I got in just when the rewards seemed to be dropping. Just in time to see the posts in Trending make even more than they do now. I remember seeing pretty much the entire Trending page full of $500+ posts, where it kind of tops out at $200 now. It sucks.. I feel like a lot of early adopters got a free ticket to become a whale because of it. The experience is very different from when the big whales entered the game last year, I believe. It is no longer possible to become a whale I think, if you don't bring in a pre-existing community of Followers from other platforms (like Jerry Banfield).
The biggest problem on Steemit as I see it, is that it's so hard to reach anyone through the massive shouting-contest that is the New post category. The only chance you have as a minnow, is to pray that a big whale will follow and hopefully upvote/resteem you one day, so you may get exposure to his followers. If you don't... well, without a whale vote you'd need about 100x more upvotes.. that's simply no competition..
And honestly.. whales don't follow many people at all. You'll usually see whales having 3K followers, yet they will be following only 50 people (also high ranking whales, not minnows). In essence whales are following/upvoting other whales it seems, only making the entry point for minnows even more harder.
I am hoping they will implement better community building tools. Personally I would love to see the tags being improved to work more like 'groups', similar to Reddit. If we can create mini-communities surrounding our favorite subjects, this would allow people to stand out much better within these communities, instead of all of us trying to shout the hardest in the chaos that is the New/Hot/Trending pages.
I would love to see discussion-per-subject too.. Like, topic starter opens a topic and in the comments discussion ensues. And the longer discussion continues, the longer the post stays on top (again, similar to reddit). Right now, we have new posts quickly killing the old posts... Content on Steemit is 1-3 days old, and anything older than that is simply ignored and forgotten. As a result we see the same topics appear over and over, instead of seeing the best post regarding that topic. It feels like the focus is more on quantity+followers rather than quality+qualityfollowers.
Personally, I kind of stopped playing the game of competing for money entirely.. Yes I came here for the rewards, just like anybody else. But TBH, the amount of effort it takes to get rewards is crazy.. I completely understand why active users/posts is going down and why Steemit has a low retention rate of users. Not everybody is as crazy and stubborn as me, to just stick with it.
This got rather long, sorry!
To return to the topic at hand: Currently the best way as a minnow to swim along is indeed to comment on other people. It's not omgawesomemegaprofits either though, and besides getting you that 0.50$ upvote it doesn't actually help you much along in the long run. I have made over 800 actual comments (honest ones, no spam, etc.) and even though this has gotten me over 300 followers, there is still a 95% chance that any post I make will get less than 10 views (not even talking about upvotes) and disappear into the abyss of the New section unless I market it heavily.
I think this is the general problem I foresee with these token economies. The free market doesn't always work in the ways it is intended and the entire intention of the community/platform can be broken because of it. This is where regulators would step in for a normal economy and prevent monopolies or tax the top earners in order to create an economy that has more mobility in it. Tokens can play a great role in facilitating micro-transactions as it is doing in Steem, but they can also serve as a disincentive to participation when they are not being distributed in a way that is fair.
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Yep.. and not to mention the fact that selling Facebook-likes and followers is a relatively big industry, I can only imagine how many abuse in ways of selling Steemit upvotes/followers will ensue. It's already happening in plain sight, with people selling their upvotes/resteems for SBD, but it's pretty limited still. What happens when the scale enlarges and this takes over the entire system on Steemit?
We all love decentralization, right? So why are we supporting/allowing a new kind of digital centralization through whale-accounts which we all have to use in order to get noticed? We hated this about banks, but now we are paying fees to intermediaries again..
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From the Steemit white paper:
Selling votes is undeniable financial manipulation, and there are various other mechanisms that are as well. Voting by bots is just breaking Steemit. I feel such manipulation is the primary reason that appreciation in Steem price is limited. It is impossible to prove that this or that particular issue is the more weighty, but my review of the concerns of posters in my 90 days here has revealed no greater concern by those indicating concern. Further, the amount of posts and comments either focused solely on money is pretty high, and blatant pandering remains an unpalatable and huge proportion of comments on the posts of those with substantial holdings of SP.
When it comes to using voting bots, even those with all the good and altruistic intentions in the world, I just don't. I am only interested in the opinions of people (well, except dogs. Dogs are the best people I ever met.), and just have no interest in the opinion of algorithms.
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Great find from the whitepaper!
And yes, I agree on your points. I sometimes do use randowhale even though I'd prefer not to use it. Like you, I care about real people reading my posts. But the simple fact is that right now, if you don't use a bot to upvote you, you simply don't even get seen, let alone be read, by real people. I'm seeing so many minnows making super lengthy posts in the New section.. sure they are a bit noobish, but you can tell they put serious time into writing it. It's just so sad to see it drop into obscurity with 2-3 total views. I can almost feel their disappointment.
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LOL I so resemble that remark!
I just posted a lengthy screed for which (my memory is poor, and I didn't pay much mind anyway) am getting less than $2 in rewards.
I just am not posting for financial rewards. What really disappoints me is the lack of criticism. I depend on criticism to straighten me out when I'm wrong, and absent eyeballs I don't get straightened out.
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Good insight! Particularly in view of the fact the the most substantial holdings of SP were mined, not generated by curation/creation, or purchased on the open market.
Personally, I expect this will be the issue that decides whether Steemit succeeds or fails, in the long run.
This:
has to change.
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I'm not going to say you don't have valid points. However, it sounds a lot like complaining and Complainers never get anywhere...winners find a way and get to work. you can do it :)
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Well, I am making it work. But I would say I am part of the 1% of people who are crazy enough to keep at it. 99% of the rest will not do that. I suppose it depends on how big of a platform we all want to make Steem/it.
Complaining sounds rather negative, I'd rather label it as 'pointing out flaws'. Besides, I'm not trying to get anyone to follow me by commenting here anyway. I stopped really caring all too much about maximizing my profits and walking on hot coals, I'd rather stay real :)
People who don't understand it... I kind of want to challenge big whales who got in Steemit last year, to go and make a new fresh account today and, without using any of your old contacts, try to see how the experience for new users is currently. You yourself are only a month older than me, so I don't consider you to be one of the really old timers. Yet, I did notice that right when I got in, price-per-post dropped significantly. I looked quickly at your blogposts, and did see a bunch of your earlier posts (one about naps and one about guitars) netting 70$ of even past 100$. I would be really amazed to see a relatively new account today performing this same feat. My point being: it is now exponentially harder to get anywhere on Steemit than last month, and last month it was exponentially harder than the month before. If this keeps up, there will eventually be no incentive for new users to join this platform after a while. I'm glad I got on last month, because if I got on later with even bigger challenges/lower rewards... I'm not sure I'd bother.
I hate that right now, success on this platform greatly depends on the charity of whales, basically.
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Call it what you like, I was telling you what it sounded like. Like I said, not saying you don't have valid points, but if you keep focusing on these issues, you make it harder on yourself. What you focus on is what you get. Change your focus = change your outcome. Just tryin to help
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