This is something I'm sure many new people are currently asking: "How in the world are some people consistently getting good payouts on virtually every post they make?"

In a previous post I mentioned how it's important to forget about the money. Well, having said that, it's hard not to at least use that potential payout amount as a kind of gauge (alongside the "views" count) to measure the attention you're getting, and how much interest people have in your content, but I still believe this an important question to ask, because it means you're curious about what makes this place tick. It will surely result in some people claiming that people are playing favorites and picking the same authors every time, but if you look at the situation a little closer you might find out what's really going on.

For example, if you look at the profiles of such members as, say, @papa-pepper, @thecryptofiend, or perhaps @ats-david, you'll find that they have several currently active threads that have pending payouts in the 3 or sometimes 4-digit figures, and, depending on how many active threads they may have at any given time, they could have a total pending payout for the week in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Well, let's take a look at one of their profiles: @papa-pepper is a great example.
For the purpose of this post, I've removed all of his resteemed posts to show only his own.

Do you see it? It should be pretty obvious, actually. This list of posts go back only 7 days and there are 26 posts. That's an average of nearly 4 posts per day. Now, this isn't to say you need to post 4 times per day. There's technically no current limit to the number of posts you can make per day (although there used to be a limit of 4, incidentally), so you can post as much as you want. However, writing 4 posts per day may not be feasible for everyone. Even 1 per day would be good, so long as you continue posting. The point is not to go stagnant for too long. Stay visible.

So with that, let's go back to the question:
"What does it take to consistently get good payouts?"

I believe the question itself contains the answer, and this is our first "C":

There's a mindset that I've noticed many new users tend to have, and it usually happens after the first or second post. If that first or second post doesn't get much of a payout - perhaps only a few pennies - a wave of disappointment can wash over and the feeling of "a rigged system" might crop up.

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I remember when @papa-pepper was just getting started, and I can tell you - he didn't start out making payouts like that. He worked his ass off to get there. And it's not just posting constantly. He also made himself visible. He became part of the community by doing things like involving himself in more than just his own posts; he also makes sure to involve himself in others' posts as well by commenting.

Which brings us to our second "C":

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I'm sure we're all familiar with @darthnava's MRI post by now, and you may have noticed that the very first comment of the post is @papa-pepper going that extra mile by donating a sizable amount of Steem to @darthnava's cause. Now, given @papa-pepper's nature, I fully believe he did that because that's who he is - that's his heart. But the resulting effect is that people remember him because of it, and because of lot of previous stuff like it that he's done.

And this brings us to the final "C":

To some, "charity" can be a bad word, but I'd like to build a case for it, because Steemit is exactly the kind of place where charity shines, and based on my observations it can have a tremendous effect for everyone involved, not just the receiver of a charity, but also the giver.

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So there it is.

Consistency - Community Involvement - Charity

This seems to me to be an equation that works for most - if not all - of the people I see using it, whether intentionally or not. I hope it works for you as well. I plan on implementing it myself for 100% of my remaining tenure on Steemit.

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