2000 followers and going strong, thank you Steemit

Hi Everyone,

Wow, I‘ve made it to 2000 followers. I celebrated 1000 in January and I get to celebrate 2000 in February. So I feel pretty happy about that. For the 1000 follower milestone, I listed the names of all my followers. I think 2000+ is a bit too many to list this time. I want to say that I appreciate the second 1000 followers just as much as the first 1000.

Exciting Year

So far, 2018 has been quite an eventful year for both myself and the platform. I think most people got excited about the jump in value of Steem as we began the year. The value has dropped in February but it is still pretty good at over US$3. The quality of the platform is constantly improving and the number of new accounts are increasing quite rapidly. So a big thumbs up to the Steem Team.

I am very happy with the popularity of my contests both meme and puzzle contests; I think so far most contests have been getting over 100 entries. I have to thank all those that enter for making that possible. I am also happy to run these contests and I have a lot of fun thinking up different puzzles as well as finding funny and unusual photos for all of you to create interesting and crazy memes. The popularity of the contests have put a strain on my Steem Power. So I have not been upvoting entries by as much as I did when I was only getting 10 to 20 entries.

I have also focused my attention on writing economics posts as well making economics videos for Dtube. The economics posts this year have been fairly theoretical with a focus on game theory. I find game theory to be a very interesting topic in economics and I feel it generally does not get the exposure it needs. I have also put together some posts and videos around a few other topics relating to consumer theory.

I have also put out two fairly controversial posts regarding abuse and bot usage that were well received by the general Steemit community. I also wrapped up my 5 fives areas of abuse (animals) in written posts, there are more posts to come along similar lines.

So where from here?

I will still be running the regular contests as well as some questions in some posts where I will be giving out small awards for correct answers. I will be starting an economics competition series in late March which will have different challenges each week. I will be giving out awards to the weekly winners. I will have more on that in the coming weeks.

I will continue my posts and videos relating to cruelty-free economics, formerly known as ‘vegan economics’. I changed the name as I wanted to expand the development of this subject matter. I also feel the broader audience might be more receptive to the name. As the year goes on, I will be pushing in deeper. I will be revisiting value of life, cost of life, and cost of cruelty. These areas can get a bit controversial and there will be many people that will not necessarily agree with my approach or my conclusions but that kind of makes it exciting and as an economist I get used to be being disagreed with and challenged.

I will continue with my posts relating to economics both theoretical and applied. I will be revisiting my dark side of economics series again at some point. There are still plenty to explore in that area. I will also be applying economics to explain some of the goings on within Steemit itself. If given enough exposure I am sure these posts will spark plenty of debate.

Use of Bots

I have been a fairly big user of bots in the past. I have written a post about how to get the most out of bot usage. Some of you may have noticed the lower payouts on quite a few of my posts recently. This is because I am not mostly not upvoting myself with bots anymore. I did not ever intend to use the bots indefinitely and I wanted to get off them at some point. I feel that with the following I have, it is about time to see how much my post are worth without distorting the value by buying votes. Ideally, I want to reserve vote buying for posts I feel are of significance to the broader community.

Vote buying is generally returning a negative return on investment as well. I find that votes are flooding in right before bidding closes and they continue coming in even if the maximum profitable bid is zero. Vote buying is also becoming riskier with fluctuations in the price of Steem and SBD.

Decline Payout

I have been asked why I sometimes decline payout. So far I have only declined payout for milestone posts such as this one. I personally don’t expect to receive payout for something that is congratulatory. I rather get paid for something that is adding new original content, which I believe is most of my posts. Accepting payout for this type of post somehow does not feel sincere.

I came to Steemit to contribute interesting and informative posts and earn enough to be able to support dedicating the time necessary to produce that content. It took a while to get momentum, which can be expected, but things have now started to progress faster than I imagined. Investing my own money in Steem has worked out well for me as well. I would strongly recommend anyone who is looking to invest to put that money into Steem Power. There is a reasonably good chance Steem will appreciate in the long-run. If you have more Steem Power, I can earn more on my posts from your upvotes. Also remember, do not overstretch if you do not have the money to invest.

Next milestone

I intend to make my next milestone at 5000 followers. Not so long ago that seemed very far away. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my post. Keeping steeming away. I believe that this is the platform to be if you want to make a difference in your life and those around you. It can be slow at first but keep plugging away.

Below is a gif flashing through my post thumbnails (excluding memes contest) since my 1000 follower post. I hope you enjoy, thank you Steemians.

P.S.

To just let everyone know that I will be posting less frequently for most of March as I will be overseas followed by some consultancy work. In late March I will endeavour to get the economics competition series running.