What if We Could Put a Post to the Top of Trending WITHOUT Buying Votes? Here's How I Think We Could Do it!

in community •  7 years ago 

First, let's get this out of the way, "what's in it for me?" right? That's what you're asking. Well, a lot, perhaps.

  • If you help promote this project, your blog will be promoted right along with it.
  • You will gain followers and upvotes
  • You could win a big fat chunk of $BD, if we succeed.

I'll explain it all in a minute. First, let's talk about how this goes down, shalll we?

I want to conduct an experiment. Can we, the plankton and minnows of steemit, put a post at the top of trending? I've been working to prove it's possible for some time now, without seeing it happen in quite some time. There are several challenges we'll have to overcome to get there.

To set this up, first, let me say we'll be using a plankton account, @dolphinschool as our launching pad. The entire platform there is designed around helping plankton become minnows and minnows become dolphins. I'd teach you to become a whale, but I haven't done that yet, so I'll do it when I get there!

  • I want to do it from bottom, that way you can see how you might accomplish the same thing.
  • I'm looking to launch a new bootcamp at the end of this, and those that help will get first preference to be on board!
  • If I do it from this account,we might pick up whale support, and kind of skew the results.

It's going to be an uphill climb, can we make it?

I'm not sure. That's part of what it makes it so exciting! I think we can, if everyone will really do what they can to help. With a few hundred of us working together, surely we can gain the attention to get more votes on board and carry it the rest of the way.

  • Hitting a meaningful spot on trending will require at least $50-75 in upvotes. Without buying votes, this could be one vote, or hundreds.
  • Keeping it on trending will require sustained promotion once it's up and running. I'll take any help with that I can get.
  • The price for entry is steep, but the rewards could be big too!

I promise you this, if @dolphinschool wins, we all win, because I've dedicated that profile to helping as many Plankton survive to become minnows and then dolphins as possible!

So, what kind of post should it be?

I've got ideas, as you know, but, I want your input here. I'm thinking we just go straight for the jugular, like, "Here's How This Post Got on Trending Without Buying Votes!" But, would it work? I'm not really sure.

I'm kidding, my best idea is an article titled something like, "The Power of Community on Steemit"

The post itself will be a declaration of the power of the little guy. It will include a list of links to any blog that helps support the project, with your best post front and center! If that means 200 links, or 400 links, then so beit! I'll keep editing the new ones in as people sign on! If I have to edit it ten times a day, I'll do it!

I'm going to run a series of these articles through some friendly accounts that will gladly help promote us and see how much attention we can get over the next several days, then on Sunday, the article will be launched from @dolphinschool.

Once the article is in place, we will promote the heck out of it! I'll be using Steemit Facebook groups, Steemit chat and I'm working on getting into Discord more. But, again, here I'm open to suggestions.

  • If every person also resteemed the post, it would help to spread it.
  • If we are offering a portion of proceeds to participants, @moneyinfant can add it to the contest list they run, there are probably others.
  • Promote it to curation services and others that share content.

Whatever else you can think of to help make it go, leave me a comment. I'll take as much input as I can. Not all of the ideas will probably get put to use, but this is brainstorming people, share!

Great, good feels, altruism, blah, blah, blah, show me the money!

I said I'd explain and here it is. By joining this project, you'll get the following, provided you help do the heavy lifting (promoting, upvoting, etc)

  • Your name in every post related to this project
  • A chance to promote your blog and your best post linked from the project post, which we hope goes viral!
  • A chance to win half of the $BD the project post earns. There's no way to know how much that will be.

But, wait, Mark, what's in it for you?

As always, I have my own motives. I'm not trying to hide it. I'll be keeping half of the payout to further my work here. But, beyond that, I'm hoping to get the following.

  1. I want to prove we can do it. Just because. That's kind of who I am.
  2. I hope to gain more followers throughout this process. Always.
  3. Promotion for @dolphinschool. I haven't put as much time into it as I want, but it's hard to do when the audience is small and the payouts are not enough to cover the time.
  4. I want to see some of you gain exposure through this project. It's going to be a seven day push, and I'll promote as many of you as I can!

So, where do we start?

We're starting at the bottom, so, let's have a conversation. Got an idea of how to make this work? Great! Add it in the comments. Want to "sign up" to help? Great! I'll be making a list of everyone that says they're in over the next couple of days, I'll add it to ALL posts on the topic. Let's call it #projectminnowvote and use that hashtag as one of your tags if you want to share about it!

As a part of this, I want to encourage as much interaction between all of you as possible. So, go, follow each other, upvote each other's posts, comment, resteem, whatever! Let's start some buzz!

If this works, people, we could build a network capable of making this a regular thing!

I'm not a huge fan of automated curation, or renting votes. You know that, but a weekly post, with comment links to any posts deserving a boost, could be huge! Imagine a weekly post that got 500, or 600 upvotes, with 100 comments, all saying, hey, take a look at what this account over here is doing that's not getting attention!

Then, what if the highest voted comment/link got our attention for a few days? Could we change trending? Maybe. I think it's worth a try.

Here's what inspired this.

Last night I was looking over my posts and feeling pretty good about the interaction, but I got stupid and clicked into Trending. I started looking at the posts sucking so much of the reward pool up. And you know what I found? They're not special.

In fact, the one thing they all had in common? Paid votes and a LOT of them. Some of them paid more than $200 SBD to get there, something many of us cannot afford to do.

The bigger problem for me, though, is the poor quality of the content. And it's what visitors are attracted to first. It's the pattern that's being set for success here on Steemit. Is that what we want? I don't, so this is my response.

SO, are you with me? I can't do this without you. Leave your name in the comments if you'd like to be tagged in future posts on this topic. There will be no minimum requirement for participation, other than an upvote on the final project post. So, what do you say?

*If you're in here are some ways you could help promote it!

  • upvote this post,
  • resteem it,
  • write a review of it on your blog,
  • make a promo image and put a link to it on Steepshot, or Dmania.
  • Make a video about it and post it to DTube.
  • Tag your friends in this post to encourage them to get on board!
  • Write your own posts about the idea and gather more ideas and attention!

PLEASE DON'T BUY VOTES FOR THIS PROJECT!

I know, we could do it that way, but let's not give the big fish any more of the reward pool than necessary, okay? They can upvote their own fortunes.

Some of you will want to watch and see what happens. That's great! Could you do me one favor? Please, please, please, don't do anything negative. Encourage each other. If you don't want to participate, at least don't stand in our way, please? Thanks! That includes negative comments, pointing out problems, being unhelpful, or otherwise distracting. Just go do your own thing, we promise not to rain on your parade!

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
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Maybe I am wrong. This seems to me that the dolphin school name will rise up in reputation and rewards level a lot faster then any of the others involved. You will end in control of 2 accounts with a high reputation level. which will be higher then the minnow plankton that upvoted it.

This is not a negative comment, But an observation.
I think you should ask for others to post in the Dolphin school, and then promote the bollox from an unknown users post. This removes any issues conflicting interest.

I can see this been viewed as a negative comment, but when the train starts rolling I will be supportive of the school and cast my vote in support.

It's a free platform, brother. Join, or don't join. I'm here to make money and teach other people how to do it too. If that's not your thing, you're welcome to start your own project. And yeah, I'm keeping half the profit,plus the SP for dolphinschool, but I challenge you to go and see the time I spent, sharing my ten years of pro blogging experience with the 20 people I charged $0 to go through #dolphinschool bootcamp and then come back and tell me you think I'm not giving enough. I am up front about it. I'm here to make money and teach others how to do the same, not interested in some communist share and share alike project. But, feel free to get involved with one of the several that already exist, adsactly is one.

A definite no for me after reading this response.

What makes you think that downvoting my comment will do any good? I am surprised to see such a behavior from you. The respect I had for you is gone. I followed you based on one post. I guess it was a wrong decision so I have undone it by unfollowing you. Please do not expose more of yourself.

Well, since you are going to upvote your own comment, I don't suppose it will do any good. I did it to hide it from the feed, because it's not useful. I'm sorry you were offended by my behavior,but perhaps basing, first, your positive impression of me on ONE post out of 5000, then your negative impression of me on ONE comment, might not be the best way for you to see what I'm about. I'm here to help as many people, including myself, which I made no secret of, as I can. I'm sorry if I've offended you. I've donated hundreds of hours coaching beginners. I've even damaged my own blog in the process by losing steady voters due to resteeming beginner's content to encourage them. I'm not sure what you think you know, but you might want to scratch a little deeper,before you judge me so quickly. Thanks for your comments, here's hoping you much success. Steem on.

I apologize for taking offense. I upvoted my comment for visibility. It was not a post through which I came to know about you. It was a @dolphinschool comment on one of my blog posts. This one was the comment perhaps. Or may be an earlier one because I remember an exchange of comments between us.

I appreciate your work and it is something that I have been doing as well.

Steem on!

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

I do see your point, and I don’t consider it to be a negative comment. The way I see it, your observation is correct.

Still, I believe this project will be something we can all learn a lot from, and when it is successful, we can pay forward the knowledge, conducting experiments like this and showing our followers how to do it - which will then grow our account.

@markrmorrisjr: reading your reply to this comment, it felt like you reacted in a very defensive way. (I could be wrong, of course.) I don’t think you should feel personally attacked, since @brayias was only sharing his observation, and was not judging. Instead, he was offering his support.

Well, thanks for your input Mike, you're obviously throwing your weight behind this, but please remember, this was my post and the comment you're responding to was addressed to me. I'll extend the same courtesy to you on your posts.

I’m sorry about that. Won’t happen again

All good man, not even saying you're not right, but seriously, if I have to constantly worry about feelings, when I didn't cuss someone out, this is gonna be a long and arduous journey. LOL I'm old and cranky.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Yes it is a free platform. and you are right I am free to support or not support.Unlike the post below, I do not judge you from one comment. Though I see you do not do much in the way of supporting others. You do not share your upvote with the community but upvote your own accounts and at the same time criticise others for upvoting their own comments.

The upvotes you get to promote you in your new DolphinSchool. The power of those votes just go to promote your own works, You promote very little of others if at all. You show no interest in the benefit to anyone else. Just how you can benefit from others.

Based on this view I have come to form of your ambition, which may be inaccurate. That you hold no interest in the success of others, but more of what you can gain from others. When your point of view is questioned you auto respond with a dismissive manner. Maybe your tactics on diplomacy are not as good as your ability to write fiction.

Your are not about community, or helping others. You abuse the helping others title to further your own ambitions of gaining from this platform. That's this newbie opinion of which I am told I am entitled to.
This will be my last post to you and this post the last upvote you will receive from me. this may be no loss to you, but the potential loss is greater then just the loss of my vote.

Since my reply to this comment has been seen in a negative light, I'd like to address it. I was not trying to discourage anyone from being a part of anything. This is a big platform and there is room for plenty of initiatives. First, I don't understand what you think would happen by me having more than one "high value" account (although I wonder, are you basing this on my rep score, or my wallet?) I'm a minnow. Just like many of you. I had over 16k SP last summer, but had to cash out due to family obligations, and some travel that we thought was paid for another way. Long story short, I'm still just shy of 1000 SP, my vote is worth 22 cents on a good day. But, I think you'd find my account has been used to encourage and support others from the very beginning, hundreds of hours, even to my own detriment. I've never tried to profit off of it, other than accepting rewards for the posts made in service to those ideals, which, by the way, are some of the lowest paid posts I've created, turns out, minnows don't have big votes and dolphins and whales are not interested in supporting training. They'd rather you buy votes from them. But, the @dolphinschool profile was created in response to the fact that my own blog was overwhelmed by the dolphinschool bootcamp. I funded the profile, what little it has, through my account and a couple of dormant accounts belonging to my wife and son. I asked no one for delegation or support. I bought what few votes I have purchased, to try and get the dolphinschool bootcamp posts to make more, so that the profit sharing from them would be larger for the students, several of whom made more in payouts than I, on their homework assignments. For ten days I got about $50 SBD. 1/3 of which I shared with students.

So, when you say, it seems I would be making the lion's share, okay. But, I'm also funding the entire process. It's my name on the line. I'm the one coming up with the idea. People were openly invited to voluntarily contribute whatever they wanted to. I've not twisted any arms or asked for a single cent. In return, I've been questioned at least three times as to what my intentions are. So, I responded. The reason I am not interested in a communal arrangement is simple. I've been in the arts for 25 years. It has been my experience that groups run by committee tend to fail, while those with a strong leader, are typically longer lived and able to do more good. This was my vision from the beginning. I'm asking anyone who wants to, to tag along. I'm not apologizing for taking a cut, because I know what I've done with resources in the past and what I'll continue to do in the future. To add an obvious point, in all of this discussion here, mine is the highest reputation score among us. What does that mean? It means that, I've accumulated more votes on this platform than any of the rest of the voices in this conversation. I've put in two years of hard work, shared more than five million words, and I intend to earn my living here. As the price increases, which it will again in the near future, the pool will as well (in cash value) leaving plenty of room for anyone that wants to work as hard as I have to succeed. I'm willing to share everything I know and some of what I earn, but not all. I'm sorry if this seems greedy, or disingenuous. I started this is an outlet for my own ideas on steemit and experiments I conducted and to date, it remains such. In the process, I intend to promote as many others, without cost or obligation, as I can. I hope this is a better response than what I previously gave.

I like this reply more than the previous one - lol

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

I second you, @brayias.

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Hi, here is the link to the post we are trying to raise, it's hit #5 in "hot" so far, would love to have your vote https://steemit.com/community/@dolphinschool/help-us-encourage-more-human-curation-by-sending-this-post-to-the-top-of-trending-read-to-find-out-more

As I stated in one of my last post: the only way to fail is by not trying.
I’ve read the entire @dolphinschool series and I think that if anyone has a chance to pull this off, it’s you @markmorrisjr

You can count me in.
I’ll be spreading the word about this, starting by writing a post tomorrow.

I hereby summon my friends of the #newbieresteemday initiative to help out.
@davemccoy @mudcat36 @beeyou @amariespeaks @fibrefox @markennard @royaleagle @cryptkeeper17 @bashadow @themanwithnoname and all other members: together we can move mountains, remember?!
Let’s do this!

Ahh, we meet again @markmorrisjr.

Thanks for the tag @simplymike. I was just having a discussion with @markmorrisjr on his @dolphinschool account on why we shouldn't suggest to 'our' newbies to use the introduceyourself tag often, especially for a tutorial post that is not relevant to 'introducing' themselves. I saw one of our newbies in the newbieresteemday initiative received a notification from using the tag from a 'steemit police', for lack of a better word.

He made a good point of me being a 'newbie' myself and to 'Come back in a year and say that again'. :) All in good fun.

Yes I am a newbie. No I am not familar with @dolphinschool. I didn't even get a chance to read the whole post, to be honest. I read this excerpt, and only commented because I thought @dolphinschool was a newbie him/herself and didn't want the person to get tagged or unknowingly not know and sharing with others. He did thank me for the input.

Step two, add it to your blog! Put it in the howto category, add tutorial, steemiteducation, introduceyourself and dolphinschool for best results.

Hey @beeyou

The idea is well worth checking out.

If I may suggest, take a look at the posts @markrmorrisjr made for his Dolphin Bootcamp (you can read them here - they’re in random order, but you can see which is day 1, day 2 etc by looking at the URLs). From those articles, I guess he knows his way around and might be able to pull this off...

Hey @simplymike. I barely have time to catch up with my replies. LOL. But I will let @davemccoy know.

How are you feeling @simplymike! It's a good sign to see you here ;)

And congrats on winning a @steembasicincome membership from @newbiegames ... I was happy to see you get a present while you were gone ;)

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Oh, you're out already @simplymike? I know it was this week but didn't know how long the stay. I hope you are doing well!

I was super happy to see @amariespeaks select your name for the steembasicincome membership.

@davemccoy, did you know @simplymike sponsored me for a steembasicincome share? Just like you sponsored me for my qurator membership. Our team rocks!

I didn't know that but that's cool! Yes we have a very cool group and what is even better is that we are all networking and working as a big team ;)

Thanks. I’m out, but will have to spend the next month lying down or walking, so my PC is off limits. :0(

Since I’m not able to load the mentions tool on Steemistry on my phone, I didn’t know yet about winning another share in @amariespeaks’ contest. Thanks for the heads up :0)

Thanks, I’m doing ok. Still in quite some pain, but SteemIt takes my mind off things.

Tomorrow, I’m going to switch from my mobile phone to my iPad, to make being active on SteemIt a little easier while lying down -lol

Rest as much as possible @simplymike. The only surgery I've had was my wisdom teeth removed, and I was a baby afterwards! The bigger ipad screen will definitely help.

We have more exciting news for our group! I haven't had a chance to write the weekly recap, but if you go on my blog (when you feel up to it) and read my thanks to the stewards post, you'll find out our initiative may be joining another empire!

p.s., no need to read my long post. Just top part and comment section. I didn't think it appropriate to link my post on someone else's post.

Rest and feel better soon!

You’ve got me curious..
I’ll check it out :0)

I'm happy to hear you are doing ok! Keep resting and we'll hold the fort down for you!

👍

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

I just gave it to you, good job @markrmorrisjr! :)

Thanks. well, we hit hot, we shall see if it can get anymore traction or not. Thanks for your support.

I’m also reaching out to my fellow members of the @steemthat community.
How about giving this a shot @binkley, @daan, @webresultat, @gardengirlcanada, @anupbose and all the others?

thanks my respected member

My votes not worth much at all but you have it, @markrmorrisjr! Sounds like you know what youre doing and Im happy to help! :D

Well, mine isn't worth a lot at the moment, either. I had to cash out this summer to pay for my daughter's wedding, among other things.

What a wonderful thing to be able to do! :)

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

You got it! :)

thanks for the tag @simplymike !! I love this idea - I had yet to see @markmorrisjr or @dolphinschool so I'm excited to learn more! I am a bit weary of the trending section as well - it can get discouraging to see so many poorly executed posts raking in the steem and then click back to my blog and see my dead posts floating at 0.46 after I spent hours working on them. If this is a way to start turning the tables then I'm totally in! Doing some more research now :)

You should look at the #dolphinschool tag and in particular #dolphinschool bootcamp. I've only just begun at @dolphinschool, when the last project overwhelmed my blog and crowded out my own content. Let me know if you have any questions. The way to get above .46 by the way, is to build in community engagement. I'm looking to get to the point where my minimum average is around $10 a post, in the next few months.

Thank you for the advice, I'm working on building up my networking on here. I'll check out that bootcamp tag. And good luck - I hope you reach your $10 minimum goal :)

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

thanks! checking it out now :)

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Whew! That was a lot of reading ... from your post right through all the comments ... @markrmorrisjr I would like to be part of it as I think you are onto something. I like to help people and definitely also need to get ahead myself. Also, if @losthippie, @davemccoy, @bashadow, @manwithnoname and the others at newbieresteemday think it's a good idea, who am I to argue. Let's go for it!
@deliberator, what do you think?

Well, it's only one post on one day, seems like a pretty small thing to "risk" LOL. I write posts every day that end up anonymous, so maybe this one will do something we can learn from and repeat in accounts all across the lower end of this platform.

I'm still finding my way around here, and also have such a small amount of time as I have to do real life too much. So whatever it is I need to do, I'll do!

Great, well, I'm extending the project a week to get more people on board and promote it better. So, if you watch my blog as you have time, or @dolphinschool, I'll be sharing more details.

Plankton and minnows do need support just because we dont have alot of money were the people who are spreading the word and getting more people coming here by word of mouth ect I would like to see more support or let some whales use there bots to upvote quality posts at random like they used to but goodluck with that anyway goodluck with the project, cheers.

Many of the whales still do, there's just a lot of us. It really feels like it's the midlevel accounts, the dolphins, large minnows and small whales that are all plugged into the bid bots and taking profits.

I'm in! This sounds like a great project and I appreciate you organizing it. I am still a minnow (if that!) but love Steemit and want to do things honestly here (no buying votes, etc.) and would love to help out!

Great! Glad to hear it!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I'm in :)
I've been in trending when I've been curated, you've been trending when you were curated, but it'd be nice to see if many small votes can alternatively make trending.
In the end of the day, most participants are contributing proof of brain, not investment.

We shall see. Yeah, I've hit it a few times recently, but it's not sticking like it used to. It hardly ever gets more votes, because all the curation trails follow the bid bots, follow the curation trails, follow the bid bots, here we go round the mulberry bush...

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

RESTEEMED!

Thanks! Welcome to the minnow votes project! buckle up, this is going to be fun!

I'm sure it will be!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #4 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Let's do this! I'm sure we can make it!

Hey, I like that attitude! At the very least, we'll make new friends and get ourselves a little promotion in the process.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Resteemed.
I'm in.

Cool! Thanks for the resteem, welcome to project Minnow votes, let's see what we can do!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

It will be interesting to see if we see an 'organic' post make it's way to the top of the trending. @ironshield

Well, they can, and do. But, most of the time it's because a whale puts them there. We'll see if we can get enough of us to push at once to make it happen.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Let's do this, I'M IN! #dolphinschool

All right! Yeah, hoping a bunch of the dolphinschool alums will pitch in some!

#dolphinschool helped so much a lot of people from the initiative would really love to come back i bet @jeejee @bozz @sarahart @minepoly @ lilyraabe @naquoya @castleberry @sarahewaring

Thanks for tagging them. I've invited most everyone, I think. But, I'll be sure to drop them a link.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Im here, Im plankton and Im hoping to learn something. I follow direction well. For instance, Now i will resteem this!

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Done!

You have my 100% support.

Most people are losing faith in steemit because of the paid bot issue, not to mention the unacknowledgement of truly deserving posts.

I'd like to see an organically trending post that is truly worth it.

I'm in!

Well, I don't know about "most people" I think most people are joining the bot revolution. But, I just wonder how sustainable that is.How many votes can be sold before it waters it down so much that organic votes overtake them?

I'd rephrase that, "most people I know..."

I guess the watering down is already happening, losses are being made.

Well, nothing is lost. It's just rewarding something I don't think is in the best interest of Steemit. It's supposed to be, at the very least, a popular meritocracy. In other words, one would assume that highly rewarded content is popular.

Well put. I agree.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

wow dance is very cool 👍👍

Hey, read the content, man. Spam comments are not welcome.

I'm in.
38.gif
@Lahvista

Sweet! I'm going to be asking the other first class attendees to help too. This should be fun!

I'm in @markrmorrisjr! I was alerted by 2 of my friends @simplymike and @beeyou so I think we will get the support of our #newbieresteemday to help this experiment. If you don't know them yet, they are 2 of the best in our growing group!

I have resteemed and will also hit the discord and spread it around to our various connections. I love the idea and think its a great way to integrate with other groups too!

Thanks and you can count us in!

Well, they are welcome. I like a lot of what they're doing. Let's see how we can help each other.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

@davemccoy, if you are in, I am!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

This is a great idea. Really great. We need a project like this to prove that anyone of us minnows can get as far as possible through community effort. Its already proven that beginners cannot buy their way to the top; they cant. So lets motivate to believe that its possible to excel by effort; not by paid votes. I have been sitting on the fence when it comes to paid votes; as a minnow, i dont even know how it works. A project like this is the answer i need to prove that no matter when you starte, success is not beyond reach. It is attainable. I get involved with all i have. I will prepare a blog about it and spread the word very fast. I am charles @focusnow
Thanks @markrmorrisjr for this wonderful opportunity and do count me in!

Absolutely. And, with the investment in @dolphinschool, I can help with that. I've helped a lot of newcomers get started and get beyond the 3 to 5 cent payouts that are so encouraging and discouraging at the same time.

Thats great to hear. Together we can make a big team and grow by helping each other grow. I appreciate the opportunity

absolutely. Those who are willing to learn to create great, useful content can succeed here.

‘Unclefocus’, wasn’t it?
I remember your introduction in the contest put up by @terminallyill, if I’m not mistaking. Glad to see you on board!

Haha. Thanks @simplymike
Yes its me. You have such a great memory. Thanks for being here and i appreciate your being here too

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

I am looking forward to this challenge! I will support by using Twittr because I am connected to hundreds of conservatives who are being banned and bound and who want to find a free speech platform. In fact, I think Free Speech will be trending this month (March) because it is actively being suppressed by ggle and utube. More new users will ultimately lift up Dolphin school. People are having a hard time joining though. Applications taking a very long time. Like weeks.

Yeah, I've noticed that. I want to check into the idea of selling accounts. It's easy to start them through steem connect, then just send the login to the buyer, they can change the password, etc.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

Hi @markrmorrisjr I love the experiment. I’m pretty new to Steemit, but what I value here is the good atmosphere, the friendliness and sense of community in some groups. Yay to more of that - I’m in 😁 (resteemed)
-@lil-mich

Hey, thanks ! Well, I try to promote community as much as possible. Of course, so many people are so suspicious of anyone that will take even a smidge of profit these days that it's hard to do, without giving everything away. LOL

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Admirable goal I suppose, I've already accomplished this task once before in my 2 weeks on here, but all the same, yes, it can be done. Unfortunately I attracted a whale which ended up getting my old post to the trending page. ****shrug****

I'm game to participate. I'm not after any slice of rewards though.

Yes, that's one way of doing it. It happens regularly, but, unfortunately, it's hard to know just what you did to attract them, and even harder to repeat the feat.

I should rephrase that, I've done it twice. I'm not certain how I managed to attract them, but it's on posts that have nothing to do with most common topics.

Do you know who the voter was? You can establish a relationship with a whale, if you get the chance. @blocktrades likes to upvote my fiction every few days, although not as much as I would like, LOL

Yes, I'm aware of who the voters all were. If you attract a while or happen to see a whale in the wild, you just have to look at their stream to see what kind of stuff they post about and resteem and if it's something you know a lot about, work towards that.

That's not nor has it ever been my goal. My goal is just to write, even if I don't make good funds from it, that's fine. I'm not really after the money as much as I am the chance to write... and read, I like reading too.

I've not gotten anything about of watching TV or radio since childhood due to being deaf, so I started out writing in notebooks and drawing, then got a computer and started writing. My old Myspace Profile was a massive blog head xD

Wow, that makes total sense. Well, stop by and chat me up anytime. Have you looked at my serialized novels? I've been here two years and have written a TON of long form content.

I've seen someone write them, I've not dug into them yet though.

Cool, well, I also run writing prompt contests from time to time, so I'd welcome your participation in any and all of them.

I was just thinking the other day on how many online friends I've made and discovered they face unique challenges that are not obvious in this arena. It creates a level playing field in more ways than one. It robs some people of talents obvious in the physical world, while helping others overcome stigmas and challenges that the rest of us cannot even imagine. It's pretty cool.

I'm in! @joannereid and I'm letting my friends @peggyhazelwood, @garyharvey, and @katebenzin know about this. I am with in you in not buying votes. That just turns Steemit into a big old scummy scam place with trashy stuff being upvoted with bought votes.

Well, I'm afraid that's already the case. And I think, rather than spit in the wind by complaining about it, it's better to do something proactive. So, welcome to the team! At the very least, we'll make some new friends and learn a thing or two about promoting content on steemit.

Good thinking! Thanks, @joannereid for letting me know about this. I'm totally with ya, brother (and sister!).

Great! Welcome to the project! This is how it works, one invites another. If you know others, tag them too! Thanks ladies!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

When I first started Steemit in May 2017, I had a couple of posts go to the treading page without promoting. I got lucky and the bigger accounts were looking at smaller accounts to upvote. Now all the bigger accounts are spending so much time on building they accounts to flag others, the little accounts suffer from it in a way, they are trying to make Steemit a better place for all.

Well, some of them are, but, I personally believe that taking the approach of becoming the self-appointed spam police is useless. Building and promoting better content would be a better use of their power. If they did, spam, would be much less profitable. It would simply cease to be an issue. Whereas their current approach revolves around them actually catching the perpetrators, and it's also bot driven and somewhat pointless, because many of the worst spammers, in my opinion, are large conglomerates that take and divide huge spoils every day. Their content is not useful. But, we'd love to have your help here if you're willing.

Great concept upvoted here thanks to @simplymike resteemed article!

Awesome! Thanks @simplymike, and welcome to @cryptkeeper17, the numbers are growing!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

i appreciate you very good idea you have, i am new here and i was thinking about it, people do not follow or resteem a newbie post even with good content ,hard work is effective and i know some smart steemians they started with zero and now popular on it,with their hard work and good skills

Well, the problem is, they just never get seen. The "new" section in the most popular categories grows so fast, your post is at the top for all of three seconds on a busy day. But, when you build a community, you have more options.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

This sounds very good, I would like to be part of this.

Awesome welcome to the project!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

          I don't know how many of my cohorts at team ????? have posted, I saw in my gina-bot that @??????? mentioned me. I read the post, and, thought your idea sounded good, I visit a lot of pages upvoting for ????? team, so I can add another logo/picture and link to my bottom list, for my post promo responses, if you'd like.


edited to delete self prom items.

Well, I appreciate the invite. Normally, I'd flag you for the flagrant self promo, but what the heck! LOL

Not a problem I edited out all the self prom stuff. Thank you for deciding to not flag me.

I was mostly teasing. It wasn't entirely uncalled for, since it explained what you were offering to make use of.

Hey, great. The promo was fine, because you were offering to help. I'm all about mutual promotion. I was genuinely joking. LOL

Just got up from a nap, but that's okay.

But what is the name of your team, by the way, is it the resteemday thing? I haven't had a chance to check out all the accounts that have responded here yet.

          Yes, I primarily try to help the newbieresteemday team, with votes to the people that drop post in our discord promo box. because of @abh12345 and his curation team and an SP donation also from @davemccoy, I was able to get the vote slider, so I am able to hand out a lot of $0.020 votes to new users, primarily those users that have less than a month on steemit, and less than a 45 rep. However because of all the work the people have put into the program, I also give votes to team members and those that do not meet the specific Newbie rules.

          For a new user a $0.020 vote and a comment is a nice vote. and with Asher's and Dave's assistance it is my way to help the new users, but if an individual thinks I am spamming I will, (as you saw) edit my comment. I also do not jut upvote a link drop, I do read each and every post I vote on and I do try to leave a note in my template of what I thought of their post. I never ask for a vote back, or a follow.

Anyone can get a vote slider. If anyone asks, just send them to busy.org to post, or tell them to use the Steemplus addon for chrome or Firefox. I end up doing a lot of small votes too. I had quite a stake until last summer, my daughter got married, so I cashed out the bulk of my SP to pay for that and do some other things. On my way back up.

I was unaware of an add on for chrome, I was, before Asher and Dave, using steemworld.org to do my voting, and his manual vote slider. I have tried busy.org a couple of times, and I still do not like it, last try was last week. I am going to have to research the Steemplus addon for chrome.

Yeah, it's pretty neat. It also has a post "beneficiary" feature I've been using for some contests. It allows you to designate a portion of your take to other accounts, by percentage.

Sounds like you're adding real value with your curation. Good job, keep it up, the more live interaction we can encourage here, the better. too many bots doing every damn thing and mucking up the system for those that believe in content creation as a mining system.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

I know that there are many posts that get good payout without having to buy votes. This is what the good curation groups/teams do here on Steemit and I have seen a very good example of this recently:
https://steemit.com/classical-music/@tin-tin/music-life-a-little-bit-of-cellist-hell-with-canon-in-d-and-some-sleepy-time-with-a-vivaldi-concerto

I think when you hit a sweet spot of being able to write something that is personal + educational + entertaining then you have a very good chance to getting spotted by the curators.

I guess to people who are skeptical about the integrity of this project, it is certainly something that anyone could do if they wanted to, and I think at least you are being upfront about what you want to get out of it and that's not something you can say about many of the other accounts or schemes out there.

Of course, not suggesting this doesn't happen. I get $100 payouts several times a month. I'm looking to be at the top of trending. It may or may not be possible, but we're going to find out. If anyone questions my integrity, they are welcome to contact any of the dolphinschool students and see what I did with them, how much time and energy I poured in, with almost nothing in return. I'm not here just for myself, but if I'm going to spend my time helping others, I still have to eat.

I had a look at some of the content on @dolphinschool and it certainly deserves more in return compared to people who earn payout through less valuable contributions to the community. But I wouldn't say that you got a lot of people who are willing to vouch for you and the value that you have created, which I think is worth a lot more than the SBDs that you can earn.

I think it is an interesting question to see what is required to get to the top of trending, but it is another question to know whether it is worth the time and effort. But I do think it is worth finding out :)

You're looking at the new profile I started for dolphinschool about three weeks ago. Search #dolphinschool bootcamp and you'll have a much different take on the project. Sorry it got so busy that it overwhelmed my personal blog and required more space. I haven't done a ton with it in the last week or so. I'm working on upgrading my entire presence here. I took almost two dozen students through a ten day course on content marketing and blogging and I think you'd find that they all would vouch for me, along with many others over the two years.

I think with the number of people on Steemit now compared to before it will be important to establish a presence and work with people more closely than before. The material you have will be good once SMTs come into play and the bugs/issues are worked out, but I think it is a worthy cause like how @pennsif is trying to teach a course on Steemit as well. I will add you to the list of people on my Steemtopia Network of Learning as well!
https://steemit.com/makesteemitgreat-again/@fibrefox/the-steemtopia-network-of-learning-update-more-fun-and-games

Great.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

I'm definitely in support of this initiative.

Awesome! Glad to have you.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Okay I'm in! I will do my blog about this soon, not today because I have a lot of things to do. God bless this project!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

The only thing that can compete with big money anywhere is peeps with little money pooling together intentionally with one single-minded goal to help each other grow.

I'm in. Thanks for this initiative, @markrmorrisjr

Great! Adding you to the list! We're officially over thirty!

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I am definitely in!!! I want to see more organic results in the trending sections. I like your ideas, Mark, and think we can all work together to achieve the goal!

Almost forgot to tag some friends who would also benefit from this: @katebenzin @musicman99 @peggyhazelwood @hopehuggs

I'll also share it in some discord servers!

@peggyhazelwood is already here. but the others should come on and join us! It's going to be a blast! Tomorrow, I'm thinking MEME CONTEST! (for bragging rights) but let's take over Dmania with memes promoting this and leave links back to tomorrow's main post on the project! LOL

Sounds great! Will keep an eye out for it. Glad I have GINAbot looking out for me. I might miss something otherwise!

I appreciate what you're trying to do here, & the spam flood is a real problem. What is your end goal though?

What if you would build a new upvoting bot with the funds we raise? Then we could make it a much stronger community builder by being like the "minnow's choice" voter. And people would have to nominate a minnow post that's not theirs or made by another account they own, & then the minnow community we build here can vote from the nominees to see who gets the "minnow's choice" vote that week. You can set rules that give more people a chance, like you can only win this vote once, and set a minimum word count for the post, etc.
Just thinking aloud - I'd like to support something like this.

@JoyLovesToWrite

Well, right now, we're working on this one post. If you'd like to participate, you're welcome. I, for one, am not interested in adding ANY more bots to the eco-system, as I see them as the problem, not a solution. But, if you think that will help, go for it. As to end goal, @dolphinschool has helped many to get through the Plankton stage. I just recently set it up on its own profile and part of this is geared towards getting it more widely seen, so that I can use it to train even more. Group voting projects like this are primarily stunts. Those who develop interactive audiences will succeed here, those who do not, are doomed to rely on bots, or whales, or projects like this, over and over and it's simply not a sustainable model for account growth.

I do like this idea. I'm always in favor of trying out new ideas to advance my progress, especially when the monetary cost is zero. I will resteem this post as well as upvote it.

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Yes! I think this is a great initiative. Your endless fountain of inspiration and astute observation is quite refreshing, and championing the cause of the plankton and minnows is a great strategy as I believe the best way of fixing the big things is by starting with the little things.

'Power To The Plankton' comes to mind as an idea for a heading, and highlighting posts that didn't get any significant votes/rewards before expiry my idea for part of the content. I believe this strategy serves as a better motivation for active participants for the following reasons:

  • participants won't join solely for the purpose of getting votes on their current posts, but because they believe in the concept of the initiative

  • it will motivate participants to create a new post, with the best content they can muster

  • the people that subsequently follow and upvote the participants new posts will be doing so for altruistic reasons as opposed to a quick buck, therefore building a meaningful following

Another idea: I know that my vote is worth 1c, as with a lot of plankton, so you would need approx. 500 plankton to vote in order to reach $50. You could create a daily meme linking to the target post, letting everyone know how close to target the post is. Something like this (but better)

PTTP2.jpg

I'm IN! @emeraldearth

Hey, we're doing a meme challenge today, so, you're right on target. I'll share more in a bit, but your math is a bit fuzzy. You'd need 5000 1 cent votes to hit $50.00 not 500. Hopefully, with a bunch of minnows, we can shortcut this and get a bunch of ten centers thrown in for good measure. I've got about 30 cents in votes combined.

Oops

Interesting. I'll keep an eye out for developments on this idea :)

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

LOVE this idea and i'm in full support! Upvoted and resteemed. I will write an article about ASAP. Thanks @markmorrisjr

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 9 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.

I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 34 SBD worth and should receive 76 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.

I am TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!

Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
trufflepig
TrufflePig

I'm in.

I'm IN !!!

This is a really nice initiative, Mark, and I believe a lot of people could benefit from it. I can't think of any suggestions just now, but if I do, I'll be sure to let you know.

And count me IN! I'd love to help! :)

Hey, thanks! Well start spreading the word any way you can. We need about a hundred times more people to comment on this post and the others.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

I don't know you @markrmorrisjr, but I like you!

I read your post and all subsequent comments. Huge kudos to you for the hundreds of hours you have spent coaching, mentoring and helping Newbies! Without people like you and the amazing folks at #newbieresteemday, like @davemccoy, @goldendawne, @beeyou, @amariespeaks, @bashadow, @lynncoyle1, @wanderlass and many more, "excited-to-be-here" minnows like me would be quite lost!

I am not sure how I can help and participate but I will be reviewing all of this info quite closely once i am done Upvoting, Resteeming and Following.

I thank you for doing what you are doing! We are all learning and growing and it's so much more effective, expeditious and FUN to do it together! I look forward to learning from and working with you, Mark!

That's basically it, then my latest post is a challenge to post a meme linking back to the post on either dmania, or steepshot, to help raise awareness of the project. Thanks for the comment, and yes, I'm not the only one, I just typically get more done solo. LOL

Thank you @kismet2018! You know my giving nature ;) Always ready to help someone out...this platform can work as a well oiled machine if everyone does their part. And if we can help build new folks' success, then the foundation continually stays solid!

I am in@vincent848... I like the initiative

Great! I'll add you to the list, welcome to the minnow votes project

Minnow Votes Project team, check out this link for today's promotional challenge. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Here is the link to the post we are trying to raise to trending. It's hit #5 on "hot" so far. Would love to have your vote. Thanks!

You certainly have some great ideas here. #steemthat upvoted

Hello @markrmorrisjr

I've just reblogged (and tried to upvote - but got an unknown error, grrrr) this post because the whole idea of rewarding quality posts which are not bot-supported is exactly what's needed here.

Otherwise the rich and established Steemians will dominate, with no incentive to uplift newer members who come to share their views and experience, and to share in the growth (and associated rewards) of Steemit.

With more plans like yours, management may come to see that changes are needed in the algorithms that drive Steemit. To prevent/minimize abuses.

I'm not worried about whether the rich dominate, that's a done deal, even if we take away bots. But, the genuine interaction being gone is a problem. It has always been (the two years since payouts started) that votes were quick and most don't read what they upvote, but at least they were having to click a button. They at least saw a title and a thumbnail and said yes to something. No, the algorithms don't need to be changed, the bots just need to be reduced.

"the bots just need to be reduced."

Could that be achieved by rejigging the algo?

Gary

I don't think so. The bots are all full fledged accounts. To separate them out could cause issues. They're the same as your profile they just automate things with software. I don't think the algorithm could be tweaked to filter them without killing curation trails. They child force live login to vote, but with so many apps allowing access to steemit, like busy. Org, etc that would be nearly impossible

Didnt know that, thanks @markrmorrisjr
...which to me exposes a flaw in the concept/structure of Steemit
...which leaves room to question its future. Newcomers will try to play the game right for a while, discover its not working and why, then fizzle out, leaving the bots to play with the next batch of newcomers. Or am I being unduly pessimistic?

No, you're not. In fact, It's akin to money laundering. Many of the whales are taking a back seat on upvoting their own content, instead selling votes, which claims the lion's share of the prize pool, by proxy. They let it filter through smaller accounts, take the biggest part of any curation rewards, spend nothing in the process, wash, rinse, repeat, up to a couple of dozen times a day.

And, there's no cost to them to do it, other than the voting limitation, which is what they're selling. No out of pocket expense, at all. So it's pure profit and they make as much in SBD off of a trending post buying votes, as the author. The author gets the SP, but that comes at a much, much lower rate. It's quite a racket.

I've been supported by countless kind steemians including you and I want to give back. Count me in @markrmorrisjr!

Great, I'll add you to the list. the post we're going to promote is going to be Sunday 2pm CST, we want as many votes as possible in the first hour! Watch here and @dolphinschool for more details on how you can support it.

LOL that's 4AM in my country. I'll auto-upvote your post before I sleep XD

  ·  7 years ago Reveal Comment

Well, you didn't read the post. But, that's about par for the course for you. Thanks for your contribution.

seemed like some boring sales letter crap, doesn't look to be on the trending page.

Just wait, when we grow we don't want to see you there. Hahaha! Just kidding ;)
Let's just support this project. It's for planktons and minnows like me.

Even though I am still a minnow, I'm helping them with their project just to promote this because we really need this. It's hard for us to be put on the trendins page.