Debunking a Myth
As a data enthusiast, and with the aid of awesome tools like Power BI and Excel (as I can’t program to save my life, not even a tad bit of SQL) I know that the block-chain holds information that can easily be turned into actionable business insights.
So following on from my previous Steemit Database analysis, I have decided to gather more business intelligence and establish how well posts really do here on Steemit. How many posts get votes? How many posts don’t make a dime? How many post create real engagement via comments? What are the chances of having a ‘Successful’ post on Steemit?
If you are on Steemit because you think you can make a quick few pounds think again. If someone told you to join Steemit because they made money and you can too, it’s easy. Then think again.
Yes there have been people that have made considerable sums on Steemit, but I am hoping with this data we can debunk the myth that Steemit is an easy platform to succeed on with very little work….
I have taken the Comments posted table from the Steemit SQL held and managed by @arcange (thanks you rock) The dates for which I have analysed are 1 July 17 to 23 July 2017 at 22:08 GMT.
During this time there were 377,880 Blogs. This is the number of new articles or posts written, NOT Comments…..
What's the chances a post will actually create engagement, conversation & comments?
Over 123K blogs have no response at all. No comments, no feedback. Do keep in mind that included in these blogs are blogs made within a few seconds of the report, so many not have had a chance to get comments. I will run this report again 7 days after month end to see if there is much of a change.
Have a look at the table below. A considerable number of blogs have only 1 comment. I would how many of these comments are made by bots, such as minnowsupport or comments from Randowhale? This is something I would like to look at in a further analysis. I will try and include this in the month end report.
11 to 20 comments is where I would like to aim. I would consider myself successful on creating a content engaging post if I got this amount of comments. Where would you consider yourself successful? Let’s face it, blogs at this level are doing better than 90% of all blogs made.
What about Votes?
To some Votes would be the most important factors for success on Steemit. But I have some bad news for you. Based on the data taken, you have a bigger chance of being downvoted than you have of getting more than 500 votes. But hay, the news is not all that bad!
Have a look at the table below
It’s easy to see that the vast majority of posts have received between 2 and 10 votes.
Nice to see 13,297 really honest blogs where the creator did not self-vote.
I am finding myself now at about 51-100 votes per post. To be honest, I personally don’t count votes as a success factor here on Steemit. Why well because many people will vote without reading. There are trails you can follow that will auto vote for you based on other steemers votes. What votes do contribute for me is social proof. The more votes you see on a post, the more likely you are to read it right! Social proof is important, but in my little head, it is a contributing factor in success but not a measure.
Financial Success on Steemit
Those that are in Steemit for a quick quid, then this section is important to you.
Let me break the bad news to you. Less than 1% of blogs have a payout of more than $100. The number of blogs that have made nothing is the same as the number of posts that have made between $11 and $100. That’s nuts. And a whopping 256K blogs have only made between $1 - $2
Most of my blogs are now between $2 and $10. This places my blogs in the top 20%. My target for success is between $51- $100. Looks like I still have a lot of work to do.
What’s your target?
Conclusion
This analysis serves as a bench marking tool. I have not taken into consideration the correlation between no of votes, comments and payout. Nor have I discussed followers as a measure of success and correlation, which with traditional online marketing, is something I would track.
What I think from reading this analysis it is clear to see, with the majority of posts having less than 10 votes and less than a $1 payout, Steemit is not a get rich scheme.
Success, well that depends on your goal……I hope you will share them below
Interested in my other Analysis:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@paulag/steemit-retention-problem-analysis-of-steemit-database
Thank you for putting all of this together @paulag. For the last few days, I've noticed a few bots hitting the photo and travel sections, fishing for up votes by leaving generic 'wow, beautiful pic' like comments.
I'm hoping these scammers somehow get weeded out of course, but the reason I say this is that they're distorting all stats re steemit as a whole, and wasting the time of posters who reply, thinking they may have a genuine fan.
So, I was wondering, since I can't do the kind of stuff you can, whether it's possible to compile a list of steemians who comment the most to get a general idea of who these bots are, so we can mute them based on their thousands and thousands of comment and no up vote histories?
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Start flagging them. I have and have noticed some of the accounts rep levels dropping fast. It's going going to get a lot worse unless we do something about it.
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@steemmeupscotty yes i can do something to try and work this out. leave it with me
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Honestly - that would be fab! And would save us all much time, voting power, and peace of mind. Thank you!
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Nice - and yes, as @rt395 said, just flag them and tag @steemcleaners - eventually when they learn that these useless comments from their auto-posting bots aren't going to buy them that yacht, they'll find somewhere else to go and try find riches through being unproductive. :)
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:-)
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I just ignore them and tell any newbies I come across to do the same.
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Upvoted and Resteemed by xx-votesplus, the dropAhead curation team! Want more earnings? Join @dropahead in Streemian https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing/396, or delegate/donate some STEEM POWER to @dropahead!
Please upvote this comment! We will earn more STEEM POWER (SP) to give you more earnings!
Keep up the good work!
Most recent post: First 7 weeks of xx-votesplus: YOUR dropAhead Curation Team!
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Very interesting, thank you for sharing. Would be great to find out about the success of blogs linked to the size of the post.
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This is something I was thinking too. Need to do some text analytics
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Great info. have you done any other topic breakdowns?
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I have only really started analyzing the database.....I have done a few posts but plenty more to come
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Very informative read. Puts a lot of things right in my head. Thank you for doing the hard work and sharing.
Cheers !!!
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You are most welcome
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If you are on Steemit because you think you can make a quick few pounds think again. @naz722
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too true
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When you are counting votes, is it a net count where downvotes count as negative?
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yes, I have counted the number of votes where the net votes is <0
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So for example, some of the posts with total 0 could be 1 upvote and 1 downvote?
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Ah, I have not caught this.....as I have just taken the net votes
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These are some interesting stats. Thank you for the info. I feel better knowing I'm doing alright on Steemit compared to all users.
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You sure are @luzcypher
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Thanks for the analysis. It's interesting to see it broken down.
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Awesome post! Loved how you analysed the data and presented your findings. You just got yourself a loyal follower.
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Thanks for this work. It's very revealing, and unfortunately not surprising. I'm three weeks in and I'm still confused on what does make a post money. I thought it was upvotes, and if somebody with a lot of steem power upvotes you, you get a lot more than one cent. Still don't know how some introduction posts make fifty bucks and over, and some posts make hundreds. I haven't been overly concerned about it, because like your work shows, I'm not going to get rich quick here. Am I wrong, or is it a lot of steem powerful giving power to one another?
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Thanks for these stats. They really were interesting and help me to understand steemit better. As a minnow I find it interesting to learn about how it all works. There sure is a lot to figure out although mostly I'm just doing my posts and learn as I go.
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I am your sister.....I too am a minnow trying to figure things out
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This is a really well done and helpful post for gauging where you are in the Steemit pond.
It appears that I'm doing alright with most posts earning $50-100 and sometimes more. My goal is to be earning like @sweetsssj does.
Resteemed this post for sure. Thanks
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Your posts do awesome compared to mine....glad to see you setting goals, now you can be held accountable.....
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Very helpful! I don't know of you're the first to compile this data, but I've never seen it presented this way before. Never had any idea how big the pond was I was swimming in, nor how much the average steemian was making. Thanks!
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You are welcome
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A very clear analysis of what's really happening with regards to rewards. I use the @minnowsupport @randowhale @minnowbooster for a lot of my posts which give me 50-60 votes, but if very little financial value - these could sway the figures even more to the negative if removed.
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Very much so, and I hope to include this in my month end report
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Thank you for writing this. I think people come on here with a pretty myopic view of what Steemit is, what it can do (mostly FOR THEM) and the impacts their activity on here will have on the rest of the world. We live in an idea economy and your thoughts and words can make a difference. I've written about plant medicines, energy solutions, advances in sustainable building and promoted the works and words of many others, in some cases, trying to lure great content creators onto this platform to get more credit for their already wonderful work elsewhere. If someone read any of those posts and learned something, saved some time or avoided a bit of suffering, BUT I didn't get any upvotes or resteems, was that a failure? Steemit koan, I guess. Thanks @paulag lots to ponder.... cheers @ecoknowme
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Your topics sound interesting. I have now followed you
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Good information! It will be interesting to see how this changes over time.
I've been doing some Steem data analysis work and making tools too.
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Looking forward to having a look
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Thanks, this was really interesting. Are you able to access the number of views as well? That is, look at this info and look into some analytics of the relationship between page views/reads and votes/money made, or comments made, for example?
I've always thought that because all Steemit posts are accessible by anyone on the Internet, and the potential readership is way larger than the current Steemit userbase, there should be either some reward-type or some other means of differentiating between Steemit views and general web views as well.
Without advertising, though, I'm not sure how the platform benefits from non-Steemit users reading (other than to encourage authors to produce better content, which is good for the platform as a whole) - but it's something I have thought about a lot and would love to hear what you (or anyone reading this!) thinks.
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I am not sure if I can access the views. I will look into this.
Remember steemit is still in beta and evolving. At the moment the hope is that non steemit readers will join so they can vote
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You always have great analysis and insights into whats going on behind it all and you have a great ability to put it all togheter in a easy to understand format.
Thanks for doing the work on this and sharing it with us @paulag :)
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I love data, business Intelligence, excel and power bi.....makes it easy for me
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This is very informative. I am not a poster, I just enjoy the articles and upvote (and comment) when I think they are worthy. I'm curious to see what the percentage of posts are just links to YT videos. Thx.
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Thank you for your feedback. Interesting to meet someone that is not blogging.
it would be interesting to see how many posts are just linking to YT. i will follow up
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by paulag from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
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Thank you, this is a very interesting read. Since I joined steemit, i was curious to learn about this facts.
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Greetings @paulag!
I found this post to be a great and valuable contribution to our Steemit community!
One of the most important I have read today. I really articles you post that actually improve the steemit experience for so many.
I make it a point to support articles that help our entire community succeed!!
I just posted a new episode of ~(~Q2C2~)~ and featured your project in hopes to advertise it and bring in more support!
Keep up the great work!
SteemON!!!
You can check it out here here if you like.
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hello @quinneaker, thank you very much for your support and for the 'feature'. I have read your article and resteemed. I have also now followed you
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Thank you. Good article.
Keep up the good work!
SteemON!
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Appreciate your analysis. I had a sneaking suspicion that the payouts being advertised by some rather prominent members of Steemit were rather unlikely for the rest of us.
I have more modest targets, much like yourself. It just seems that people use the "thousands of dollars" quote to hook people into the platform, and that attracts the worst kind of user.
I look forward to other bits of analysis when you have time.
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Impressive analysis @paulag! It's obvious you've put in a lot of time and effort in this. Thank you for doing this. I'm bookmarking this page to reread it later. Upvoted and following you.
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Nice analysis of Steemit Paula. It gives an overview of what happens on the platform.
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@holoz0r
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Thanks for the statistical analysis... Or better yet... thanks for dashing my dreams @paulag :)
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