You're not supposed to make money when promoting a post on Steam. The ROI is hidden and over many people's head.

bwells (65) in steem • 7 years ago (edited)

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Comment if you would be interested in having me create an animated logo such as this one. ^^^

How is everyone? This is bwells bringing you some more information on Promoting your post on Steem with Steem Bucks. Make sure to follow for similar info, crypto predictions, ICO reviews, and more!

The common Promote Post Misconception

I just want to start off by addressing the common misconception a lot of people have seemed to be running into time and time again since I have been on this platform for the last month or so.

It seems like everyone and their mother think that if they pay to Promote a post with Steem Bucks that it will magically garner a profit on their investment every single time. Unfortunately, it is not that easy and you shouldn't be expecting a profit when you spend Steem Bucks to promote a post. The truth of the matter is, you will likely never even come close to breaking even with promoting a post unless you spend upwards of $400+ with the promotion and have a very high quality content article with a "viral factor" to it. I am not saying that it is impossible to make more than you spend with promoting on Steam, but it should not be your goal and there is a hidden ROI over time that is over most people's head.

Why would I Promote a Post on Steemit then?

As I said above, there is a hidden ROI when it comes to promoting on Steem.

I have seen dozens of different people on this platform that pump out tons of great content. Their blog is filled with informative, interesting, and worthy content that should be making money. They seem to be doing everything right when it comes to creating great content, but they are stuck with 10 followers and most of those are people with Rep levels under 25 looking for a follow-back.

Why aren't these people succeeding on Steem?

The real Return on Investment isn't from the %10-%20 that you might be lucky enough to immediately make back through the Author Rewards of the post, but the real return is the potential to gain new followers every time that you promote a post.

How does Getting New Followers Help me?

When browsing on Steem you can go to the Hot, Trending, or Promoted sections to get content. You can also go to different sections of the site such as Bitcoin, Steem, Cryptocurrency, etc.

Most people always stay caught up on their feeds as well and this is probably one of the first places that most people go since it is only posts and resteems from people they follow. That is why getting followers is so important because it gets all of your future content in front of eyes without the need for any promotion. Therefore gaining followers through quality content and paying a significant amount to promote either your best quality article or all of your future articles is probably one of the best ways to achieve long-term success on this platform.

How do my posts have so many likes but I am not making much money still?

Some people's upvotes are worth much more than others and this is because they have more Steem Power in their account. Steem power is taking the actual crypto Steem and investing into your own account for a longer term.

If you had 1700 Steem which is worth about $1700 today. Every single %100 upvote that you gave would earn that person around 17 cents. This is assuming that your voting power is %100 and that is another topic for another post, but basically the more you upvote within a period of a few days, the less each future vote is worth.

It is also worth nothing that once you reach a certain threshold in your account at 1 million vests (around 500 Steem in Steem Power) you can start allocating how much weight you give each vote from a %1-%100 range. This means you can still return a like or nice comment without giving up too much of your voting power(value for future upvotes)

Getting high quality followers that save their Steem with Steem Power are the best followers to have. They will make you the most money by upvoting good content you post or helpful/funny/beneficial comments. Most of the time, the better the content, the more likely someone is to give you %100 of their upvote allocation.

I hope this has been of some help to you. Please consider upvoting and following! Please comment any questions.

To the moon,

bwells

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7 years ago by bwells (65)

$12.05

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swissclive (63) · 7 years ago

I experimented with promoting three posts of mine. I thought the posts were pretty outstanding and might go viral if seen by more people. I tried for $10, $20 and $30.

None of my posts earned the amount invested, although I did increase the amount of upvotes compared to normal and the earnings were higher than my average. However investing $10, $20 or $30 wasn’t enough to get me in the first three or four pages. People on the first page have literally invested hundreds of dollars.

As far as the promoted section is concerned, it seems like the first page or two are filled with ads for mostly for new ICOs. Probably people glance at the promoted section a few times, see the ads, and don’t visit again.

In conclusion, I would say it’s an expensive experiment for most people.

$0.41

4 votes

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gokulnk (63) · 7 years ago

You are right on. I did a similar trial couple of months ago and here are my observations https://steemit.com/steemit/@gokulnk/are-steemit-promotions-dead

One suggestion would be do not spend amounts like $10, $20 and $30 in promotions. It is not worth it. It is pretty much like google search results. Nobody really takes a look at posts after the first page. If you look at the promoted tab now you will see that the first four posts are 100$ plus. So there is no point in outbidding them. But the fifth post is 60$. So I would spend 61$ on promotions and make sure that my post is in the fifth position.

By following this approach I was able to get better ROI on the investment I made for promotions. But I was still not happy and have not spent on promotions after thats.

$0.53

2 votes

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bwells (65) · 7 years ago

Right on @swissclive and thank you for your comment.

As you said the top of the promoted page tends to be new ICOs.

One thing I forgot to mention in the post is that you can actually see how much each post on the promoted page was promoted with and then you will be able to tell how high up your post will show depending on how much you spend. So far in my month and half here the cost of being the very top promoted post has fluctuated between $180-$400....the more you spend, the higher you land on the promoted page.

$0.35

3 votes

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curtiscolwell (43) · 7 years ago

If it means anything, your $37 promotion earned you at least one new follower. Since the long term future of Steem requires investing by advertisers, I tend to check out what is there from time to time if not just to see who the advertisers are. Without the promoted feed the Steem that is generated daily has less value.

$2.32

2 votes

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bwells (65) · 7 years ago

Thanks for the follow @curtiscolwell! I too check out the promoted page to see is willing to pay for their content to be seen. Many times it is either something for sale that I don't want, or very high quality content. I think the Steem will think of other ways to raise money in the future even if it means adding some outside CPC/Google Adsense or something similar. I wouldn't mind a small amount of ads if it helped the platform sustain growth.

Thanks again for the follow and the comment!

$0.00

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osita4coin (2) · 7 years ago

As a wannabe steemian, this is one of the best i have read since being steemized a few days back. Please @bwells keeping it coming.