Votes for witnesses are the most important we make on Steem because our votes decide who earns ~ $295 a day for doing the work of creating our blockchain which is usually what we call mining in blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Witnesses also decide whether to accept changes made by Steemit, what the price of Steem is worth relative to the SBD, which updates should be made in the future, and generally do Steem full time in the top 20. In summary, witnesses receive good compensation for what usually is a gigantic contribution to building our future here! I am a witness for Steem and am honored to be a part of this community which I view as my full time work!
While I titled this post with an emphasis on the money to get the most attention from readers that often are difficult to reach when it comes to anything witness related, my goal is to help increase witness voting participation which currently is at about 4%! That means 96% of users are not even making 1 vote for any witness! Among active users, only 15% even have made one vote! This is REALLY low and I am hoping to help change that along with fellow witness @lukestokes who posts updates showing the voting numbers in detail at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@lukestokes/the-witness-voting-engagement-report-2017-09-13. The craziest data point in Luke's post shows that participation remains low at about 21% even among the most influential voters!
Would you join us in participating in witness voting at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because we will see in the post below how every single witness vote is critical for determining our future on Steem? The easiest way to participate is to set a proxy to handle all witness votes which can be changed at any time. The account acting as a proxy should be a user already voting for 30 witnesses that we trust to make the votes on our behalf until we want to decide who to vote for instead! I am grateful about 100 people have set me as a proxy in the last three months because I check my witness votes every week at a minimum and often every day. Meet more active witnesses that might make a good proxy at https://steemit.com/trending/witness-category.
$295 A Day "Mining" Steem?
Have you ever wanted to participate in mining? I used to think I did not have enough technical skill to participate until I joined Steem and learned more about what it takes to become a witness! I setup my witness server and seed after having no previous experience using Ubuntu Linux by following guides and receiving answers to my questions on steemit.chat in the witness channel. If I can set up a Ubuntu Linux server like this, then there is no reason you can't set one up too! We need every single active witness we can get as we continue to scale up our network here and existing witnesses continue to go offline or inactive! I hope this post provides motivation to get started and scale up!
I set up a server in just a month or so of reading an hour a day about Ubuntu Linux. That makes this one of the very easiest and lowest cost mining opportunities to get started with while having some very high-end rewards.
Now, I've just isolated the earnings that are technically from mining in this system and I will show you the actual accounts who are earning this. The truth is, these earnings actually snowball with a lot of other earnings from post, from upvotes that make this an extremely lucrative opportunity that many witnesses were smart enough to get started with over a year ago!
Here is exactly who is making this much today. This is the list of the Steem witnesses which handle all of the creation of the blockchain process, all of the transactions, do everything we think of as mining.
Now, technically it's not called mining because there was proof of work mining, in Steem, we call it being a witness. Therefore, for the rest of this post, I will refer to it as a witness because that's most accurate.
However, I do this with the understanding that you might think of what goes on here as mining.
You can see the top 20 witnesses here on Steem: https://steemd.com/witnesses
I am grateful that within a month, I am down here currently at 61 with getting blocks every few hours or so. I'm currently making about $15 a day as a Steem witness, which is amazing given I just started out doing it. There's this potential for any witness to get up in the top 20.
The top 20 witnesses make $295 a day at the current price.
I'll show you the exact calculations for this and reverse engineer them here. All of this is visible for you to take a look at, at any time. The number came out like this.
What I did is I found a witness who just is a witness. They don't post, they don't earn anything from upvotes, they've just got an account that's a witness. I started off and I took their earnings from this date, August 14.
This entire account was started from zero. All of this was earned from being a witness. You've got proof that this works and it works for a long time.
If you look at the amount here, it's 19,085 Steem Power.
Then I go back to the balance 15 days ago, which means this is essentially the starting balance at 15,476 Steem Power.
Then you jump forward one day at a time. Meaning the number of the day corresponds to how many days you went forward. One day's earnings would start on August 1. Two days earnings would start on August 2.
Therefore, 14 days of earnings or two weeks go to August 14.
I then subtract 19,085 - 15,476 = 3,609.
That's 3,609 Steem earned within 14 days.
Let's go back over and look at my witness where I pull my witness' price feed, which is $1.145.
We're going to time 3,609 by $1.145.
3,609 x 1.145 = $4,132
That is $4,132 earned in 14 days.
$4,132 ÷ 14 = $295
When I divide by 14, that's $295 earned every single day. Now the Steem price just plunged along with the Bitcoin price today and after taking weeks to get this post ready, $295 is still close enough today to communicate the point. Technically it might be $250 today and maybe tomorrow $125 or $500.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
These are the earnings that are paid directly in Steem Power, which can be powered down and essentially withdrawn every single week. If the witness chose to power down constantly, the earnings would essentially just pour out of the account and be available immediately in liquid Steem Power.
That's the tip of the iceberg because there's also a lot of other ways to earn. Most witnesses, in addition to simply running their witness server, continue to post online.
For example, here is a post I did about being a witness. If you'd like to learn about being a witness, I have everything up for free now on my Steem profile. I will be continuing to add more.
I've got this Steem Witness Basic Training guide and now also a complete command line interface tutorial showing every single command to enter at Get a Steem Witness + Seed Online Today with These Ubuntu Linux Commands!.
I've got everything explained in this post. I show you exactly what it is, why take the time, and how to make a vote. I show all the basics and I show the exact server I'm using.
The amazing thing is that there are two other really powerful ways to earn as a witness.
As a witness, you can then make posts that are specific to the witness category. As you can see, I'm not the only one that makes witness posts.
Witness posts are popular among all the witnesses. Any witness, regardless of position, can make a post in the witness category. What we see is that witness category posts tend to earn pretty good. In addition to the daily payouts, then witnesses get to do these posts which provide additional payouts.
All of this is tied to the Steem price. If the Steem price makes a big leap upward, then those witness earnings make a big leap upward as well. Witnesses on Steem were earning as much at $600 plus a day when the price was a bit higher. I believe the price will blow up. Therefore, being a witness is an extremely lucrative opportunity. Even if you're relatively new witness especially when you combine it with these witness earnings.
If you look at these posts, you can see witnesses earning, now yes, not everyone makes $100, but in addition, even as a brand new witness, you can make these posts that earn $10 or $20.
The amazing thing is that it is extremely low cost to get started. You don't have to dump thousands of dollars to build graphics cards and motherboards. That's why this is so cool.
You can literally just rent a Ubuntu Linux server. You don't even need to be very good with it because you can then just get help. You can ask for help, you can learn how to do Ubuntu Linux. All you need to be a witness is a Steem account, and then a Ubuntu Linux server. With a Ubuntu Linux server, you can get to run Steem for about $50 a month. The costs are extremely low. You don't need to go get any equipment.
Then what you can do is you just learn how to run the commands. I barely know what I'm doing on Linux.
What I just did, I listed the directory, and then I changed directory to "Steem docker." This is where the "Steem docker" is located now.
Then you can do: /run.sh logs.
I can now see the block chain being created in real time. I can see who has done the most recent block, the transactions that are going on the block.
These steps are really easy to do and learn. It's not complicated. There's very low-cost getting started, which is why I was able to do it. I'm technically on my seed server.
If you really want to do a good job, you can also get a seed server. That'll automatically put you on a top 50 witness mindset. Especially for the future, having a seed server is a good place to practice essentially. I've got my own server up here, and then I can monitor the status of the blockchain.
Then on my witness, I've got essentially the same thing, plus a few extra commands.
The payouts are only for these very top 20 witnesses. Every single one of these top 20 witnesses gets $295 a day.
All of them!
If you'd go into the combined earnings, that's almost $6,000 a day that the top 20 witnesses are earning together. What's really cool about this is that most of the witnesses are individuals. They are real people. They aren't companies with hundreds of employees. They are real people who've set up servers. I believe all of these different servers are managed by different people.
Steem provides a truly decentralized mining environment where all of the Steem blockchain creation is not controlled by a very small minority of users. Many of the other blockchains have very small groups of people who own, and then have companies and a bunch of employees that manage the blockchain.
Most of the existing blockchains are very centralized with a very small handful of people having an extreme amount of power. I like on Steem that this is spread out a good bit.
If you're not in the top 20, especially if you are close to the top 20, you can still earn a very good payout. At rank 50, I earned about 20 Steem Power a day which is easily enough to cover server hosting especially when combined with witness updates. Today at rank 29 I am earning about 40 Steem Power a day.
As we get closer to the top 20, the earnings continue to go up and up too. If we are at 21 or 25, we are probably earning close to $100 a day as a witness.
Then we're in position to jump into the top 20 and "get that big money." I'm impressed that most of these witnesses have been using Steem for a long time, since it came out. The witnesses in the top 20 that have been there for nearly the entire time are so smart for getting on this at the start. Steem is going viral now and the witnesses there since the beginning are in position to continue earning indefinitely. The only baseline thing you need to do is maintain the Ubuntu Linux server and maintain the votes by consistently posting updates showing all the contributions to Steem.
Now, the single most difficult part of moving up this list is getting the votes. THE BEST WAY TO GET VOTES IS TO POST WITNESS UPDATES SHOWING WHAT WE ARE CONTRIBUTING! I'm grateful that after months of posting on Steem, sharing about Steem, that I've got 900 votes or so today out of 13,000 followers. Therefore, it's in everyone's interest to educate about the witness system, both for those on Steem and those who've never been on Steem.
If you are smarter than me, which is certainly possible, you might realize that with Steem, it's called "Delegated Proof of Stake," and every vote is not equal. It's based on how much Steem Power you have.
Therefore, if you look at a visualization of the Steem Power, which I can pull a nice visualization for you up here off of Steem Reports, you can look at the witness voters.
What you can see is that you don't need to convince everyone to vote for you, and that's really good news. In fact, you can see exactly who you need to vote for you in order to get to the number one position.
You need Freedom to vote for you, that singlehandedly if just Freedom votes for you that is enough to make it into the top 60. Just one single vote. I am extremely grateful today for votes from Freedom and @clayop which both came in a few hours after I posted witness updates showing what I am contributing as a witness.
In fact, most of the top upvoters have these same votes for them. In fact, it's very hard to get up there without those votes. The nice thing is, if you want to be a top witness, you know exactly who you need to reach and influence in order to get up there.
That makes this a really good mining system because you know exactly what you need to do essentially. You put up a Ubuntu Linux server. You become a part of the community. You get to know the influencers. You put yourself in a position to do a good job, to participate, and to then gather a vote from one of those top influencers by consistently doing witness updates demonstrating what contribution you are making each week.
In that sense, it's the most transparent mining system I know of because you can see exactly who is earning the most, you can see exactly how much each witness we are earning, and you know exactly what to do. There's outstanding guides to get started with it.
I really like this because the competition is clear. If you want to say "compete," I look at it that there's no competition. I'm exactly where I need to be. If where I need to be moves, then all I need to do is simply go along with it. If you are into the idea of competition, you can see exactly who you have to compete with and this becomes a fun power game of who do I make an alliance with, and who do I make my enemy to get out of my way, and who do I need to buddy up to get a vote. You could have a lot of fun playing a power game with this because you know exactly who's playing.
Try Bitcoin or Ethereum mining, it's just brute-forcing, getting all your machines together. That's just a matter, then, of spending a whole bunch of money and time, and then power. That's not a game most of us can play.
The Steem witness game is one that most of us are qualified to play. It's an awesome opportunity because with limited technical skills we can find many other ways to contribute as @timcliff explains in his newest post about being a good witness at Guide to Being a Good Witness. It pays really well with consistent effort and it's very easy to get started with compared to say mining Bitcoin or Ethereum which is nearly impossible for the average person to profit from.
Thank you very much for reading this post which was originally filmed as the video below!
The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
I love you.
You're awesome.
I hope to see you again soon.
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript by GoTranscript.
Shared on:
- Facebook page with 2,255,789 likes.
- YouTube channel with 201,369 subscribers.
- Twitter to 105,563 followers.
PS: Witness votes are the most important votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together? Thank you to the 863 accounts voting for me as a witness, the 190.6M VESTS assigned from users trusting me to make all witness votes by setting me as proxy, and @followbtcnews for making these .gif images!
Or
Sounds good to hear what the big shots are making. But what about the average Joe that rents the server for 50$ a mo.? And is ranked 478 the first month and makes 20 steem the first three months?... I think many people that read this post would fall into that category.The numbers are awesome for people who at least make it to top 50... I don't know, I wonder if a person with 5000SP could even make the server cost
Though this not directly related to witness but price of STEEM, and @jerrybanfield is involved this idea may get notice. The best exchange right now is the Bittrex for Steem and Steem Dollar (SBD). The poloniex is holding transfer for months. There is no pair against fiat for STEEM other than STEEM/EURO at HitBTC where volume is non-existant. Also, HitBTC is halting transfers for months too.
I think if a couple of big exchanges has STEEM trades against USD, for example, Bittrex, STEEM trading will be much more fluid and attract more investors and traders. It is not quite convenient to trade or acquire STEEM with BTC. For example, if someone orders STEEM at $1.05 with BTC ($4000), his order will not be filled since BTC has dropped to $3200 though STEEM has dropped to $1.05 too. Therefore, I request @jerrybanfield to make a public request to Bittrex and HitBTC to make USDT/STEEM pair for traders and investors.
I have made requests to HitBTC and Bittrex but more of us do the same, it will push them to enact. Overall, it will be a boost for STEEM and STEEM will be less affected by BTC/ETH's big swings.
Self voted for visibility.
I doubt that I will ever be a witness. Just focusing on acquiring SP while it's still dirt cheap.
ehehe i would like to be one of them xD
I remember you made a course on mining steem, could you please share the link along with a promo code? :)
Thanks for sharing. I want to set up a server eventually just haven't gotten to that point yet, but after reading this it makes me want to start sooner rather than later. I might have missed it, but are you renting or running your own server. Any idea the power consumption of the server?
I am renting one with @privex with the company CEO being top 20 witness @someguy123. Would you read more about this if you have not already in my Steem Witness Basic Training guide and now also a complete command line interface tutorial showing every single command to enter at Get a Steem Witness + Seed Online Today with These Ubuntu Linux Commands because these guides have complete hosting specs and setup instructions?
I'm go to check the - steem witnes basic training guide
Thanks for cooperation
That's a lot of information to wrap your head around! I used to be on the leading edge of technology among my friends and peers and had the resources to spend on the newest gear and the latest updates. but now I lag far behind and no longer have any resources to spend on such things, my want too's are bigger than either my budget or my current mental capabilities. But I'm working on it anyway lol, perhaps with time and a few sound investments I can get there one day.
I know what you mean!
Wow, good work Jerry!
Wow nice calculation - thanks for sharing and the insights behind STEEMIT
@jerrybanfield - thanks for another great post about the witness system. You are my #1 source of information about Steem. I have some questions about voting for witnesses...
It says I have 30 witness votes, if I cast all of them now can I change them later? Do i have to vote for 30 different people or can i vote for you 30 times :-P
Also do votes count more from people who have more steem power just like upvoting does?
Thanks again!
I still need to know more about vote for witness. Getting interesting
where do you know all this ...??
I like your video
The young man is a genius. He shared great post
you read my mind Lawson. I always resteem is posts to benefit my followers. May he continue the great work
yes. I strongly agree. by young people asking for help from you ..... ???
i am inspired to read this post to be a witness. can I will be a Witness now.
Done. Should have done this long time before.
I tried to set you as a proxy but I was told that the the name is invalid
hello mr banfield. voted for you as a witness. like your blogs but i have one question. what do the voters win with it if they vote for a witness? hope to hear from you. @sebboo4
I think we should look at this article:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@privex/so-you-want-to-be-a-witness-clearing-up-some-misconceptions
before flying in the Air as everyone is not a Crypto Celebrity like Respected Sir JerryBanField :) who has plenty of fans & It's easy for him to regularly work on this all.
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@privex/so-you-want-to-be-a-witness-clearing-up-some-misconceptions
Thanks @jerrybanfield for this wonderful post, it's an eye opener for. I've followed you, I'm hoping to learn more
I would still rather stay with my Bit connect
https://bitconnect.co/?ref=Comfortcare33
Information is very useful
Thanks for the new information
good job
Thankyou for sharing @jerrybanfield
Always brilliant and sharp , staring to learn resteemit
Lol @ the picture with the black background!
Great info, thank you.
I am active and try to type in my Posts
I try hard to learn and I need your help
hi @jerrybanfield i have follow you on youtube and facebook a long time ago thanks for your effort im following you here on steemit and watch all your post keep the good work men also i will be happy if you follow me and upvote my post just to encourage me to do more on this platforme thank you
One of my favorite posts from you yet---gives me confidence I can figure out how to do this witness thing as well
wow, thanks for the education again. i hadn't checked steem reports before so that was insightful. and now I understand about the massive whale Freedom... my my. gl
Hi @jerrybanfield
I joined steemit in july this year but somehow I don't get traffic to my posts and hence my payouts are very low.
Would you post about how to get traffic to your posts?
I did setup my witness server this Monday, the log is looking fine, but so far I've earned nothing, how long it takes to see anything? 2 weeks?
nice post
thanks @jerrybanfield I have already voted you as my witness duo i don't I don't understand what it means to be a witness before, once again thanks for the information.
I will love to be a witness i am from Nigeria and the power problem is a factor which I am thinking to go solar. I will like to phone the full system configuration i can use and the cost
Seria excelente poder montar mi propio servidor y empezar como administrador en esto de las criptomonedas y la minería
Great art bravo :) My Guide for faucet https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@maxiusz/top-free-btc-ltc-doge-faucet-s-2017-and-eobot-mining
Thanks for sharing this jerry, I'll take a look to your other posts and read more about how can I setup my own server :D
hi jerrybanfield , i saw your video on facebook today .it was quite inspiring so i had to sign up , thanks for this platform
you are really brilliant brother @ jerrybanfield .... your post always inspires us all and my small community @ steemitarmy87 we just built which is headquartered in kingdom of oceans pasai-Aceh ... our community hope to you and your friends want to become our coach. .. our teachers ... also hope to be our donator in support of any unlimited potential creativity in any quality postings ... you are a very friendly person ... hope someday be close and brothers with our small community @steemitarmy87 ... regard brother hood @academix87
You deserve to be in that spot too @jerrybanfield, you're an asset to this community.
Hey, nice way to make an income there . Look i know i am very impolite, but maybe you could have time and , you could look at a minnow post , and maybe if you would like it you could upvote it :) https://steemit.com/life/@rihardszaimonts/self-confidence-more-quality-in-life
If you think being a witness is about renting one single server, you're not a very good witness.
This post has been ranked within the top 10 most undervalued posts in the second half of Sep 14. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $79.35 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Sep 14 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
i joined just two months back. my knowledge is little in this. but i voted 15 witnesses selected from the list others like you voted. still i am not clear about to whom witnesses vote to be given. if i set any one as proxy how long it will be valid? can i change later? or withdraw? what is the advantage by set proxy?
I always take myself to give the vote to the Witness, and of course I also have to enter the name your @jerrybanfield as my proxy. Thank you for your article, always interesting and useful to study. ;)
Wow. I've watch the video thru youtube from your channel. It's very informative and very interesting. I want to become a witness too but the problem is im only using a Laptop. .too bad for me. huhu
I'm forming a community on my account. I hope you'll be part of this campaign. Come follow me back and upvote my post if you find it relevant. You will get some tips for your steemit journey. Thanks
https://steemit.com/steem/@dmitrywong/100-success-steemit
Amazing post as always. Upvoted and following u. Regards Nainaz
Hello @jerrybanfield congratulations you are now top 30 Witness
I hope you will win of the voting.
Sir i have a drawing can you visit and upvote me there?
https://steemit.com/art/@jaderpogi/my-first-attempt-to-draw-here-in-steemit-or-using-my-gel-and-black-color-pencil-or-step-by-step-drawing-steemit
Mr Banfield, I still don't get what I'm doing here but I love this site to make money even in a slow pace
Congratulations @jerrybanfield!
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