Dolphin 541,753—Monthly Report: January (2020)

Good To See You

Welcome to my first report of the year for 2020.

I don't know what it is about 2020—the balance, the evenness of it, a more sophisticated feel to it—but it just seems to have a better attitude about itself so far than 2019. I'm not sure why that it is. It may just be me. I admit, I'm happy to leave 2019 behind, even though it wasn't a horrible year for me.

Maybe it's just the idea of something new, with the potentiality of some excitement. Who knows?

Whatever it might be, 2020 is here, so might as well make the most of it, right?

With that in mind...

Quick Summary

January 2020 in some ways, was the best January yet, though production-wise, January 2018 set the bar. At this point, with full-time work and other responsibilities occupying my waking hours, I'm happy to be able to show some improvement over January 2019, even if my production last month in areas is below even that.

I suspect that this will become a reoccurring theme throughout the first half of this year since I didn't start back to work until mid-June. However, I still have to put in the time I do have and make sure there's as many posts, comments and upvotes out there as can be.

Let's get to the breakdowns.

Posts (no comments)—19

Since I am now in my third year on STEEM, I have two previous years, along with the month just past, to look back on and see how far I've come. In the case of posts, my first year's January (2018) output is still best at 22, but last month's 19 represents nearly a three-fold increase over 2019's seven posts.

I'm glad to report I was able to stay much more focused and motivated than the previous year. That, I assure you, is a good thing.

STU allocated to my posts were above $1 STU on all except for one. Four posts managed to reach double digit STU territory. The STU stats aren't quite as consistent as I think they should be at this point in my time here, but I feel I am slowly turning the corner on the minimum STU front, while I still have a ways to go to bring the majority of posts into double-digit STU levels.

Admittedly, quite a bit of it is out of my control. I can provide the content—you all decide how much it should ultimately be rewarded. You also need to be able to see it, and discovery content is still an ongoing issue. Communities is open beta and I think people are seeing some decent results from there participation in some of them, so who knows. Maybe we'll all be more content with rewards in the not-too-distant future.

Comments—125

This is up over December 2019, a small victory in and of itself. I managed to sneak back on the Engagement List @abh12345 puts out weekly at least once last month. I don't find myself making it into the Top 100 nearly as often as I used or want to. Something needs to be done about that.

What, I'm not sure of, but trying to accept that "it is what it is" isn't working for me.

Upvotes given—118/318

More improvement over last month. Vote spread is close to three times greater, and total vote spread is over three times that of December. I think the increase can largely be attributed to upvoting comments again, after a few months hiatus. After discovering I could make some curation rewards off them, while benefitting the comment author, too, I'm no longer just relying on post curation. That's a good thing for me, since more comments can be read in a sitting than posts.

Still, those upvote numbers are not where I would like them to be, but I am feeling a little better about my manual curation efforts.

Upvotes received—1,112/2419

The total number of unique curators voting on my posts was up by over 100 from December last year, but the total number of votes fell by 900-ish. Go figure. Actually, the difference can be attributed to which curation vote trails did what when, and to what degree. Since I'm not visited as much from curie as I used to, the upvote numbers have a tendency to drop.

Earned SP—322.483

I feel like that number is slightly deceiving, but I've decided I need to add in the amount of 'interest' I'm earning from my stake since it seems to be up around the 1 SP per day range now. At least, that's the only way I can account for the total increase from January 1 through January 31, 2020.

The numbers more or less add up as follows:

• 131.898 STEEM (which was subsequently powered up, some of it being converted from SBD first) and 131.498 SP for a total of 263.396 SP in author rewards.

• 17.445 SP in curation rewards. Frankly, I'm surprised to see it that high, but again, the upvoting of comments has helped.

• 33.642 in 'interest' earnings from my stake. That amount is an approximation since I haven't been paying as much attention to it as I have the rest. I think I should, since it's adding a fair amount of SP each month.

• I also need to include an additional eight SP which I won in a contest that I didn't even know was happening. I'll explain it in a moment.

That puts total earned SP from January 1, 2018 through January 31, 2020 at 4,378.687.

Total SP (earned SP plus purchased STEEM powered up) reached 10,501.112.

Highest single payout—17.665 STEEM/17.638 SP

Mom's Funeral Was Today earned the most STEEM/SP in January. You Could Be A Boomer wasn't too far behind at 0.086 SBD/14.363 STEEM/14.778 SP.

Self-Upvotes—0

Accident free for 100 days and counting. Okay, I have no idea if that's true or not, but it sounds good (and probably isn't too far off).

Contests—1

So, curie has a contest where posts with the most engagement are rewarded SP. Apparently, you don't have to sign up or promote or anything, which is cool, since I probably wouldn't have. So, thank you, curie for the 8 SP. Very much appreciated.

Downvotes given—0/received—15

Downvotes on my posts came down from December's new high of 23. I don't know what that means, but I think it's premature to consider it a downward trend of any kind. More fish in the sea to downvote maybe?

Reputation ranking—67

I came close to turning this number up in two months, but alas, like the last time it happened, it was not to be. However, also like last time, the number has since upticked to 68 in the beginning days of February, so I'm nearing my goal of passing the 70 threshold.

Investment—596.038 STEEM

I did go ahead and buy STEEM. Some of it then went to purchase SNAXP on STEEM-Engine, but the amount listed is what I powered up, and represents almost 80 percent of the total purchased.

I intended, and had ready to go, another amount to purchase, but I tarried a little too long in doing so and then the price jumped up a good $0.05 USD. I blame it on whoever is responsible for not allowing me to instantly have access to either my fiat or my alt coin purchase so I can convert it to STEEM without waiting a week. Otherwise, I probably would have pulled it off.

Still, $0.20 USD is not a bad price, especially if the trend is going up, so I'll just need to wrap my head around that. After being sideways and trending down for so long, it kind of felt like the price wasn't ever going to go up and hold ever again, even though I was sure it had to at some point. Funny how that works.

Token Trading

As in previous months, I converted more alt tokens on STEEM-Engine to STEEMP for the purpose of buying SNAXP, but I haven't bothered to add them up, since it's a small amount compared to what's been used via STEEM rewards and STEEM purchases.

SNAX/SNAXP

At the beginning of January 2020, total SNAXP stood at 8,412,187.7609.

By the end of January, I increased it to 10,360,947.4735. In total, 1,848,759.7126 SNAXP was acquired in January.

Meanwhile my SNAX via STEEM post round rewards stood at 294,082.3557.

Miscellaneous

Not sure if I have a whole lot more to add to this.

I'm trying to put more structure to my week by designating certain days for certain topics. I'm hoping it will give me something to write about and motivate me to keep up. We'll see. I'm not the best when it comes to such formalities, but as I noted in this section last month, I feel like I need to try something.

Onward and upward.

Can't get enough of monthly reports? I recommend giving @bashadow's Progress Report - January 2020 a read. He also references a post by @abh12345 that provided data for those requesting it, a personalized monthly report for January. So, monthly reports abound if you so desire to peruse them.