I don't usually talk about how Loreshaper Games uses the platform of Steemit and the Steem blockchain in general, but since I'm buried in work on projects and don't yet want to finish my series on archetypes, I figured I'd talk about how we use Steem and what our ethical code of behavior on the platform amounts to.

I also want to take a time to recognize some people who I consider to be positive influences and forces in the Steem community, both as a whole and in Loreshaper Games' individual experience. I also want to talk in some depth about how Steem has been turning out for us, now that we've been "experimenting" with it a couple months.

Give more to others than yourself.

One of the things I'm trying to use Steemit for is to support people who are trying to break into the games industry or artistic endeavors. The more people who are doing things, especially on Steemit, the better it is for everyone. With that said, I don't have any qualms using upvotes to reward people who are doing other inspiring things (I upvote a fair amount of photography, just because I like it even though I'm far from an expert and it's not particularly overlapping with Loreshaper Games' mission).

My rule is that I try to upvote five other people every day (or at least five posts by other people). I do upvote my own posts (but not comments), simply because I want to try to keep up a certain baseline of incoming rewards, but that's a small minority of what goes into our reward pools most weeks. I'm contemplating stopping this altogether, because it does limit our payouts to other people some days, but I'm also willing to try to justify it because we pour these resources into power.

Another thing I want to start trying is having contests on the site, but I want to make sure that our income is at a point where I can make sure that we have enough assets on hand to cover the prizes. @mctiller is an inspiration on that front.

Interesting trivia: Loreshaper Games was actually founded as Loreshapers, and our first act was to run a game design competition!

Another thing I'd like to do eventually is invite people (e.g. our freelancers and collaborators) to the Steem network by creating accounts for them, but I need to look into how exactly that works. I know how to do it, but I'd want to make sure I'm not disadvantaging people when I do so. That may require us to grow a fair deal.

Avoid manipulation.

I want to make it clear what I define as manipulation before we begin: curation is fine (in fact, I believe it's the best hope for the Steem blockchain to draw in highly-productive users), but I don't believe in using any sort of boosts or promotion. I want everyone who resteems our stuff to do so in the belief that it is good and would make someone's day or life better and more fulfilling. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to use these services, but I made the decision that I would not very early on in our time on Steemit, simply because I want a clear picture of authentic engagement.

Right now we're sitting pretty on a lot of @curie and @archdruid curated posts, which is a big egoboost and also a reminder that we're able to make it with what we're doing. Steemit is still not helping us reach the operating budget we'd like for the company (largely because we put everything we've been getting into UNLIMITED POWER [imagine a Sheev pic here]), but it's certainly putting us in a better place than we were two months ago.

We're also building up reputation. Our hope is that in doing so we can help boost the reputation of other ethical users of Steemit.

Interestingly, although we do have a lot of bots following us (I estimate that at least 50% of our followers are people trying to get us to boost our posts), Loreshaper Games has more engagement on Steemit than on traditional social media, and we get more legitimate followers every week, despite having a presence largely in the relatively small #tabletop-rpg community.

One final note: although we try to hand-curate content, we don't follow curation trains or contribute directly to curation groups. This is to avoid any sort of conflict of interest or other issues. We do upvote curators and things like the @steemitboard, because those people boost newcomers and other quality content creators.

How we make our fortune(-ish)!

I've noticed that we tend to have three sorts of posts:

• Core Follower posts
• Resteem Supported posts
• Curator Supported posts

These Core Follower posts, right now, tend to run between $0.40 and $1.00, though that latter number is fairly high. This means that even on a bad week, we're pulling down about $5, which is enough to keep our progress forward facing. About a third of our posts fall into this sort, and they tend to be things like our weekly news updates. We do have some followers who we highly favor (and whom I highly recommend following) who can get us above this, like @xyanthon, @jacobtothe, and @lextenebris, (in no particular order) who are awesome curators and creators who you should follow right now if you aren't and you like our stuff, because I can tell you that I like what they send across our newsfeed.

The Resteem Supported posts get resteemed by people (@grimjim earns a spot of recognition here; his resteems mean a lot to us) and tend to run between $1.00 and $3.00, though that upper number is sort of a golden unicorn. These posts tend to get as many as 20 upvotes, and unless there are bubbles we haven't broken into I think that's the core #tabletop-rpg community.

Finally, we have the Curator Supported posts (largely from @curie and @archdruid). These posts typically make $15, with our biggest making $60. This was enough by itself to help us boost our Steem Power by a good deal, which by extension improves our curation and self-upvoting.

Quality, not Quantity

I try to aim for one post per day, consistently (now, admittedly, I write posts at very different times during the day, so it may not seem like that rate to people who don't live in my timezone). Of these I try to limit myself to one "news" post where I talk about what I'm working on. This keeps me accountable, and if I didn't do it I would be very prone to just slacking off on projects. We might move those over to our Patreon account and cut them off of Steemit, but I also use them as a buffer while I'm writing articles that need a little more time and polish.

My writing skills have been getting better as I've been on Steemit, if for no other reason due to practice. We might see more output and more quality in future days, or we might not. It's an adventure.

One thing we've been trying to do is to really stick to the quality of our posts. I'm thinking of going back and revisiting a series on world-building I originally started for part of the promotional efforts for Open Legend and really polishing it up and pumping out a series on the same scale and quality as our Using Archetypes series have been. It petered out after a bit because I didn't have the motivation or time to continue it, but as I've become more diligent and responsible I've found that to be less of an issue.

Wrapping Up

We started using Steemit as an experiment, and we're here to stay. It's been a tremendous experience connecting us with great people, and while it hasn't exactly been making us money (at least not in a spectacular "we have an operating budget worth recording" sense), it's been a viable platform for us. We hope to help Steemit expand and also use it to support excellent free content for a long time to come.

Let us know with comments if we're doing anything wrong or if there's anything we could be doing to improve our method.