to come and watch them. People walk by and drop money. It's a new game. ... now I'm rambling.
Dude, I had to put the coffee on to be able to respond to this. I'm tired. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I realize I sent a wall of text, and got one back. Oops. These are tough to respond to. Enjoy the vote. Time is money around here. Remember, this is just my opinion.
Thanks man! I appreciate it :) Also I feel like we can talk about this for quite a while, but I don't want to take up too much of your time or hijack @abrockmans post any more than I have. Also I can't figure out how to add the quotes like you're doing, so this reply won't look as cool as yours haha.
So let me just define what using a bot means to me: You pay to have your work shown in the trending and Hot Sections, and depending on how much you pay, for how long. Period, that's all.
It doesn't dictate how you treat your followers, you could have an amazing community or be an absentee poster, but that has nothing to do really with bots. These things aren't mutually exclusive.
Some of my best friends are rich ;p Hey man, I'm not a wealth bigot either, if a whale likes my stuff that's awesome too. The only thing using bots does is increases my chances of reaching them in the first place.
This is why I said bots are a good band-aid, I don't think it's a long term solution either, but the only way people aren't going to use them are if
And they are effective at doing what I defined above.
Lastly on your last point, again you could do this and promote it and all the promotion would do is allow more people to see it.
Its not like anyone who uses bots cares about the bot upvote. Using @abrockman as an example, typically he'd have over 300 upvotes, like 6 of those are bots, the other several hundred are fans. Fans that would have never seen his post had he not promoted it. Just like this post, I'm following abrockman, but this post didn't show up in my feed. I just searched his name because I was wondering what he'd been up to. I think that's the perfect example of why promoting can be valuable.
Now none of this means you should NOT do all the things you're mentioning above, I think you can and in some cases should do both. Just as you mentioned in your fist post that sometimes you might do an extra special post that you really want people to see, those are the ones worth promoting. At least that's my opinion so far. As I mentioned, a small amount of SBD won't make a difference and a post that you haven't put much time into won't get that much attention anyway, but if you put the work in and make something you think is awesome, I can only see promoting that post as bettering your chances of people seeing it.
This ended up being long again, sorry, anyway, thanks for the upvote, it was good chatting about this with you. It seems like such a taboo subject like a kid brother locked in the attic that everyone knows is there, but people don't like to talk about, haha.
@midlet & @nonameslefttouse, This may be the most content-rich comment dialogue I have ever seen. I appreciate you guys having this conversation here for all to see.
First off, @midlet, it's good to hear from you. I remember you "coming to my rescue" if you will, When this original post was under fire. As a fellow digital artist and just from the way you communicate I see so much of myself in you.
In the book that you wrote above ;) those are all the exact feelings and thought processes I had. I was trying to leverage my SBD into more exposure and essentially make money in more SP. However, it really isn't that simple. I went a little crazy and had almost 3k invested into bots promoting my posts over the last month. A lot of that was rolled over into the most current seven days. By then there was so much money "on the line" that the risk did not even come close to the reward. Because it takes seven days for our reward payout, that money could have easily been down voted or flaged (Totally plausible mind you), resulting in a complete loss of all those funds. For the most part, once that happens you are shit out of luck fighting to get that back. If you paid for those votes (which I did), rather than just getting them from generous whales (nothing out-of-pocket), it would quickly make you consider suck starting a pistol.
In the beginning, I did not fully realize the risk to reward ratio. Also, @nonameslefttouse mentioned it briefly, but there is a reward "slippage". By the time the reward pool is distributed, you take out the 25% curating reward, and the market price per coin falling you are in the hole big time. Also, take a look at your pending payout a few minutes before it is paid, it drops another 20% usually, furthering my point. Trust me, I thought I had a perfect system, but putting that money into actual SP may have been a better move. The only "saving grace" is the amount of followers gained. That is indisputable and very hard to assess a value to. Maybe that alone makes it worth it in using bots? The system definitely needs some fixing and until that happens I am treading very lightly.
It took me a long time to really think about all of this, analyze, calculate and realize the true wisdom @nonameslefttouse was giving me. I would listen to everything he mentioned above and really focus on what he said in a previous post – "Rather than making people pay for attention, let's go back to paying attention to them."
@midlet, is 100% correct that for artists time is money… So it's difficult to continue to post great content with little rewards for months on end. But I guess that also determines who deserves to be here? @nonameslefttouse made the most epic analogy : We are like street performers hoping to garner enough attention to have someone drop a vote in our proverbial hat. It is up to us to have enough hustle to fill that hat up.
If all of us here stick together and help educate others (especially minnows) about what's really going on behind the scenes I think we will all be paid/rewarded enough to be able to focus our time sharing on this platform.
Hi @abrockman,
It's good to hear from you as well. I'm also glad we were able to talk about this here.
So I think what you mentioned above is the ACTUAL best argument against using bots, and that's that someone can just come and downvote you and you can lose everything you have invested. That's pretty scary, and I feel a bit of a problem platform wise.
In this case, there was a presumed justification for the downvote and flagging of your post even though it was more of just a misunderstanding. But that doesn't guarantee that someone couldn't just downvote you because they don't like you or for some other arbitrary reason.
That's why I think this is a bit of an issue with the platform and your situation really put a spotlight on it to me. In this case you lost money, but as you mentioned time is money also, if I spent a couple of week working hard on something and it was doing well, theoretically someone can just come along and remove all or most of the reward I receive arbitrarily. A lot of people have turned to Dtube because they don't like the fact that Google can just remove your content or demonetize it and there's nothing you can do about it, but your situation made it clear to me that on Steemit, other USERS could potentially do that. Obviously that's not what happened here, but it just opened my eyes to the possibility, since what I observed here was that you were accused, judged and punished within a matter of hours, before you even had a chance to defend yourself. Plus as you so eloquently put it, once that happens, you're shit out of luck.
Anyway, both you guys have schooled me on a lot of stuff and I appreciate it. Keep doing your thing man! One day this upvote will be worth more than a penny haha :)
Just to follow up a tiny bit on the progress with this post.
The value and views have increased. No bots/paid for votes were used. Over 200 views now. Nearly $30 value. The post was resteemed by @jerrybanfield. He has over 32000 followers on this platform. That's why this post is doing better now, plus Jerry voted on it and he's got some power behind that vote. That's community. These guys know each other, they're helping each other out. It's out in the open and there's nothing wrong with that. We see results and it didn't cost anyone a dime.
Jerry's account is a good example for you to have a look at some time. 32000+ followers. I believe his most recent post as of this writing has about 132 views as of this writing. About $71 value with 727 votes as of this writing. Most of that value came from Dsound. That account has a high powered vote and offers it as an incentive so people use the platform. It's a free vote. Dtubers get one too. Steemit members... we don't get anything like that.
Remember, you said this:
You want to make money and I don't blame you one bit. That's what artists do, it's normal.
Catching minnows just to pad stats and gain a large following might seem like a wise decision on the surface. People spend money to get that. It's an investment for the future, they think. They're not getting results. I'm showing what I consider evidence to back me up as well. These minnows see the trending page, they see all that money, the look at what they're earning, they quit. Most don't even realize the money was purchased. Most don't even know people like me(there are lot of us) exist.
You see a school of minnows swimming in the pond, you dip that net in, most of them get away, you catch a few, some die unfortunately(leave the platform/lose interest). Minnows only grow to a small size in real life. They can't feed you for an extended period of time. Catch a few recently hatched fish, let them grow, let them reproduce, it takes time, maintain it, take care of them, and that will keep your stomach full for a long time. It's not easy though. My approach was one of the most challenging things I've ever done in my life. People don't seem to want that challenge. They want to skip it. Someone comes along and says they'll make it easier for you. What's the catch? There's always a catch. They want you to pay for it, but their solution doesn't seem to be working.
For me, watching so many take that so-called easy road while forfeiting their future... it's hard for me to watch. It's hard for me to watch hard working members here who EARNED their keep get bumped down the trending page by someone who feels like cutting in line. I'm watching people I've known for months fall off the map. The one's putting them out of business aren't even earning money, they're just trying to hog the spotlight.
I've become so frustrated that I am now losing interest. Everything I worked for seems to getting flushed down the toilet. Even this reputation number beside my name used to mean something. I earned it. Now people just come along and buy it. All that work means nothing.
I don't even know why I'm telling you all this shit. I'm supposed be on break. I've been trying to take a break for over a month. I'm stressed out. Much of what I said is contributing to that. I can't perform and I'm just turning into an asshole. Morale is low all over the place. ... I'm done talking.
I hope you know I hear you and I do see the problem. I was just over at your blog actually reading maybe it was your most recent? The asshole one, haha.Hey @nonameslefttouse,
So after listening to you as well as @abrockman, I think I've been pushed a bit more in your direction. With my personal beef being how much good shit is getting pushed down because someone is "Hogging" the Trending top spots. I still don't have that much of an issue if you promote a post just to get it on there. Sometimes you can pour your heart and soul into something and get less than 10 VIEWS, especially when you're new.
But when one user with content that is of questionable quality, I say that because different people find value in different stuff, one mans garbage...you know the rest, has like 4 spots on trending for days at a time, that just makes trending useless, and of course, that's a problem.
I saw one of your proposed solutions; detecting when people are using bots and moving them over to promoted, but I think the hole in that is that any user can promote any post, so someone else could get you sent to promoted section. I think differentiating between those two is probably technically very difficult in terms of development.
So yea, I dunno dude, take some solace in that you moved me from "Bots are A okay!" to "Bots are okay for a special post but even then, don't overdo it"
*Edit: I forgot I wanted to ask you, the great equalizer here is supposed to be the downvote right? If you see someone on Trending and you REALLY don't think they should be, why not bring out the downvotes?
Downvotes. Some of those downvotes on trending right now are from me. Someone abused those bots to write a post to tell people they were about to write a post. That's on trending. I had thought I'd seen it all... That's the "asshole" and he's putting on quite the show. New minnows think he's a VIP. The rest of us are just shaking our heads.
Ewww...
"Sometimes you can pour your heart and soul into something and get less than 10 VIEWS" and boohoo all round I am sure. The question life is asking you when you are not a winner is: what are you really doing this for.
the answer to that is probably the most important part of your relationship to your own creativity and maybe your reason for being.
the journey imo is bigger than just to win, it is to live and die and disappear ultimately as if you never existed at all. looking at it from that perspective is , again imo, the best way.
when it is meaningless, pointless, and no one will see it or give a shit, but you do it anyway, that is when art becomes spirituality and the value makes sense. all the shiz you guys are talking about is the bollocks associated to the industry and selling and the fickle assessment of worth based on the numbers of opinions that say it has worth. but again just...imo. but I enjoyed reading this conversation after the posts of emptiness that abound around steemit.
and at the end of the day if someone is promoting their product, then they are promoting their product.
its an issue a lot of artists fail to acknowledge about their own behaviour believing their way is the integral one and shooting down others, and I often feel that is caught up in self-reflection issues more than the reality. All artists want for acknowledgement.
but often it also involves taking swipes at other artists success, while maintaining an aloof drama or playing it cool and holding up their own integrity as the correct one in comparison, while actually they are pushing their product just the same really. creatives are all in the sales business, or they are not but there is no in-between. if your stuff is out there its there for a reason and if it is out there, then by default its in ''the game''. and the old cliche is tired but true enough, if you dont play the game it will play you.
it is often tough to see beahviour in ourselves and this tug of war on opinions often goes with the territory, and to be clear I am not saying that is what is happening in this case, but just that it made me think of it while reading this post.