Testing... Testing... Is this thing even on? Week # 4. The Trending page!

Welcome to a very scientific investigation of the steemit ecosystem. For the last 3 weeks, I have been conducting experiments to see just how things work here. The biggest thing I need to make my research legitimate is your comments. I don't know how many humans read this page until you let me know you read it by commenting!

Let's recap what I have learned so far.

Week 1:

I wrote a post. I used no vote bots and no resteem services.

I had 13 upvotes, 4 confirmed human readers, a payout meter reading 0.81 and an actual tally of 0.011 STEEM, 0.352 SBD and 0.191 STEEM POWER (I copied that straight from my wallet page)

Week 2:

I wrote a post. I sent 20 SBD to 4 vote bot services.

I got 16 upvotes, 6 confirmed human readers, a payout meter reading 51.29 and an actual tally of 19.705 SBD and 6.653 STEEM POWER (I also copied that directly from my wallet page). I would need to subtract 20 SBD from that tally, so... somewhere around 6.3 steem power is what was made on that post.

Week 3:

I wrote a post. I spent 5.7 sbd on 6 resteem services.

I got 215 upvotes, 12 human viewers, a payout meter reading 5.95 and an actual tally of 2.702 SBD and 0.694 STEEM POWER (I hope you know the drill by now). I would need to subtract 5.7 SBD from that total... meaning that this post lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.3 (ish) SBD (I don't want to mess around with converting the 2 currencies... I am doing scientific research, not super scientific research).

Let's analyze the data thus far.

Writing a post and leaving it at that got me a few views and a few cents. All in all it was fun and not super lucrative.

Writing a post and spending 20 SBD on bid bots got me pretty much the same results (since a lot of commenters were my regulars) but paid me a little over 10 times better (after subtracting my investment). Not good for getting more viewers, much better payout results.

Resteeming my post got me a ton of very tiny upvotes and pretty much doubled my views. If you are looking for more views, this is a good way to go. It seems like it is an investment to build your readership, as I lost almost half of what I put into this post. It is also worth noting that my top vote was from someone who sometimes reads what I put out and gives me a decent upvote... without that vote, the resteem services would not have even come close to paying me back.

Why am I doing this?

I am curious about what is really going on here. I think that there are a lot of robots here and want to know if my posts are really getting read. I got over 200 upvotes in my last test, but only 12 confirmed viewers. That is a big spread and I don't want to write all of these amazing posts for a bunch of robots mining cryptocurrency. That is not my idea of a good time. You will see me replying to all of the "good post, please upvote me and follow me" comments... never. (Unless it is a scientific experiment and I need to confirm their humanity or roboticity (that should be a word, but the spell check is telling me it is not).

Ro - bot- i-ci-ty - the qualities making up a robot, qualities or traits that confirm a being is a robot.

I also want to know if the vote bots have a purpose other than mining steem power. From my first test, it seemed like that was the only thing that changed from my initial test. I got more steem power and the same amount of views. I was told that this test was not really a good conclusion on the vote bot usage because I only spent 20 SBD. I would get a lot more views if I got onto the trending page.

That is this weeks test. I have powered down and exchanged steem for SBD (I don't recommend that move BTW... but this is for science). I have allotted 100 SBD to conduct this test. I am not sure if that is enough to get me into the trending page, but that is all I have, so, it will have to do. I am sure I will at least be "hot" for a while. This might get me more human views.

I don't know if I got a human view until you comment... so please, help me with my research and leave a comment.

It is also worth noting that I am controlling aspects of this post to keep the experiment consistent. There was no photo on any of these posts, and that will remain the same. They are just text. This is controlled to not give any post an advantage over the other, and to gain a more accurate set of results. This week, we want to see if getting into the trending really does anything for my viewership, or if it is just a good way to mine steem power. The tag lines are remaining the same as all other weeks and I will be upvoting this post the same as all other weeks.

The trending page.

Steemit is a beautiful thing to be a part of. I have made some pretty good digital friends and have made a few bucks too. Steemit also has a lot of problems, a lot of these problems hang out on the trending page. Whales with enormous amounts of steem power upvote garbage, and writers with a lot of disposable SBD pay for huge upvotes all to end up on the trending page.

I have never really wanted to end up on the trending page, but for science, it is my goal this week.

What I want to know from this experiment is if there are more human views because one hits the trending page, OR, is it just more mining of steem power?

What do I expect?

I expect to be flagged because of my massive vote buying and the clean-up trending initiative (which I also appreciate). I expect @transparencybot to show up and provide his statistics about my massive upvote purchase. I appreciate @transparencybot, mostly because he shows us how much the bid bots make on curation rewards. This is something that I have not really thought of. That is a massive source of income when you are swinging around a $200 upvote every 2.4 hours.

I also expect to get a lot more readers and likely a similar payout to week 2 (if I were to multiply it by 5 as I am investing 5 times as much into the post).

I am not really for or against vote bots. I feel that they are a rather neutral force. I feel that they even the playing field so that not only whales can benefit from large upvotes. I feel that both vote bots and whales are responsible for the state of the trending page (both good and bad). I am not sure what the solution is, or if steemit is just an experiment itself. That is a crazy thought, conducting experiments within an experiment... Half of me thinks that this steemit thing is going to last another year and a bit before the free crypto machine runs dry. The other half of me thinks that this is genius futuristic society emerging and we as a community are just working out the kinks. That leaves me very torn. Should I mine the shit out of this steem power while the getting is still good or should I save the future by standing up for what is right? What is right? The steem blockchain is heading in the direction of being an 'advertising blockchain' (page 57 SMT whitepaper) where poeple will pay to get into the trending page... if this is the future of steem, then, that futuristic genius society is maybe just an idealistic dream, so, is the dream worth fighting for or should I be mining steem power with all of the daily trenders (usual suspects)? My head hurts.

Please share your thoughts on the entire steem ecosystem, trending pages, vote bots and the future of steem, I would love to hear from you about it... plus... you get to contribute to real live science!

To recap: I am going to spend 100 SBD on vote bot votes in an attempt to get onto the trending page. I want to see if the exposure on the trending page will get me more views or if steem power is the main objective of hitting the trending page.

The results of this experiment will be posted sometime after I claim the rewards for this post and have all of the data tallied up. Thank you in advance for your comments!