A fun look at some of Steemit’s most popular users and how readability scores may influence earnings.

A recent post from @bendjmiller222 briefly explained a new program developed by @nphacker that measures readability scores for Steemit users. The name of this program is SteemIQ. Reading through some of the comments on the post, it was mentioned that the scores could be used to compare readability versus earnings. I thought that was an interesting idea and decided to try it out.

Please keep in mind that these numbers do not measure the intelligence of the writer. Your writing style should best reflect the type of audience you're targeting anyway. Also, this test does not account well for posts that are focused on imagery rather than writing, so those types of posts can drag down the average scores. Here is @nphacker’s explanation of SteemIQ and its stated purpose:

"SteemIQ is not a direct calculation of an individual's intelligence, but rather a calculation of intelligence based on writing. The biggest factors that contribute to increasing one's SteemIQ are the number of difficult words (multiple syllable words) that are in a post, as well as the Flesch Kincaid grade level of the post.”

"The goal of SteemIQ is to make an accurate judgement of a user's writing quality, and to promote quality content on the Steem blockchain.”

The Flesch-Kincaid grade level (FKGL) is a readability test that determines the readability of text and is primarily used in the education field. It’s calculated using the following formula:

0.39 (total words ÷ total sentences) + 11.8 (total syllables ÷ total words) – 15.59

I picked some users from the 30-day trending list and a few that I follow myself to use in this data set. There really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, but I tried to get a fairly decent cross-section of genres. It turned out that eight of the eleven users were in the top 29 of the most recent Steemit Follower Count Report that is published by @lukestokes. I compiled some data (as of approximately 10:00pm EST on August 17th) and listed the users in the order that they appear on the report.

Steemit User	SteemIQ	FKGL	Posts	Total Earnings (Avg./Post)
@dollarvigilante	121.8	9.0	12	52,695.46 (4391.29)
@larkenrose	124.8	10.7	9	12,210.02 (1356.67)
@cryptoctopus	112.6	7.3	79	56,490.21 (715.07)
@sterlinluxan	124.7	10.1	42	16,218.59 (386.16)
@heiditravels	119.9	7.7	19	48,746.75 (2565.62)
@roelandp	104.3	7.5	75	49,820.51 (664.27)
@infovore	122.2	7.8	56	50,878.41 (908.54)
@rok-sivante	134.6	11.8	98	62,244.33 (635.15)
@sirwinchester	117.6	6.2	30	9846.75 (328.23)
@federicopistono	124.4	9.2	30	32,342,66 (1078.09)
@bridgetbunchy	115	7.0	26	16,864.35 (648.63)

With this data, I calculated the following results of the above users.

Average SteemIQ: 120.17
Average FKGL: 8.57
Average post payout: $1243.43

Five of the eleven users scoring below the average SteemIQ earned an average of $984.36 per post.
Six of the eleven users scoring above the average SteemIQ earned an average of $1250.84 per post.

Six of the eleven users scoring below the average FKGL earned an average of $971.73 per post.
Five of the eleven users scoring above the average FKGL earned an average of $1569.47 per post.

It’s interesting that those who are writing with higher SteemIQ and FKGL scores are earning more money per post, on average. It was fun to compile these stats, but I’m sure they don’t really mean much. It’s a small sample size and I certainly didn’t take the scores from each post and compare them directly to the earnings. The earnings are basically an average of an average. Regardless, the data collected from this can be very useful for searching for quality content, as @nphacker has stated.

Interestingly – but not surprising at all – looking through the content of these users, I found that, out of the top-earning posts from each person, eight of eleven were tagged with either the introduceyourself or a steem-related tag.

What does all of this mean?

These statistics probably don’t mean anything at all. This is obviously not a professional study. Although, it could mean that you’ll have a better chance of earning larger payouts if your posts are about Steemit and the Flesch-Kincaid scores for those posts are over eight. It also wouldn’t hurt to have at least 300 followers, as most of these users do.

Just for a fun and useless reference, these are my results compared to @dantheman:

User	SteemIQ	FKGL
dantheman	116.3	8.8
ats-david	127.9	9.6

I’m pretty sure that our STEEM Power is almost the same. If not, feel free to send some to my account to balance it out, Dan!

I hope you found this interesting or helpful. I encourage everyone to check out the program. Type your name in, type anyone else’s name in, do some comparisons, post some intriguing results in the comments, and just have fun with it. I think it’s great that programs like SteemIQ continue to be developed and I hope that the platform can continue to grow, evolve, and benefit from them.

Thanks for reading. Now let's see some of your own stats!

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The revenue that I generate through my content on Steemit will be used as described in my post, Enriching Lives Through the Power of Steemit. Please feel free to contribute to my cause in any way that you can. We can achieve greatness through voluntary interaction!