^{I've been pushed around far too much in my life and I don't need to take it anymore.}

I'd like to see both sides of the coin working together.

Otherwise the coin has no value.

Bots

^{I get it.}

I know what their purpose is these days.  I know these ads on the trending page lure people into buying STEEM.  I know the role of the vote buyer is to purchase STEEM, work, buy votes, and hopefully enrich us all while they're to be content with a 10% cut.  That's the gist of it anyway.  The theory.

I have 23467 of these tokens on this platform.  By the time I finish writing this, I'll have more.  By the time you read this, I'll have more than that.

Of course I want to see the value rise.

Content Producers

^{I get it.}

That's what I am.  Trust me, I get it.  Do I need to sit here and talk about working my butt off?  Majority of you already know what it takes.  You get it.  Even you witnesses know, when it comes time to write up an update, those take a huge portion of your day.  Everyone knows.

Bots vs Content Producers

^{This is pointless.}

I've stepped out of my little world here, on many occasions, with good intentions in mind, to point out my side of the story.  I don't expect anyone to listen but I know you hear me.

I don't normally mention names or single anyone out.  This time, things will be a little bit different.

@lordbutterfly approached me and was nice enough to explain the side of a bot user, from his experience, to me, without cutting me down and chopping me up.  I got to see first hand what this approach is doing for him by looking at his recent posts, doing the math, figuring out what he's earning, all that.  After our conversation and what I witnessed, my final words were:

Those of us who came here to blog and produce content are not getting in your way when we post.  We're not stepping on anyone's toes and if you're like me, you're out there voting and trying to help others.  I'm not preventing anyone from making money by posting.

When you folks come here and boost your posts with no real care about how much attention your work is getting; as long as you can snag a percentage of the reward pool you're happy; that makes our work, the ones who do care, get pushed down and away from the eyes of new and old members alike.

I don't think you'll be able to see why that's a problem though.  You must be able to put yourself in the shoes of those who you're hurting before you can actually see what it's like.

I could easily play the same game.  Produce GOOD stuff people have enjoyed over the years, PLUS push your work down so you see far less of a chance of earning organic votes; but that behavior doesn't sit well with me when I put myself in the shoes of someone I could be hurting.

I guess they can stop calling it "promotion" now.

Thanks.  I'm glad we had this talk.

The full conversation will be included later.

In a nutshell, he figures he'll never be able to earn anything here, organically.

It was depressing to see two posts of his today have hundreds of votes beside them, all paid for, and no comments.  With under 400 followers, I can see how it would be difficult.  He's been a member since January of this year.  Under 300 posts, and that includes comments of course.  Obviously his networking needs work but unfortunately, in so many words, he doesn't believe in advice.

One of his posts was actually a comment he wrote to me, copy/pasted and turned into a blog post.

That post was boosted up with 15 STEEM, I did the math, and he'll be lucky to earn one dollar.  One single vote from me is worth more than that so I'm glad I didn't vote before finding out the bot user decided to pull over $17 out of the reward pool to place beside a comment so he could earn less than one dollar.  Most people here do not earn more than one dollar per comment but it does happen occasionally.

So, he didn't believe in the typical work hard, network, blah blah blah advice most of us who've done well here will agree actually works; but because he spoke to me, got my attention, his latest post, as of this writing, got a vote from me.  Not a sympathy vote.

The post was well written, included an unexpected ending that caught me off guard, and also reminded me of some of my previous work.  So he earned a follow as well.

That's all it takes, bot users who think this place doesn't pay people; that's it, just like that.

^{Buying votes, sitting back, and waiting; that's like fishing in a creek with no fish.}

You can buy 400 votes but not one of those people will come to look at your post.  That is not their role.  You're paying them to look away.  Is that good, is that bad?  I don't know.  Everyone can decide on their own, but that is how it works.

Moving On

^{I wrote a post not long ago.}

Not Once, in the two years I've been here, have I ever made an agreement with anyone, when it comes to who I support and who supports me.

Ever since about the time I earned my first 10k in Steem Power here, I've been noticing how people change their attitudes towards me.  It seems once one reaches a certain point, many start looking down on you.  You get called names.  People think it's impossible to do well here and if you did, it must be due to foul play.  No matter what you do, how hard you work, how much you give back; people will eventually start to despise you.

I try not to let it bother me.

In the same comment thread I shared with @lordbutterfly, this was said about me:

The circle jerkers like noideaslefttowriteabout are only here to make a passive income. they really don't have any content or product.. Their content is a hook for their main purpose...

And he just went on rambling about his own uninformed paranoid delusions.

So, let's go back to bot users vs content producers.

^{Bear with me here.}

The current struggle I face as a content producer who does not want to hand over money to a middleman and purchase votes is the fact those who do purchase the votes hog unearned visibility.  Because of them, someone like me, now, after working and being a member here for over two years, has less of a chance to enjoy the visibility I was working up to.  It's less likely for me to be seen on the feeds due to artificially inflated posts bumping my work down.  Many face the same problem, I'm not alone.

So they take away the visibility, then complain and treat you like crap for having an earned following willing to vote.  I'm limited to the people who vote for my work and don't stand much of a chance of earning more now.  Do they want those who vote for their favorite authors to stop and start voting for other posts?  Curation is fairly basic stuff.  I don't see why some frown upon it.

If I'm being accused of being a "circle jerker", everyone who votes for me is also being insulted.  Does that seem reasonable in your mind?  You came to me on your own, and I thank you for it as much as humanly possible.  What more can I do?  I explained how my support group came to be in that post above and I know many share the same experience.  You folks didn't do anything wrong.

I responded to that guy with the fancy f-word.  That's how it is though.  Jerks calling people down for doing something good with their lives doesn't sit well with me.  And unfortunately for the bot users, the bot users are more often than not the ones hating on everyone else for earning rewards.

There's no point in having a beef with each other.

We're really not on opposite teams, yet, like I said up there in my response to @lordbutterfly:

When I post, I'm not taking anything away from anyone.  When a bot user posts, they're paying to take visibility away from others, including other bot users.  It's selfish.  It's difficult for everyone to live under one roof when some are doing all the chores and others just want an allowance for doing nothing.  That's life, my friends.

That's how I feel about it, but I'm not angry.  I'm simply trying my best to say: these issues exist and they're not easy to put up with.

I don't want to take anything away from anyone.

^{We have all of these building blocks.}

Now we just need to figure out a way to fit them all together.

Working against each other is a tremendous waste of resources.  I can offer a possible solution.
^{Please pardon the passion behind these words.  I was fired up when I wrote this:}

This model of promotion is a joke.  There are only a handful of top slots and if thousands of people tried to promote their posts in this fashion, all they do is end up blending back in with the crowd; making this more pointless than it ever was.  The business model is one big flop.  If it becomes successful it becomes useless at the same time.  That's not capitalism, it's stupidity.

Content producers come first.  The ads and promoted posts should be tucked nicely inside posts as banner ads.  That would give those who wish to promote their posts a much larger potential viewership, and the content producers would be able to produce content that can reach top slots organically.  There are literally thousands of posts published daily.  The ads should be inside those posts and the content producers should take center stage to attract eyes to the platform.

The content producers should have to select a maximum of two ads they'd like to include in their blog from a market.  In other words, content producers would curate ads and look for something people might want to click because the content producer would be earning a piece of the ad revenue.  That click should function like the vote button, voting for the post before the consumer takes off to visit the ad.  Those promoting would have to spend more and more to jockey for position within this market tab.  If they wanted the top slot there, with the hopes a lazy blogger wouldn't look hard, they'd have to buy STEEM and spend more to boost it to the top.  This creates a huge demand for STEEM this current model can't even come close to.

That promotion, on payday, then gets split between the promoters, content producers who hosted the ad, and if there's any profit left that goes to the one who published the promotion.

Everyone then works together.  Content producers can earn ad revenue on top of their votes, those promoting have far more potential slots and far more potential eyes on their ads, those selling votes for the ads within the market would earn less per post but far more in bulk.  There wouldn't even be enough of them, which creates more demand to buy STEEM on top of all this.  Content producers with more stake earn higher percentages of the ad reward pool, creating even more demand to buy steem and power up earnings.

Right now everyone works against each other and the promotion system is a joke.  These people could be making far more money but they don't have any experience in the entertainment industry to be able to understand their roles.  They want the most money and they currently depend on the next sucker who walks in the door.  Everything about their system means, eventually, it falls in on itself.

I know the language is strong but my intention is to help.  I wrote about that on 7/7/2018 here:

The comment section under that post also allowed me to brainstorm further.  It's a mess because I was writing it all as it came to mind, but the idea is solid.  There are far more potential eyes viewing individual posts at any given second than there are eyes viewing the top 20 slots on the trending page.  A big brand doesn't care about 1000 eyes viewing the top slot on the trending page.  Add up all the posts people look at in a day and that could be well over one million eyes even at the numbers of active users we have today.  They buy STEEM, offer content producers better incentives to pick their adds over the competition, and as the old saying goes: we go to the moon.

Of course then once people learn they can earn ad revenue on top of votes, that creates a positive feedback loop.  More producers, more ads, more STEEM being purchased; and it can't be stopped.  Everyone is making money that way.  Nobody is left out in the cold.  That's teamwork.  In business, teamwork is key.

I've been meaning to do a followup post but it's not easy for me to break character, stop the entertainment style I typically focus on, and do things like this.

Setting the record straight.

^{You may have seen me around the trending page, stirring things up.}

I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or take anything away.  I could talk about the issues for days on end, I have a lot to say about this stuff, but never really have a chance to put it all together.  Even now, there's more, but I have to stop before I bore everyone to death with business talk.

Here's the link to the full conversation I had this week:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@nonameslefttouse/re-joeparys-a-beginners-guide-to-success-on-steemit-2-0-20181008t223009039z

That is all for today.

Thank you for your time.

Credits: _{All art and images seen here were produced digitally, by me. "Damn. I forgot to warn you to get popcorn at the start."}

^{© 2018 @NoNamesLeftToUse.  All rights reserved.}