Extensive curation stats overview since HF19 (June 20th 2017)
It's been over a month now since the big changes to rewards were introduced in hard fork 19. Let's see what the current relevant statistics regarding curation are on the SteemIt platform.
General stats
I have data-mined all votes and flags between 2017-06-13 17:31:54 and 2017-07-18 00:56:24 UTC and only recorded votes on content which was paid out between June 20th and July 18th. The curation statistics are from roughly 1 month. All SBD values represent author rewards only (the reverse-auction calculation has been included). Content that didn't receive any votes on or before July 18th has been filtered from the data set.
Stats:
- 6,520,238 votes (including only ~0.097% flags)
- 63,947 total accounts voted or posted at least once
- $2,068,277.043 SBD total author rewards (~88.84% to posts, ~11.16% to comments)
- $175,181.088 SBD (8.47%) was from visible self-votes (the amount of self-voting with multiple accounts is unknown)
- 40,300 (63% of total) users are authors (made at least 1 post this month)
- The average author currently makes only ~$45.544 SBD per month on SteemIt
Conclusions:
- This month at least $175,181.088 SBD (nearly 10% of the reward pool) was not assigned to others
- You cannot expect to earn much money on SteemIt (currently only 0.9% of authors make more than $1000 per month)
- It's hard to know how many active users there are, because we can't know which accounts belong to which user
1. Posts
The following statistics are exclusively about top level posts.
Stats:
- 376,883 total posts ($1,835,420.21 total author rewards)
- 4,986,259 total votes on posts (13.2303 average)
- $4.87 SBD average post author reward
- $1,860.695 SBD highest author reward
Conclusions:
- The average post reward is $4.87
- The average user gets around 13 votes on posts
- Authors posted ~9.35 times per month on average
- Content creation is rare since authors post less than 10 times a month on average and the vast majority of that is considered spam
2. Comments
The following statistics are exclusively about comments.
Stats:
- 723,368 total comments ($230,754.392 total author rewards)
- 1,533,979 total votes on comments (2.1206 average)
- $0.319 SBD average comment reward
- $223.327 SBD max comment author reward
Conclusions:
- When a comment receives at least 1 vote, it has received ~2.12 votes on average at payout
- A comment receives 15.27 times less rewards on average than a post (in theory you have to post 15.27 times more comments compared to posts to earn the same rewards)
3. Reward pool distribution
The following statistics are specifically about the distribution of users that control the reward pool.
Stats:
- 10 people (~0.016%) were responsible for ~21.6% of the payouts (they own only ~5.02% of all SP)
- 53 people (~0.083%) were responsible for ~50% of the payouts
- 100 people (~0.156%) were responsible for ~62% of the payouts
- 634 people (~0.991%) were responsible for ~90% of the payouts
Conclusions:
- The distribution problem is a well known problem, but it's expected since we're all very early adopters!
- The top 10 users have assigned 4 times more rewards than their stake (if this is universal that would mean that approximately 75% of voting power is unused each month)
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I think it's very unfair I am depressed now after two months of hard work I get few cents from my posts, this hard fork was very bad for me and a lot of new people that joined few months ago, I hope they will change the situation, I am just giving my money away to users now, I dont want to earn on steemit any more, it's almost imposible to earn good money for me now, lets see what will happen in the future, thanks for the sad statistics !
I upvoted your last 20 posts for about $1 total. That all i can do as i am poor as shit too.
Don't give up though, just enjoy posting and making friends. If your content is good you will make money soon enough. Keep in mind that the top authors that earn $1000+ each month almost all have worked a year to accomplish that.
Thanks a lot for your support, you make me happy :)
Completely and utterly wrong.
How much do you think you would have made as a new user under the pre-HF rules? My guess is approximately zero, since you weren't a well-known trending "star" with whale support. You've made more than that on this one comment alone.
I made this from this comment because I am upvoted by @jamesbrown ( thanks James by the way ), he has 43,368 steem power, but if you look at my old post you see that I earned few cents from post, just lately I began to giveaway my money this why it's few dollars but before.... Just check my page !
My account had approximately that much SP before the HF, before the experiment. I would give out $0.01 or $0.02 on a 100% vote. Granted, the price has gone up significantly since then, but my guess is jamesbrown's vote would be worth $0.20 or so instead of $7. This hard fork has been very beneficial for you and almost everyone. Save for the top 0.1% authors and whales.
if jamesbrown's vote would be worth $0.20 , why my comment worthed more than $7 when it was upvoted just by my ( my vote worth 0.02 ) and him ?
Because of this hard fork. It would have been nowhere near $7 with the old hard fork algorithm.
Hi :)
Doing good work as always @jamesbrown, you're like a curation machine :p
Thanks you again @jamesbrown, you made me happier by upvoting my comment ☺.
You're welcome.
It's an easy decision for me to upvote comments like that because I can relate. My first 20 or so posts averaged less than $0.20 a piece, and this was when Steem was trading at above $3, back around this time last year.
Persistence pays off :)
Whats that..Curation Machine? Lol. But seriously, perhaps you guys are interested in supporting this initiative @jamesbrown and @clixmoney
Quite likely since the steemit account (almost 50%) by design does not vote and many of the largest accounts are investors who are not holding stake (at least primarily) for the purpose of using it on the social platform do bother to vote. Initiatives such as minnowbooster and others may help distribute more of this voting power over time.
Overall good analysis. The $40/month number is interesting and should help serve to remind people that Steemit is not a free money spigot, at least not one that dispenses a significant amount to everyone. Some very successful content creators with a good following can do well but the average user can not expect to earn a living (or anything close to a living even if the rewards were distributed equally)
Thank you, if only you were so nice in the other post that you feel personally attacked on for some reason :p
Again, you jump to (incorrect) conclusions. I'm not 'personally attacked' as I'm not even on your list (I have barely been voting at all, for self or otherwise). The disagreement is with the value of your approach on substance, not whether it attacks me personally (it doesn't).
Well, a datadump has substance...but yeah the approach could have been better. It's controversial so it's tricky. But at least i have the balls to do what others are scared of.
Anyway, technically you are on the list as htooms ;)
Also not me (but emoticon wink noted)
Oh that's interesting, i (and probably many others) assumed it was. Have you ever publicly distanced yourself from that account then? (You might also not care about it, lol.)
When that account was first created it was done for the purpose of opposing my votes, and I think there were some not-so-friendly comment exchanges too. So it was pretty clear at the time it was not mine.
OK, good to know. I probably missed it because i took a 10 month long break from SteemIt because i saw too many problems. Many of the same problems still exist but the inflation fix made me come back and give it another try.
BTW i just noticed you upvoted this post even though you flagged the other one. I can appreciate you're not making it personal like most people do. We both want the best for the platform and we do what we think is best, even though sometimes it doesn't turn out all too well as you saw in the other post ;)
@smooth has proven time and time again to not only understand this platform better than almost anybody but to also prove quite objective rationale.
There is nobody I have read more comments by than @smooth and @smooth is a part of almost all big steemit discussion posts.
I am actually very surprised at how calm and objective he is with such power. I find it extraordinary respectable.
It is easy to make too much out of any particular comment, post or vote. I prefer to focus on the bigger picture.
That is wild. Great work. The distribution of wealth seems to be exactly as stands for the general population. Not sure if it is a good thing or bad thing. I am not sure why most people even post here ( including new). It is really my time. I looked into it and wrote 1 or 2 posts about why steemit continues to interest me. Anyways , when you say the average post earns over 4 dollars, did you include the 0.9 percent of high earners. If so can you remove the group that earns over say a 100 bucks per post and then see what the average post is worth? Or perhaps take out top 5 percent. I am surprised by even the 4 dollar plus payout and wanted to see what the reality is.
Great question, I would very much like to know this as well if you can find time to look into it calamus056
I think she will do her math magic and spill the beans.
That's so bad of course, rich people became more rich, poor people stay poor for ever !
If you remove all payouts over $100, the average payout will be even lower of course.
Of course calamus. My estimate from taking a look at new posts is probably closer to 20 cents or lower. Was just wondering if you had any inclination to delve deeper. Thanks though
I could but it's not that relevant. If you have any other suggestions that are more interesting let me know.
Agree with Nedspeaks. if we could take out the huge payouts from the averages, we could see what could be generally expected for the "more ordinary" persons. Great posts by the way (both of you)!
I don't think you understand the concept of average :p
Anyway it's not that interesting, just assume it's significantly lower than the current average if you remove a large part of the money that go to top authors.
Of course it is significantly lower. i am interested to see actual the average without the 'wales' without assuming, that is the point.
I'm not interested in that at all, so i'm not gonna invest time in that. Sorry. If you have different suggestions for stats feel free to give any. I will probably look at follower related stats next....
OK thanks for the reply
As an advocate of universal basic income, which in the US based on 2017 federal poverty guidelines would need to be $1,000 per month, and as someone who has crowdfunded their own basic income of $1000/mo, I find this statistic especially fascinating and thank you for sharing it.
Working your ass of for a year to make $1000+ a month isn't really a basic income ;)
It is basic income, you wouldn't have to do work at all, which is why it should just be called "universal basic handout".
I'm talking about making 1K/month on SteemIt, that's a lot of work!
Oh... I agree.
I guess, if you have the resources, you can always jump start your STEEM rewards by buying enough STEEM so that you can earn more per post. Do 5 posts every day and automatically upvote yourself at the 28 minute mark. Do a giveaway to have a bunch of people follow you. Reinvest until you make $1000 per post.
Then just do a vblog of you sitting on the couch 5 times a week bringing in the STEEM.
Yeah some people are really milking it with 5 vlogs a day :p
thank you SO much for this valuable information and data analysis, I am finding Steemit very fun but honestly also confusing, as many of my well thought out posts that I spend much time on go seemingly unnoticed, I am expecting to be doing much better by the end of the year, and pacing my expectations, and learning the right way to approach this cool platform. Thanks again, I am upvoting this post and resteeming as well and of course now following you. Please follow me if you would. Peace
good job
It's interesting to see these numbers. And it makes sense that few people reap most of the rewards, there are not that many quality posts.
I think most users are too occupied with earning more for their lackluster posts (like som big guys). The real value of being on steemit rather than any other social meida is that you actaully get a chance to get something instead of nothing.
It's not natural that everyone should create content, the solution might be to gear rewards more towards curation.
Thank you @calamus056 for this great article. I am not surprise about those numbers, i have the same vision before reading this article. Most of the big earner are here since the beginning. I am sure it takes some time and dedication to start earning in Steemit. Thank you
Great information @calamus056 Upvoted!
What these numbers mean is that for the majority of the users it is more cost effective to write short post at the current price of Steem.
Applications such as Stepshot & Zappl are ideal for the current market as long as they make a serious effort to market outside of steemit.
If the price of Steem goes up then long form posts will become more profitable for content creators.
It's not only about the STEEM price, it's also about the amount of active curators, the way curators distribute rewards and the distribution of SP.
The thing is that we can't change the disribution of SP nor how the voting is done. It is what it is...at least for the time being. It is not a perfect situation. If we get a massive influx of users it will be worse...more posts competing for a limited reward pool unless if the price goes up.