I'm Not Using Facebook or Twitter
Two days ago, I wrote a quick opinion piece. I brought up the fact a few of my month old articles are still receiving views and offered proof with links and screenshots.
At the time, article one had 25 views. It now sits at 41.
Article two had 23 views. It now has 39 views.
Article three had 22 views. It currently sits at 29.
Finally, article four enjoyed a jump of eleven views going from 18 to 29.
Keep in mind, it was exactly two days ago when I brought this up. Majority of these views are coming from outside sources. Non-steemit members. I didn't cheat and just tell my friends to go view these articles. I highly doubt very many steemit members followed the links I shared leading to those articles. I don't use Twitter and my personal Facebook page consists of a few close friends and even fewer relatives. I'll share my articles with them, they won't pass them on. I'm fine with that because I prefer to use and maintain a pseudonym. They know this and they know why.
I attempted to explain why it is beneficial to Steemit members to gain exposure beyond the overly short attention span of platforms like Steemit, Facebook and Twitter. I believe the message fell on deaf ears. Not one person asked me the most important question.
How
The article where I first mentioned this only received 26 views. Due to the nature of the game. I'm not going to waste my time writing out a massive game plan, sit here, and watch the article fall flat on it's face. Consider this an update to simply help reinforce what I attempted to establish in the two day old article I speak of.
If there are any members here who can see why this extended exposure might be beneficial to their blogging hobby and brand, show some interest. If the fly-by-night approach where your stuff gets hundreds of votes, fantastic rewards and a tiny audience is more your thing, fair enough.
Here is the link to the article I published two days ago in case you require some sort of proof.
Hah I get it!
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You get what?
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That you are "This Man":)
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Interesting fact. My "This Man" image has 528 views on imgur.
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I remember having a discussion with you about a month ago. I went back to your post. I see one view.
Why are my articles still alive? I'm not trapping people with chain links and luring them to these articles in an attempt to bullshit people.
I had the views before I wrote the article and provided links as proof.
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I can hear that you are frustrated man, it certainly does seem like an interesting topic. I would try and remember that we don't have a generalised way of engagement here on steem yet.
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I'm not frustrated at all. I'm sitting here enjoying the fact that my stuff isn't dead... and offering to help people extend the lifespan of their work.
Nobody seems to want to ask, "How." This doesn't bother me one bit.
Every hit I get from the outside is a free advertisement for me, as well as Steemit. Those articles I mentioned were getting hits long before the view counter was added to Steemit. Hundreds of people see my stuff. It seems nobody else wants that. I'm fine with how people want to run their business. The offer still stands though.
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I had a peek at your old stuff, not everything, checked the views. They're dead, no views since the view counter came along. This is normal here, it doesn't have to be, but it's normal. If you're fine with that, I'm fine with it too. Not all of my old stuff gets views, but some are really taking off. That's why I blog. So people read it. This isn't just for steemit. Steemit is the platform I use to get my work to the outside world.
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Well, I want to know how you did it. Having people read and enjoy my posts means more to me than small amounts of cryptocurrency. I'll go check out that other article.
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These articles that are taking off were only mentioned in that article. I didn't mention how I did it. I thought someone would ask.
I wrote this one to show how much they've come along in two days. I offered the link to back up my words and numbers. Proof of progress.
You're the third person who is interested in this so far. As long as I know there are people interested then at least I won't be wasting my time.
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There's definitely a market for some of the stuff you're writing. I had a little peek. That science fiction stuff should be a hit. I'll keep you posted.
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Thanks, but of course it has to be seen. I get a little response from Google Plus, but that's about it. Of course, I keep hoping the actual blog part of the software improves to make it more like my own personal blog when people visit it,.
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This platform will get better over time. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen though. Those at the top, open source developers, hundreds of suggestions by users. It's very difficult to piece something like this together and make everyone happy.
The setup now deters uses from engaging in older content... there's no money involved. We have a one month extension to earn rewards, nobody votes on that stuff. It's considered a waste.
What I'm using is really simple and effective but requires patience because there's no sure way of knowing if people will pass it along or not. Once they do though, things take off. I'm up to 200-500 views on certain articles, some are dead.
I'll give this a little more time, if nobody is interested, I'll keep it to myself but fill in the few who'd like to know. Everyone has their own ways of doing business, I'm fine with that... I'm not going to waste my time writing an article that nobody wants to read...and for the most part, it's simple and doesn't really need much direction. I'm just a bit leery about who I share this with and I don't want to be responsible for flooding that market with trash.
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Just for the record, I vote on posts that are older. If I like somebody's stuff enough to go back and read old posts, I consider it a courtesy to upvote, comment or both , so they know someone is still interested.
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I've done it a few times myself as well. Generally though, people don't bother. There are over 700 people using bots to vote now. The way it's set up, there's no value to the person running the bot if they vote on old stuff. More people will jump on the bandwagon soon enough.
They didn't read the fine print. The people behind the bots own their vote. It's even mandatory to vote on any post about the status of the bot. Let that sink in. Giving people free money has always been one of the greatest sales pitches. Banks do it when they tell you to spend 50 dollars to open an account that pays you some ridiculously low interest rate to hold your money there. Then they ask for a yearly fee, and people pay. The only making money is the bank. In the fine print for the bot it states if they do not write an article which you are obligated to vote on, they have the right to bank your mandatory vote to be used in the future. One day you'll wake up only to find out your voting power is zero and it all that money went to the bot. That's the future here....
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BTW, thanks for the feedback.
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Read this. Part one and two
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Well, I am interested, for sure! Whatever it is, it's definitely working for you.
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Yup, I've already considered your interest based on our quick conversation the other day. I've been thinking. Since there are no real guarantees and if my stuff getting views could be a fluke, maybe the three showing interest plus myself could be test rats. It's been a concern of mine. If it doesn't work for someone else I'd have questions and want to critique their approach, constructively of course. The advice I gave in the previous article about creating something unique which will stand the test of time is definitely important. Steemit related stuff is irrelevant. I certainly won't be submitting my most recent profanity piece about the flawed flag system and about 185 f words, you know?
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haha. I'd be happy to be a test rat. Our content is so different, that it should be a good test. I do think a lot of my stuff is unique -- I can't find anyone else showing how they are eating the Insidious Gomphidius mushroom, that's for sure!
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Read this. Part one and two
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Thanks! I've been distracted by a major ice storm in my town. I will take a look now!
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I'm interested too.
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Noted. You don't usually write for the right now audience, your stuff should still be relevant in years to come, especially the food stuff, who doesn't eat. Four people interested in sharing their words with the world and not just Steemit or personal social media friend lists. Just realize, you won't earn, outsiders can't vote. If you plan on doing this for a few years though, down the road you'll see the benefits.
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Though this doesn't apply to you since you wouldn't likely be using free image hosting sites to upload your art, I wrote a post, in conjunction with another after reading his blog, that addressed what has to be a problem for a large number of people on here. Use img safe for everything you do for example and then it disappears...and so do your photos. Your left with useless links and one hell of a lot of work. Because they don't have the hard drive space on steemit, they can't be the host...as it turns out someone on steemit solved this problem by creating a host site specifically for steemit. (blueorgy) Your stuff gets erased from the host site after fifteen minutes of using it, plus once it's here, it's here. Well you can erase it, but you can't copy paste the link in another browser it comes up with an error. And it won't go down unless steemit goes down. craig-grant gave me this tip and walked me through it in the comments. I was wondering why it wasn't public information, but then I thought it was extremely likely that blueorgy did a post...and few people read it through to get the info. Whether you'd need it or not, check it out http://dirtyimg.com/
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Are you saying that Steemit caches images from dirtyimg but not from imgsafe or steemimg for example? I (maybe mistakenly) thought that image links form any site would be cached.
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From what I understand, yes. I posted the article about it after I heard and was concerned about losing all of my images in the future. Craig-Grant gave me the link above and the creator is from steemit, this is his post about it. https://steemit.com/dirtyimg/@blueorgy/dirtyimg-steemit-temporary-image-hosting-solution-utilizing-steemit-image-caching
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Note: Even if this doesn't apply to you, it might be helpful to the few that are actually reading this thread. Reward system for reading content in action.
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Maybe from the first post, people didn't get that the reason you were still getting votes was because of something you were doing. I know I thought that it was just that you were picking up new followers who were going back and looking at old posts. Maybe (probably) I didn't read carefully enough. But it is a bit surprising that with the title of this post, you're not getting more response. Maybe it's a symptom of how things at the moment, that only a certain number of users are actively engaging, many are auto voting or following curation trails. The next question is - is that because this is an insanely busy time of year, or something else?
It's nice to earn from Steemit, but nicer is to get a real time response from readers. I've had health and food articles online for nearly 20 years. We have a bunch of websites and I sporadically use FB, though have never bothered with Twitter. With the websites, we can look at the hits, but don't know how many are actually reading the stuff, and the feedback is pretty much non-existent. Unless it's some schoolkid who wants to ask a bunch of questions and basically get me to write their homework, without actually reading the site!
Recently I've had more light hearted posts about music, for eg, but as you say, a lot of my stuff is written for the long haul. I had hoped that people would actually go back and read articles that can help them, and I still have that hope. So my vision for my body of work here still is that it's just another way for info to be stored, and another path in for people to find what they may be looking for.
So that's probably a long winded way of saying that it doesn't matter if the views don't get paid - I want them to be accessible in the long term.
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Just to clarify, I'm not getting votes, just views. Views are the most important for the future success of your brand as a blogger. Imagine if everyone bought Stephen King, but never read any of it. Would his books still sell? What's the first thing someone tells you when they recommend a book?
The robots are killing the brand, plus the 700 or so people using bots simply select the most popular authors so they see the highest "curation" rewards. Nobody cares, they can't see past today. They don't realize that behavior will soon crush a glaring majority of contributors here, they will be forced to leave. New users don't stand a chance, nobody is around to read. It will just be a handful of authors, a bigger handful of robots and a very low Steem value.
I see how this is causing harm. The views are important, we can all add value to our brands, blog here, set up sites with advertisements, link our work on those sites and use that to subsidize lost revenue.
If the work is only about steemit, or just some sort of "status update" or shared meme or video, there's no brand power in that. People do that for free. That's why it's important to write about things that stand the test of time. Opinions work as well, provided the content doesn't sway towards guessing the outcome of something political. For instance, if you wrote about how you were certain hilary was going to win an election, and wrote about that for six months... you were wrong for six months and there's no value in some asshole being wrong for six months.
It's all about exposure, good material, doesn't really matter which genre. The views matter most. Show me one successful newspaper that simply asks people to drop a quarter in a can next to the stack of papers, but leave the paper there. These folks just don't get it.
It's true, there's no interest in this article because people are not reading. Since many of them are seemingly new to the business side of things, they don't realize a view today is worth a dollar next year. To them, a vote today is worth a penny tomorrow so they must mass vote to earn mass pennies. There's no future in that. When the bots fail, and they do, the entire platform takes a massive hit. The way things are looking, this behavior is more like sabotage.
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Yes, I did get that they were only views. Since I'm already getting votes without views, views without votes would balance that up nicely. I agree with everything you said.
So, the site(s) you're using - are they specific sites?
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It's one site with a potential market of 30 million (that might grow if Steemit users jump on) It's been around forever, hiding. I'll get into the details soon. The view counter broke again, that's something I needed to prove my point even further.
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Read this. Part one and two
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Okay, yep, there was a post and here it is: https://steemit.com/dirtyimg/@blueorgy/dirtyimg-steemit-temporary-image-hosting-solution-utilizing-steemit-image-caching
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