Do you remember when the post promotion was announced, it wasn't that long ago actually. Back then I was concerned that the feature will not be really useful and it seems that my concerns have become a reality. The Promoted page has initially turned into a battlefield on who will pay the most to have his post on top, then it was overtaken mostly by authors that already had high reputation and serious follower base and now... now it seems to be slowly dying. With less posts getting promoted and with less paid to promote them with the reason behind that simply being that there is really no point due to the lack of effect. The only thing that remains useful and actually working is the fact that the Steem Dollars spent for promotion get burned.
I have been testing a couple of times the feature by promoting a few of my posts to see the actual effect. Sure, maybe I don't have a post worth going trending (don't I really), but that does not mean that I don't have good posts right? My success so far was in getting a bit of boost of the post reward from a few votes mostly from Whales after promoting a post. This was totally missing the point of authors getting new readers by promoting their posts, but was exactly what was happening. Pretty much nobody besides some Whales and the users that did promote their posts was visiting that page and the second group was not paying much attention as it was not there to vote for "the competition".
Yesterday I have decided to give another chance of the Promoted page by promoting a post that needed to get more attention and raise some awareness. The post in question was this one: Bug Report: Issues on Steemit and Different Steem Tools with IE11 where I talk about some of the issues that Steemit currently has under Internet Explorer 11 as well as cover over 10 different Steem Tools that aslo don't properly work under IE11. My posts reporting bugs have been a total failure so far, a failure in terms of getting attention or at least that was the impression I was getting.
This time I wanted to make the post more visible and get more attention and I have decided to Promote it, so I did and I did use enough SBD to make sure it stays among the top 20 promoted posts. Now, 24 hours later nothing much has changed with that post, and I've been looking at other highly ranked posts on the Promoted page and there is not much happening with them either. Seems that even the Whales are not visiting that page anymore...
So i just wanted to let you know that I will not be using the Promote feature anymore, and so should you as it apparently has turned into a pointless and useless way to waste your hard earned Steem Dollars without any effect. And I'm not talking about getting rewards here... I'm talking about getting more people to read your posts and maybe even react to them, not to mention to actually gain some new followers. There are different ways that can be more effective and completely free such as using the Steemit Chat for example, not spamming with links to your posts.
Promoting a post on the Promoted page has literally become burning SBD and nothing more...
If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.
Did you like what you have just read? Check my other posts on steemit @cryptos
As a firefox & chrome user, I wouldn't even click on that based on my own interests.
As a reader and tiny curator (0.01$ worth of vote), even if you paid 1000$ for promotion, I'd still not click it. I read IE 11 and I LOL'ed (just sharing my reaction). I wouldn't have any interest in reading it or upvoting it.
Content is relevant to what will have success or not. This may not be the type of content to attract upvotes. Obviously, no meaningful conclusion can be extrapolated about the usefulness of "promoted" from that case.
On the other hand, I went over the top 20+ or so, they were like 5-6 in the 0-1$, 6-7 in the 1-10$, 3 in the 10-100$ range and 3 in the 100-1000$ range. So their ratios are decent.
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I've checked in on the Promoted posts page a few times, just to see how other people were doing there. By and large, it didn't seem like most were doing any better for promoting their posts than they could have done without promotion. So, the feature didn't seem worth it to me, and I don't check in there much anymore, because I don't see anything changing (thus far) regarding the value of promoted posts to the authors.
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Yes I remember it and in the moment it is really not working well with the promoted posts. :)
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I had used the promo feature two days ago and was able to catch a whale. I invested about 1.50 SBD and turned them into nearly 30$ payout. So maybe it depends.
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It was a terrible idea to begin with. It never should have been implemented. Straight garbage!!
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Agreed. See my recent post on this https://steemit.com/proposal/@nonlinearone/a-proposal-to-make-promoted-posts-worth-the-price-without-spamming-up-steemit-com
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When bots are doing most of the upvoting, you can promote information however you want and it won't make a difference.
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I could tell his would happen. We need an unobtrusive way to view promoted.
Maybe it should pop up in the new feed trending feed or active feed
Maybe it should show up every 5th post in your home feed something thats not too annoying but atill he's it out to. New audiences .
On burning , while that will be good I wish they would t burn u till we drive Steem power below 90percent. It really doesn't make sense to power up until then and burning just delays he inevitable.
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The problem with promoted posts is tied to the core problem with the platform itself: low quality content. Launching an ad model on Steem just a few months after launch is asking for trouble. You attract quality advertisers by having a large, high value user base with a strong ROI. We are a small community to begin with, and the eyeballs that reach the Promoted posts tab is even smaller. The economics of how much an advertiser needs to spend to get adequate reach are not transparent (any digital marketer is going to want more data like their impressions, click through rate, etc). The result is limited opportunity and a poor experience for advertisers. Steemit definitely has the long term potential to build a sustainable ad model, but it's clear this was a rushed, half-hearted attempt to inject more demand into the market. Unfortunately, it's just a drop in the bucket right now compared to the substantial sell-off occurring each week by the early stakeholders.
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Much appreciate your sharing of your experience latley with the promote feature. I just made an analysis today of all post so far published on stermit and their monetary performamce. Less than 1% ever make it above 1000 SBD.
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Is it just me.. but when you pay to promote a post the funds don't show up on the post.. i still see 0.00.
Before it used to put about 50% of the value onto the post for the author rewards.. did this change?
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Yup. It's a waste of your money. Don't expect more people to upvote just because you pay to get it there. I've tested as well. Take care. Peace.
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Thank you for sharing your findings. I have only promoted one of my post and I felt it was not worth the effort.
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This is most likely my typical log in ritual:
See, I have plenty of steps and possibilities to stall or stop at before even getting at the promoted list. Most of times I'll get hook by something in the feed (home) of the people that I follow like I just did here & now. That's just me, but for the moment promoted material is not my viewing priority.
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Good timing on this post. I threw away a dollar on a post today. But I had to try it to see. The concept was a nice try, but it's still subject to power influence. But after all, that is what power is for ;>
For us littles, it's still a process of writing, commenting, and networking...which I think it should be.
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