Should you invest in promoting your content on SteemIt?
Your first question is probably "is it worth it?". This article will answer that and any other question you might have in great detail!
How to promote your content
First things first, let's explain how it works. On steemit.com, the only way currently (that i know of) is to press the PROMOTE button at the bottom of the content of a post. You can see what the button looks like in the image below.
When you press that button the follow dialog will popup:
You simply fill in how much you want to spend and voila! Your post will be promoted until the first payout, 7 days after publication! Keep in mind that you can only promote your content with SBD (STEEM Backed Dollars).
One extra benefit of promoting content is that it deflates the value of SBD by decreasing the amount of SBD in circulation. Your promoted post investments will be send to the user @null. This is a non-existent account so those tokens can never be spent again. So by promoting your content, you essentially increase the value of SBD for when you get paid in the future!
Return on investment
So why would you spend money on promoting your post? What can you expect in return?
1. Followers
In my opinion this is why post promotion really pays off! It's likely that you'll earn at least 10% more followers. Let's assume you paid 100SBD. Your content on average earns 10SBD per post. Let's assume your future posts will earn 10% more, you will start earning a profit after 100 posts. In reality it will likely pay off even faster, because every single of your new followers can resteem your content so your exposure increases exponentially!
2. Exposure
From my experience a front page (being in the top 5) promotion will be seen by between 1 and 5% of the active users that week. If there are 50,000 active users that week your content will probably be seen by at least 1000 people! If your content manages to get trending it will get seen even more! If people didn't upvote or follow you, there's always a chance they will remember you and decide to take action next time. There are certain users you might not ever reach without content promotion.
3. Money
With your promoted content you will very likely earn much more money than you usually do. If you are lucky it will even pay back the promotion cost completely or even make you a direct profit!
How much to spend
In my opinion it's only worth it to get your promoted post in the top 5 of the promoted tab. Depending on the situation, this could cost 100's of Dollars. Going too far down decreases your exposure drastically. You can see how much other users paid by clicking on the rewards while you are in the promoted tab (see picture below).
At the time of writing this article it costs approximately 135 SBD to get a top 5 spot. At the moment that is over $220 USD! So for beginners this could be a huge investment.
How often to use promoted content
My suggestion is to only pick your very best work. It's highly advisable to pick content that is interesting to the most amount of people. I personally invested in promoting my article Curation rewards explained in great detail for example, because i felt like it would benefit a lot of people. As you can see i made a direct profit! There is absolutely no guarantee you will too, but the more value your content has to the average user, the higher your chances!
Conclusion
If you are a serious author on SteemIt, promoting your content will certainly help spreading your brand! The more people know your brand, the more you will likely earn. If the investment won't hurt you too much, i suggest to give it a try. You can also always wait until you have earned enough SBD with your content, that way you didn't invest any money yourself.
Don't forget to follow, resteem and browse my channel for more information!
Good intro to Promotion option on steemit. Interesting that now with services like @randowhale and WhaleShares we have more options to promote posts, which offers promotion and rewards return at the same time.
Those services don't promote your post at all. Resteems are way better.
They promote in a way. Post with high rewards in short time are getting to Hot section.
Right, but then you might as well spend the money on post promotion yourself lol.
But you can get money back later as a reward for whale upvote. Promotion payment will not be returned.
@pal May i ask why you unfollowed me? Are you personally involved in randowhale or whaleshares or something?
I'm really only trying to help. To make a system better you have to be critical. I still see some flaws that need to be resolved.
I don't care if you follow me or not, if you think there's a problem please at least let us know. Now i don't even know what i did wrong....
P.S.: I just realized you might have thought that i was talking about randowhale/whaleshares, but in fact i was talking about the SteemIt protocol and curating problems specifically.
I just unfollowed to prevent accidental conflict. I know that you considering self voting is unjust. I can't agree with that. People with stake are not got it for nothing. Some of them were early and bootstrapped community. Some of them took a risk and put their own money at stake in STEEM (they could by ETH). All of them were through the hard times, then the STEEM price was declining for 10 months. Because of people who hold the stake the price at that level today.
Even if they can't write in English very well or propose some idea - doesn't make them parasites.
STEEM is a system with stakeholders, they own the part of network capacity. They decide how to dilute their own stake by voting for others if they provide value. If they decide to vote for themselves - then they don't see enough value and their stake don't get diluted. System punish those who don't vote. From that perspective I see that system working efficient - stake gets distributed to people who provide value, not on some moral basis.
TLDR
There is not self voting, stakeholders just deciding to not dilute their stake because there is no better option at the moment.
That's a really weird reason to unfollow, anyway you have the wrong image of me. I "self-vote" all the time, because the system allows it. But no matter my situation, i just don't think it's best for the system.
I hope you do understand that if everyone "self-votes", there is no value in SteemIt. That's a flaw in the system to me. It's irrelevant if something is likely or not. Flaws are flaws.
We really want the same thing: a platform without abuse, exploits and injustice.
I hope you have a better idea about my intentions now.
Thanks for giving us an update over how system works. Please follow me at @honeychum. I am sure you will like my work.
pal i think u are unfairly categorizing @calamus056 here and u dont even have a profile image and u are talking like u are one of the originals heere ?? are u? if so u should be a lil moe chill...early adopters have a ot of pwer
and u guys understand how steemit works more than most
alot of people here have no idea how it wworks
alot of people love to act like they knwo everything and we should all stop that and all stop being so naggy and wwe should stop complianing and focus on our work...unless we are an actual developer...cuz talk is easy....
hello Calamus, I am new on Steemit and i am trying to build up my follower base. I am continouesly posting and i am more into poetry. I am sure you will like my work . Please follow me at @honeychum
Begging is achieving the opposite.
It's all less optimal than when all users would curate optimally. The protocol needs to get better so people get rewarded for moderating the network. Right now there's nothing we can do about the terrible distribution of funds. The people that contribute to it also don't get punished for it, so it keeps going on.
where can i tract it
rock on steemit is destine to make it
Not if you upvote your own comment instead of my article ;)
chill.. and remember take responsibility mi amigo
Oh maybe you already upvoted it, i'm sorry. The price of STEEM keeps falling so i didn't notice the change.
Thanks for your support :)
np steemit is an experiment and Im glad Im part of it
Hell yeah! It can truly change the world when the final few flaws are resolved.
nice..
good information and straight to the point, I like it
Thank you, that's the goal; conveying as much quality information as possible in the shortest period of time in the simplest manner :)
I find that part of steemit so confusing! My mind buckles when I think of SteemPower and Steemdollars. My mind wanders off! But maybe it is time to invest money, not just time and energy! Thanks for post!
I am with you there. Just joined and this is a lot more complicated than setting up an ETH 6 GPU mining rig. Ha ha ha... Not really in to social media, but maybe this can get me started. We'll see how this Steemit deal pans out.
Interesting post @calamus05656 . Followed and upvoted
Thanks for the tips, conveniently found this post in the promoted section. Clever?
Question: What's the best way to organize favorite posts, like if I want to save yours for reference. Good old browser bookmarks? Or is there a Steemit feature? Thanks!
Unfortunately there is no SteemIt feature yet. Making a bookmark folder seems fine for now yeah. There's also this website.
Thank you! Man, so many resources out there. I have to admit I'm a little overwhelmed by the pressure of how to "do Steemit right".
I meant "clever" with an ! not a ? :)
Actuallly @calamus056 is wrong and should neever say "there is no steemit feture yet for X" because there actually is! its called chainBB and @jesta created it http://beta.chainbb.com loginwith ur steemit username and psting key (found in wallet>Permission) and u for example, theres muliple categories for weed related steemit posts thres #cannabis theres #marijuana theres #cannasteem and on chainBB they ahve em all organized into one subforum! theres a subforum for arts for photography for crypto currency its amazing and u caneven suggest and ask for nw subforums!!!!
Maybe this wasnt what u wereasking but it actualy is a soltion to what i believe is ur problem of neediing to organize steemit!
I didnt kno about steemlets.com but also theres a website called steemfeatures.com that i couldnt find any infoa bout and was woondering if it was a steemit phising site because it ask for ur username and steemit WF password and it looks JUST liek steemit.cm but iit is NOT teh same website or it would have had bme logged in aready!
anyone knwo what steemfeatures.com is??? Is it a phising website???
Oh, thank you for your rich info about should we promo our post! I like your writing! I am now have a brief idea about it. It seems that it is nice to promo our article in order to get more people to reach it! So do you promo all your article or just sometimes?
Good tips on using steem, thanks! Though is it true that promoted posts are only seen under the "promoted" category? I'm still quite new to this community and often only look at the feed or the new posts. If that is so I think the promotion is not really quite worth it..
That's true right now. It gives you exposure to 100's or 1000's of users, you decide if it's worth it or not :)
Thanks for answering! :)
And i just gave you six cents , two upvotes, 3 cents each! and ur first comment is up to $1.22 did u know that??
Keep posting! comments are a gold mine! create HELPFUl comments tho! even if its some subject u have no idea about, just take the topic and google image search it and find a related image having to do with it! and post it! or find a Funny GIF thats relevant! any erelevent info from wikpedia is also a great way to create a helpful comment! u can make tens and 1000s a day off comments if u comment all day on top posts!
Thank you! I've been thinking commenting is a good way to get started too as it can connect with other people when nobody knew me in the first place as I'm a minnow. It is nice of you to give me encouragement and advice! Have a nice day and happy steeming
Haha thanks for your advice. I'd consider making more posts, but the thing is I'm usually busy to write a post so often times I do commenting instead. Would try to spend more time on it in the future. That's kind of you to take the time to read my posts and for all the support!
i just gave u 3 cents on this comment of yours with my upvote, pushing you up to $1 exactly on your coomment! see? its paying off to comment! its more tha jusy connecting with someone like me who goes and upvotes all ur posts, u also get a reward directly from good comments!
here look i just upvoted all ur recet cmments giving them all 3 cents each
but wow look! ur making $1 per comment! why arent u commenting more?????
u need more posts too! i ried upvoting all YOUR posts but all i found wwas posts u resteemed of strangrs im not trying tp upbote! iits annying to ee a bunch of resteems and none of your own posts
ust a warning that other whales wont like this either and wont take the extra time your foring me to take to scroll down and unt for your posts and not all tthe resteems u post, too many, u should have at least 1 or 2 of ur own posts for every esteem...just a tip! jus a to help u!
a;so udont post enuf! u should make posts everyday showing photos of hong kong!!!!
well explained article. Well done. Thanks for the help i was anyway thinking of promoting.
Sounds like a good investment on a interesting topic. If its something boring you'd just be throwing your money away.... Great write up, thanks for the info.
This was useful. Thank you.
Upvoted.