More Power = More Support.
This might be a rather "sensitive" subject as people have different opinions and this is strictly based upon those. One might say that the more power you have, the more you can do things for others. It's easier to support someone if you have 1000 SP instead of 100 SP. I am not saying that this is what people are doing today, because no matter where you look, you'll always find things that looks like greed and selfishness...
However, I am probably not known to be egoistic or someone who is controlled by greed or selfishness in general, which is why I want to hear your opinions in this matter.
Many of you are aware of my attempts to strengthen the middle class on STEEM. My attempts of growing users who often seems to be overlooked and/or ignored. We have the former ASAPERS project, the previous "push people"-initiative and the recent, on-going Minnow-ASAP project to name them in the right order. These are initiatives and projects I have either founded or things I am the co-founder of. But, I have also been involved in the "250 minnows in a month"-initiative, I am a former SOG and I have, at least for the majority of my time here, tried to educate, support and motivate others around me in various ways.
On top of that, I have given away a bunch of SBD and STEEM througout my STEEM-journey in multiple contests/giveaways. The most recent one is my 3 Simple Tasks For STEEM.
One might argue about these things being the best approach or not, but no matter if one agrees with the route I have taken, it should be safe to say that I am not egoistic.
I rarely support (upvote) any of the articles in the trending pages for various reasons. The first reason is that I don't endorse maximum bids to bid-bots in general. Many of the authors in the trending pages have placed maximum bids on multiple bid-bots in an attempt to "be seen", according to themselves, but we all know the real reason. The ROI.
What bothers me the most, is that most of these authors seems to ignore the rest of the "pond". They feed themselves without caring about others. Many of these users are also "too busy" or whatever, to answer questions or to reply to the comments they get. I don't like that sort of behaviour.
I don't have any exact details for this, but I think it's rather safe to say that you get anything from 5-10% profit each time you buy votes. I know it depends on several things and I understand that you can get a negative ROI too...
In general though, I'd say that you'll get a 5-10% profit.
So, if I publish 10 posts, buy votes for 100 STEEM in total, I should end up with 105 or 110 STEEM upon payout. + The rewards from other votes, but let's ignore them this time. Let's focus on the profit when buying votes.
My 100 STEEM becomes 110. If I continue to do this for each 10 posts, I will grow my account with 10 STEEM (in general), each time I have made 10 posts. - Right?
If we look at OCDB, which I am happy to have become whitelisted for recently, they seem to have a maximum bid of 100 STEEM at the time I'm writing this. (According to the queue).
They also allow you to promote one post per 24 hour period. Which basically means that you can get 10 STEEM per day, as long as you place maximum bids. This means 70 STEEM per week or 280 STEEM extra per month.
This is not a debate about bid bots being good or bad. I like OCDB, as they are non-profit, and I have nothing bad to say about them. I don't want you to discuss that either, because this is not the place for that.
However, 280 STEEM per month is a superb growth. That equates to a total of 3360 STEEM per year. All due to that initial investment of 100 STEEM.
If we take all these other bid bots in consideration, and include marketplaces like minnowbooster and smartmarket, it's easy to see how much you could profit in total. The potential to grow your own account is crazy.
And this leads to my question...
What Would You Say/Think...
This is obviously just in theory, but I rarely promote my posts. I do it occasionally, but not as often as I could be doing... I won't discuss anything about my personal life and my current situation in this article, as it could mess with peoples opinions and feelings. But, if I started to promote literally all my posts, with let's say bids of 50 STEEM for each...
- Would you be okay with that?
Would you be more okay with someone specific going this route rather than other users? If so, why? Would you base your answer upon what they have done for others or based on their life situation?
Is it more okay for someone in, let's say Venezuela to buy votes and make a huge profit, rather than someone from Sweden, USA or England? - Is it more okay for a top witness to promote posts than a witness further down the list, or the other way around?
- Where do you draw the line, so to speak...?
In your case where your growth would go toward others in form of upvotes or sbi, I dont might that mindset. I in generel dont might bid bots. I mostly use @treeplanter since 0.2steem gives me an upvote of 0.237$ most of the time which is amazing profit for me, but also helps plant trees.
But as I said, I dont might bid bots. What annoys me is the flags smaller users gets for using bid-bots conpared to bigger account who doesn't get flags. That to me is bullshit.
But go for it if it would support your growth to give out bigger upvotes to minnows :D
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Yeah, that is messed up. But it has always been like that... Some people are more "worthy" than others, or more "allowed" to do certain things. And that was basically my point with this. To find out where people seem to stand in this. I get you though, and I appreciate it. :)
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As long as you dont receive flags for using bid-bots like everyone else, then go ahead :p
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But you couls also delegate to something like @upvotebuilders which gives you an upvote daily.
I have delegated 50sp and I an upvote of 0.026$
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I would say there is no linie
everything is ok
or
nothing is ok
At the end of the day you take more steem for your posting as you would usually get regardless if it is a non profit bot with a whitelist or not.
I am a bit torn about this topic myself.
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So it's either black or white? Good or bad. Okay or not.
You wouldn't support a specific cause or a specific user more than another one and you don't think it's better or worse depending on who the users are?
I think there is some sort of "middle ground" or a "grey area" so to speak, but I haven't really came up with what I truly believe as of yet. I have some "criterias" or whatever one might call it though, as explained in the article, but I guess there is more to it.
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even if it is for a good cause I take more than the other cause which is not using a bot.
I support specific users or causes and I even used to send bot votes sometimes if I thought it was worth it but as I said atm I am not really sure what to think as I am flirting with the idea to use bots myself again.
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I see, thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it. I guess we're both in the same place on this.
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The use of bots to get to trending i am sure inflates peoples ego aswell. I tend to (for the most part) stay away from them and grow more organically.
I generally read trending to keep up with the info about the dapps and just see the same people writing stuff i would never read!
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Yeah, I think you are right.
It serves like some sort of "accomplishment" and increase your stake at the same time. I don't know, I just don't bother with the trending pages at all. People usually resteem whenever new dApps are launching or when some changes or whatever is being made, so I can stay away from it with ease. Doesn't feel like I'm missing anything.
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It is not material for me to judge and I don’t elsee why I will not as long as the content remains consistent. I too have been considering it as it is also a good way to reward curators with rewards as the bot will come in after most upvotes are in and therefore provide good curation rewards for supporters; so a win/win in my eyes!
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I see, yeah. That's a good point. Thanks for sharing.
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I hardly ever go to trending as it's mostly junk. People will say they buy votes to be seen, but most will just look at their feeds. All they will attract is brand new users with no SP. Some of them have built up big followings, but their support just does not seem to be enough. They also build up their reputations artificially.
I'm not sure if OCDB is really better. I did try one small vote from it, but it feels wrong to me. I'd rather earn my votes even if I make less. But we have freedom to do whatever we want here.
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Perhaps what we are really looking at here is that we have the people who only care about the numbers on one side, and the people who have more of an "emotional investment" in community building and social connections on the other.
To be honest? I think it's cool as heck that we get to have this odd "savings account" attached to our blogs... but I don't really see it (directly) as "money."
THAT SAID, my personal "objective" here is to have fun and build connections, while my global objective is to do whatever small thing I can to help the community thrive in the long run.
I still want to be here, doing this, 2, 5, 10 years from now... just like there is a measure of "comfort" in knowing that I haven't had to deal with "migrating" from Facebook since 2006... even though I don't particularly like Facebook.
But let's talk about promoting posts.
I would absolutely be 100% in favor of promoting posts that "announce" something, for example. Let's say you wrote a post announcing the #minnowASAP initiative as a sitewide invitation to action, and promoted it. 100% justified! Just like new apps being announced, or major updates being announced, or major "airdrops" being announced.
In those cases, there is an actually message to be spread, and the purpose is to put it in front of as many people as possible. Totally fair!
Now is you wrote that you washed your socks last night and promote that to the top of trending, that's when it just looks like self-involved greed to me.
=^..^=
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