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So, you may have noticed lately that I have been much more active in terms of voting on comments. Or maybe you haven't noticed, because I haven't been posting that much lately and also who gives a damn what I do. Regardless, there is a reason for it, and after seeing the results, I'm very excited to share it with you!

As many new users are joining the Steem platforms every day, and thus far it really hasn't been laid out in chalk on any of them to my knowledge -- they're probably wondering some things as they watch their rewards coming in. One of the most frustrating things for me when I was a new user was the payout threshold. I found SteemWorld pretty early on, which caused to me to sit refreshing the "coming rewards" section for quite some time as a new user. Everything was just so exciting to me back then so sometimes the thought of watching that would completely distract me from everything else I was doing at the time.

Now, if you were like me, keeping an eagle eye on your payouts, you might have started to noticed your smaller payouts would seem to disappear. It's kind of a heartbreaking moment when you're bent over your computer, eager eyes bleeding on the screen, and you notice that micro-vote just disappear. I then continued on to wonder if somehow these little pieces of "dust" were just accumulating somewhere else, or going right into vesting. Nope. I quickly realized that these votes were disappearing, and that there is a payout threshold somewhere around .02-.03

Now, in case you want to skip all that rambling and ranting I just did, the point is this -- if your comment or post has votes on it but are below ~.028, you will not receive any rewards for them. Why? I have no idea. Kind of really sucks, as every little bit counts.

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This was a moment that caused a lot of disappointment for me. Being a minnow, and many of my friends being minnows, most of our votes were worth under the threshold. My vote is currently worth only .01, although it was up to .04 at one time when the market was better(that was awesome). So, I stopped voting on people's comments on my posts. I was still very responsive and loved to receive any sort of engagement, so I would try to do my best at letting my followers know my appreciation, but my vote would no longer accompany my response.

I think some people kind of took that the wrong way and stopped engaging with me. Either that, or they just left the platform, or got sick of me. Who knows. I admittedly have been going through a lot of shit and have been off the platform for long periods of time, so I don't really know what happened to a lot of my friends here. Either way, my personal journey is not the point- just simply an example.

Dustsweeper

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And then I stumbled across @dustsweeper . Dustsweeper was created as a tool that aims to solve the threshold problem for us users whom really work for our every vote. It is not completely intended to be profitable- I would like to say that up front so neither anyone at dustsweeper or myself gets yelled at. Who am I kidding, yell at me anytime, I love it. The point, instead, is to automatically bump up all those posts sitting with meaningless votes to payout level.

Meaning what? Meaning you need to make a deposit by sending any small amount of SBD or STEEM(recently I found out that is also an option- important considering we are currently not getting any SBD payouts) to @dustsweeper , and they will create an account with you. They will double whatever you have sent to them as your active "balance". Then, around days 4-6 of your comment or post- whatever has votes yet is under that threshold- their bot will come by and automatically bump your post up to the necessary amount to beat the threshold.

i. e. if you have a comment sitting at .01 STU, a few days before payout a bot will swing by and bump that up to ~.03, and some SBD/STEEM will be taken out of your dustsweeper account - not your wallet.

How this applies to you as an author!

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I've been wanting to write a post promoting this service since I found out about them but wanted to see how it held up and also wasn't sure I was going to be able to convey my point as much as I want to. It has clearly been doing well(as of 20 days ago they had over 900 accounts, so I'd assume they're at around 1K now at least) and even though I was off the platform for some time I just started receiving my dust votes again.

The past few days has presented me with a different reason to let everyone, and especially anyone I'm friends with here on the site, know about dustsweeper. Because now that I know it works, I am voting on your comments. This is an act that in the past would give nothing but a very small reputation boost and a little bit of a fuzzy feeling inside, as my .01 ain't doin' shit but wasting my voting power unless it receives more vote.

So what I'm trying to say is, is that if we are interacting with each other, I am going to vote on your comments and I strongly suggest you use dustsweeper to get rewards from doing so. It also means that if you're like me, with your tiny little vote, you can start voting on your friends interactions that you appreciate and if they use dustsweeper, they'll receive some benefits as well.

It's exciting for me because I want to let people know when they engage with my writing that I really appreciate it. Because I really do. I know a lot of my followers are either inactive, or are simply here for other reasons rather than to read or write or make connections. I'd really like to have more of an organic community here and the best way to do so I think is to start benefitting from our genuine engagement. So, yes, I will be 100%(lol) upvoting ALL RELEVANT comments on anything I write from now on, and if you're the commenter, I suggest you start using @dustsweeper !!

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Please head on over to @dustsweeper 's page to read their FAQ and what not before you get involved. I am not pretending to be a master on the subject- just trying to promote the service through what little understanding I have.

P.S. please head on over to @steemchiller 's page and upvote his most recent post about SteemWorld. Chiller is the person behind SteemWorld and has been doing a lot of amazing work to make all of our lives easier and I'm sure he/she would appreciate all of our upvotes.

P.P.S.- I wanted to mention steempeak.com . I am writing this on Steempeak right this very second, and since discovering it a few days ago I have only been on steemit.com accidentally, through links. One of the many features that is amazing about this site is the fact that I am writing this from a saved draft right now! And you can save as many as you want(I believe). I could go on and on about the features of the site but instead I suggest you head on over and check it out for yourself.

Love the shit out of all of you <3 Stay gold.