How Does One Get Over 500-3000 Votes Per Post on Steemit?
Nearly every new user I've signed on to this platform has asked me this question when they see the trending list. Maybe it's time we discuss it in the open and maybe try to answer it for our entire community and the world outside.
You logon to Steemit everyday and watch the trending authors get hundreds and thousands of votes resulting in payout value increasing to thousands within minutes, you take a quick gulp and wonder how in that world does this magic happen?
It's a difficult question to answer. I've racked my brains whenever I've gone digging into the blockchain to find some pattern to this behaviour. At the very forefront of these number of votes are also a large number of bots. Many owners of these bots who are supportive towards these regular users they vote on everyday. That as well as the curation rewards are too good to ignore which isn't a bad thing at all. I think this is what goes down somewhat in addition to a dozen secret slacks where the rich and famous live and prosper! Ha! (my first conspiracy theory on Steemit)
I'll give you my example
The usual number of votes on my posts range between 210-290 on a good day. Occasionally the number crosses 300 and very rarely 400. I've never been in the 500 votes (I would love to) and above hall of fame list.
I dont worry about the payout value as much as increasing visibility towards my work with a greater range of votes on my posts which clearly signifies higher engagement with my content. To me higher number of votes also signifies somewhat directly proportional and greater engagement levels.
Comments are a different type of engagement altogether. But even as my votes are comparatively low on my blog page, I've managed to trend on the top of the trending page 4-5 times, and great things are still happening with me.
Dear bot owners and whales, what is your general approach to voting?
Loyal Voters and Readers
The daily number of votes on my posts comes from a loyal set of readers, and for that I'm really thankful. Similarly, some of the people you see on trending are people who stuck around creating value, bringing people to the platform, networking with one another and did a splendid job of retaining engagement levels throughout the low phase (November-April) and today's that's paying off for them.
I came back from a forced sabbatical to open arms of incredible support and encouragement, post after post, comment after comment. This platform a year down the line continues to amaze me and hold my commitment and loyalty towards it! Even as I wish I was able to maintain my efforts through the past four months, nothing seems to be lost and I continue to make new friends and gain new readership by the day!
As I became more consistent with my writing everyday in the past three weeks, the number of votes have also increased, even if only marginally. The payouts have increased as well (also thanks to the Steem price doubling up). I continue to increase my Steem holdings which is what I've always wanted to do right from the start and vote on new and established users.
Remember, whether we like it or not, Value and Quality are two highly subjective things. The content you see with a high payout, the payout value again is a subjective matter.
Do our followers really 'follow' our posts?
I've gained 500 followers in about 3 weeks of coming back to writing on Steemit. I actively engage with hundreds of established and new authors per week and reply to every comment on my blogs.
But, even as I've got a good number of followers, the votes on my posts are quite low. It's quite hard to tell if people are actually following you or doing it for the sake of it to get a follow back from an established author. But ofcourse it is impossible to vote for all unless you go around voting with a 1% vote weight.
As you can tell I follow nearly twice as many people. That's because I have in the past and continue to actively curate content as much as possible. I dont find it too hard to go through hundreds of content in a day. This was a skill built up helping run Project @curie, @steemcleaners and the early days of @robinhoodwhale.
Do you check your feed everyday or once in two days? What is your approach?
Steem Price
Steem price undoubtedly has brought back many voters and users who were hibernating until recently. This has added to the overall engagement levels that you witness. It is time saving and easy for anyone to simply login and vote and curation rewards are a great payback for the time spent voting. Some do it manually like I do, others use bots and scripts!
Fact of The Matter Is
@kyriacos' piece, 'Does It Really Matter How People Make Money on Steemit?' throws some light on why this behaviour is justified! It's a must read!
The fact is that we're all here to make money, get rewarded for our efforts and use this platform to improve our lives and those around us basically trumps most other intentions of using this platform.
But there many people behind the scenes who are trying to make a difference in the long run and I think it's worth your while to support their initiatives and efforts and help them add more value to this place.
Many developers make the daily trending and without supporting developers, there won't be any of this software that we use. However, It's also important to remember that without active community builders, users engaging with one another and initiatives towards community building there won't be many people to make the fullest use of our platform Steemit today.
There are many incredible authors who are also missed out unintentionally so please look out for them. In addition to voting, please also try to leave a comment on the users content you vote for. Please network and support each other as much as possible!
Thank you for your attention and support!
If you like my work, please share my posts and follow my blog to support me. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- The Hands of an Artist!
- LetsTalk—Results From Leveraging Facebook To Promote Steemit Content!
- This is My Plan for STEEMFEST 2017 + Slots Open for My Crew + Requesting Feedback!
- LetsTalk—Why An Excellent Health Insurance Is a Necessity and How It Saved My Ass!
- Ike's 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air (B&W) Photoshoot!
That moment when you send @firepower a try-out drawing because of a new pentablet, and it ends up on one of his post. Touché - well done, sir.
I am not quite sure who is an active follower and who is not. However I would love to even reach 50 votes on a post. I think my highscore was a 100something.
There is a tool called Dead Followers, which can tell you the amount of inactive followers you have. Basically sums up your followers and if they have been online lately or not. http://steemit.deadfollowers.info/
I must say, I have a pretty nice rate?
This only answers some of the question about your followers, but doesn't do that completely. I guess we should have a tool similar to InstaFollow or something to check out who our actual, loyal followers are.
I know for one, that you and @roelandp often upvote my posts, thank you for that. I appreciate it a lot! Here some virtual love:
hug
I have nearly 19.5% dead followers. Thank you for this valuable tool. Probably going to unfollow the people who aren't following my work once in a while. I have a few who havent interacted with my a/c for months!
Thanks for the comment. Learnt about a new tool! Good job @sjennon!
That is an awesome tool, but I realized one thing. I am brand new, five days old and one of my followers is dead. How is that possible? It means that somebody, and I know who because they added a few bucks to a post by voting, has not posted but remains active. A lot of the vets don't post often but seem to vote up stuff on a regular basis. I wouldn't totally discredit all of your 19.5% dead followers. Since you have been here a while, some might be vets that don't post much anymore, but remain active.
Hug back at ya
I've been checking out who upvotes me and following them if they follow me and returning the favor...I would like to keep this as real as possible, besides I really like the information I've been coming across in posts.
@wvm I only follow back if the author has content that's interesting to me. Otherwise you end up with a feed filled with stuff you dont care for. This would make it a nightmare to go through my feed. But thats me.
True it's a healthy mix of loyalty and content that interests you. I just started on Steem but have been using other social media for personal use and blogging. Found a mix always works best to keep me sane but also grow followers.
Exactly! Keeping the ones who are loyal to you is very important :)
Of the 53 followers I have, 2 are "dead". That is 3.8% of my followers. Thanks for sharing that link.
Thats pretty good! And no problem :)
I am new in Steemit and event doesn't know how people vote us, i just knew how to vote juat a minute ago..
348 dead follower here lol
Pretty good for the amount of followers you have though!
Haha! I have 36 followers and all 36 are real but I hardly get votes from them all!
Ugh I know the pain :(
so all of my followers are dead .. Hmmmmm
Hey Thx for this interesting tool, gives an interesting perspective to the followers part of Steemit. But also reminds oneself of being active ourselves too since we may reflect as Dead followers in someones else's account too ;) being social is the main objective thats what we have to do be ACTIVE :)
Really like the way you closed out the post with the "Fact of the Matter is"...And followed through with listing Key points of Attention. 100% agree with your outlook here.
I came across your post as I just started browsing within the whaleshares tag. Not entirely sure what whaleshares is at the moment, but it has peaked my interests and I will do some more digging.
Steem On,
The Dream is Live
:)
Some great points, well thought write up – I think you get quite near to the secret of votes, trending and rewards – you are doing excellent too. I do certainly believe it is a combination of many little factors that make you successful – sure it is key to have the right relationship to big power holders but it is at least similar important to create either awesome content, be an interactor engaging with others from all levels or you are a great investor curating and using your power in a responsible way. The ecosystem and community is a special one for sure – I am pretty confident toeards a long-termed success. Thanks a lot for this great post.
Thank you so much @uwelang. I hope I can do better in the days to come and I hope you like my latest blog on the meetup! :)
Checking
Good post! I am finding that you should first enjoy what you are doing rather than focusing on upvotes. You should sincerely be a contributor and good things should follow.
You are absolutely right! That's the right approach!
Thank you for sharing your honest opinion. I wanted to upvote your content as well as leave my thoughts !! The following quote is from you '' The fact is that we're all here to make money, get rewarded for our efforts and use this platform to improve our lives and those around us basically trumps most other intentions of using this platform.'' Is true for me . I just started to hear about a lot of good things from Steem. I heard that you could participate in a community even if you were not a content creator. But be rewarded for your efforts of loving to read research and learn. At the same time using your reputation and steam power to vote content you agreed with. I was drawn to the freedom and flexibility that steem provided because I need to make a living in a flexible way. While raising my three young children. So even though I was initially drawn to the site to be able to earn doing something I love having an opinion on content while raising my children. I choose to follow individual content providers that I share an intellectual view with! And so I can continue to be involved and learn while earning for being reliable ! Again thank you for your great article and your honesty and I will be following you and up voting any content which I share beliefs in. When I vote an article that I agree with i use 100% of my voting power. Being that I am now I think this is the correct thing to do but I do it because I agree with content.Looking forward to more of your content creation. Thanks
Thank you for the wonderful comment and taking your time to leave a proper feedback. It's a great feeling to read comments such as yours. I fully agree with you and I work on similar lines. I'm glad that you find my work interesting. I hope you like other articles I've written as well. Thank you for following me. I'vedone the same. :)
STEEM ON FIREPOWER!!!
Well, the ones who are still enquiring about the votes, I would like to say to those that, it's not something you should focus more about.
The first thing you should concentrate on is on the quality of the content you are providing. Try to be consistent. (I see @firepower is quite consistent with the articles). That's the time you start getting loyal followers irrespective of the fact whether you follow them back or not. They follows you coz they love to. :)
The second thing one should care about is curation. Engaging with others. At least that had been very helpful for me in my last week to get a lot of new (and targetted) followers.
And btw, voting does not determine the Earnings always. My second post on this platform got 67 votes and earned $60 only (payout completed) , whereas my third post (latest one) got just 45 votes, earned $70+ and its increasing. So you shouldn't care about how many votes you can gather, rather you should care about WHOM you are getting the votes from.
Surely someone with high reputation will give you better earnings, if that's something you care about (yeah everybody does a bit I know) :)
And at last, it all come backs to the relationship you maintain with fellow steemians. If someone feels that you are regularly following their updates, he will definitely check your content back :)
Another nicely written post @firepower
I don't know if Steem has any algorithm like fb, but it always shows me your post first whenever I visit my feed. Haha 😅😅
Good comment dude!
That's because the SP of each user is different and the same ones might not vote each time. Although higher votes means greater interaction with your account, atleast on the blockchain if not actual viewing of your content.
On a technical level, rep doesn't matter, only the SP held as far as votes go. :)
This is a really good post. I think it's really hard for the minnows to get exposure and therefore upvotes because we rarely make it to the trending pages and there are too many new stories appearing every minute so people just don't see you. I think it's super hard to break this cylce unless you come here and bring a significant following with you (like @jerrybanfield) or you have been here a long time and built up significant number of followers already through your steem power.
You make an excellent point. To be honest there weren't many users when I signed up and even then I struggled. My introduction wasnt seen for the initial couple of weeks but then as I networked and increased my efforts it started working out for me. If you are a social influencer or celebrity it is always easy to break into an platform.
I checked your account and followed you. I think you have an interesting story. I hope you will continue to blog further.
Thank you. I definitely have a bunch of ideas for blog posts. Now I just need to find the time to write them.
@lifeofpai is my handle. please read and follow if u like what u read
Do people here actually read or simply upvotes just for the sake?
I actually read the article or post before I upvote. But usually I follow and upvote people that follow and upvote me.
@wvm it's all depend.
Some high profiles, have been caught doing plagiarism.
Some are safe to upvote. I don't upvote those with too much monies already.
Mainly, look after the Newbies.
Well I'm new. ;)
@bullionstackers just started following you, checked your page out and looks like posts I'd read.
It's really hard to say that without accessibility to the metrics of our individual posts. All I can assume is that people who comment + around 30% of the voters might read it. This is again just a guesstimate. But for the daily trending authors it might be more or less.
Just compare the number of Views with the Votes for this post ;)
That was a real eye-opener, 102 votes, 50 reads and 24 replies (25 with this one...😀)!
Some people do read. Most don't it seems.
well said @justtryme90
I do most of my voting on AutoSteem so the majority of my views don't show up in Steemit.com. For the most part I curate art & photgraphy and target posts with a low amount of votes. I think about two thirds of my votes are automated (30 to 40 per day).
I also have a fair number of automated votes :)
I'm gonna be 100% honest here, I also upvotes articles without reading. Most of the time if I do I've been following the author for quite a while already so it's also a kind of loyalty thing for me. Lets say 35%/50% of my feed gets upvoted with out reading properly. I know it sounds weird, but I think that a lot of people do this but won't admit it.
@futurefood
There are others that following my curating, They following me base on my judgement.
https://steemit.com/experiment/@bullionstackers/experiment-4-junior-steemians-please-read-are-you-ready-to-be-upvoted-first-in-steemit
My takeaway is to just do what comes naturally and stay consistent about it. Keep interacting and building relationships. If that is the case, then it seems like just simple natural law and I can sure get with that.
It takes time to develop relationships. Agree with you that consistency is a good approach.
Good points there! :)
I have always wondered are upvotes random? Or do people actually follow individuals? I say this because Steemit is not as mainstream and I feel like others may check back every so often unlike fb where people log on multiple times daily...
I feel like getting more people onto the platform will make things more regular.
Posting valuable content is the key to success here .. That has been proven numerous times.