Who I'm delegating to these days, and a @Yusaymon Appreciation Month Re-Cap

A couple of months ago, @stellabelle started an initiative. Her idea, in response to all of vote selling on this platform, was to encourage whales to delegate to promising Steemians, free of charge. Especially with the value of steem jumping so high lately, it makes it even a little harder for new users to get on their feet here. Both @wwf and @fulltimegeek joined in on this initiative, you can check out posts they've published about it here:

• FullTimeGeek Explains Why He Delegated Most of His Steem Power Away

• @wwf - Steem Delegation - How "Trickle Down Economics" is really supposed to work and how do we delegate steem

@stellabelle decided to delegate 5000sp to me back then, and @fulltimegeek followed suit matching all of her delegations, while adding a number of his own. This left me with 10k delegated SP!!! (WOWZA) I have a lot of gratitude towards these two, although I've never had the chance to chat with @fulltimegeek, all I can do is be grateful, I suppose. Not only has this allowed me to reward many users with bigger votes than I could have offered before, but it also helps my account to grow by about 10sp a week. <3

Before this came about I was hosting a contest called:

@yusaymon appreciation moonth

As many of you are already aware, @yusaymon is a talented and dedicated artist, as well as an Outstanding Steemian. He's been on steem for almost a year now, and was sustaining his life in the Dominican Replublic with his steem rewards. He's always been a great guy to me, and for the community, as well as being one of my earliest friends on Steem.

(by: @juliakponsford)

In support, and celebration of my friend, I decided to host a contest. The rules were to make a post in honor of @yusaymon, celebrating his art. All the liquid rewards would go to Yu, and whoever the winner was would win a 200sp delegation for a month! Little did we know, but Yu had been saving up to pay for fees for a over staying his visa in the Dominican Republic, so he could return to his home in Venezela, and not have to go to jail for unpaid fines! So this effort came at the perfect time for him.

Partially as a result of the efforts of many amazing Steemians who also paid tribute in support of @yusaymon, he gathered together the funds needed, and is now back with his family in Venezuela. HOW INCREDIBLE IS THAT?

• @yusaymon - Thank you Minnowsupport, Thank you Steemit // Happy New Year 2018!!

Recently, he also created this banner art for me as a thank you. :) But he's always been making free art for fellow steemians. That's part of why I started @Yusaymon Appreciation Month. You'll see in this, some art that he as made, as well as other artists here on steem. Some of my favorites since I've joined. Thank you @yusaymon, @shello, @juliakponsford, @stellabelle, @federacion45, and @creativesoul (left to right).

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

The contest came to a close, and I wasn't sure what to do. @vachemorte came up with this amazing submission, which is a movie trailer for @yusaymon:

(via: @vachemorte - Movie Trailer for Yusaymon Appreciation Month)

I decided, perhaps, the delegation should simply go to Yusaymon himself. Since, I had just been gifted with a large delegation, it was easy for me to bump the delegation to 400sp. When I mentioned this to Yu, he would hear nothing of taking the delegation for himself, and insisted I give it to @vachemorte. Well, I couldn't argue with that, and it seems we had both independently chosen the same winner. So I decided to give them both 400sp delegations!

About 6 weeks later, I saw this post:

• @abh12345 - #stewardsofgondor - Is it time to pay it forward?

@abh12345 has been running reports to keep track of how the people who received delegations were using their time on steem. A nice and transparent way to keep records for the delegators, and those of us who received the delegations alike. I saw this post, and thought about how still I had 1000sp left undelegated, and about how long it had been since my month delegation prize had been awarded. I decided to look over my delegations and think about what to do with them.

With sadness, I decided to remove the delegation from @vachemorte, and reduce @yusaymon's by half, so I could support some newer users in need of a boost. Here are my current delegations:

@shinyforest and @spiritualmax are both new users, that I met recently, who show a lot of promise. I decided to delegate 300sp to each of them.

@venalbe is being very helpful with the @slothicorn project, without much sp, so I also decided to delegate 300sp to him.

After that I decided to delegate 500sp to @minnowsupport since they helped me when I was getting my start, and continue to help many users who are coming on to steem.

This leaves me around 400sp left un-delegated. As this number grows, and I find more promising steemians, I may choose to delegate some more of it in the near future. But it seems like a good practice to keep some of it, for I know that my current awesome delegations can't last forever. However, I am extremely grateful for as long as they do, and will do my best to pay it forward.

Resources

• @stellabelle - A SP Delegatee menu to solve the vote selling problem
• FullTimeGeek Explains Why He Delegated Most of His Steem Power Away
• @wwf - Steem Delegation - How "Trickle Down Economics" is really supposed to work and how do we delegate steem
• @yusaymon appreciation moonth
• @yusaymon - Thank you Minnowsupport, Thank you Steemit // Happy New Year 2018!!
• CONTROL DE CAMBIO: The Root
  @vachemorte - Movie Trailer for Yusaymon Appreciation Month
• Big Thanks to, and an Overview of the Sponsors to the Welcoming Contest
• @vachemorte - First ever Full Length Film released on Steemit World Premier
• @slothicorn - Launch of a new Open Source Project on the Steem Blockchain