Let's Shut Down The Corrupt Pay-For-Vote Services, Now There's A Much Better Service Available!
We all know paying for votes is bad, but many new users still pay the little money they have to fat accounts like @randowhale and @booster, just to name a few. This is bad, really bad!
Yes, one gets his investment back in the form of a whale vote, but these services are a cancer to the Steem economy. Small fish pay money to the big ones?! Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Steemit is all about sharing, not depriving users of their money, especially new ones who just started out and want to reach a wider audience. In other words, the rich get richer, and the poor poorer. This is just another scheme to drain the rewards pool, and it's just bad karma.
Don't you wish there was a better solution?
Well, there is! The recently launched @promoted account by @fabien offers a service that can change all that.
When promoting posts, they go to the Promoted tab, and by doing this, authors get noticed. This is the way to go, and the way Steemit is supposed to work. I've been promoting my posts from day one, and I can honestly say it did have a positive impact on attracting new and organic traffic to my blog. Also, I get my investment back most of the time. I usually promote my posts with the equivalent of my vote, and upvote myself. For example, If my vote is worth 0.3 SBD, I will promote my posts for this amount and upvote it. This way I get back my small investment and all I lose is just some voting power.
What @promoted does is quite amazing. When you promote your post, the bot will vote for you, according to how much you paid for promotion.
Maximum: 10 SBD burned => 100% upvote
Minimum: 0.001 SBD burned => 0.01% upvote
So what's the difference?
When you promote a post using the Steemit feature all funds go to @null and get burned. By burning SBD we make the price of Steem and SBD go up because there are fewer coins in circulation. Contarty to paying whales to vote for you, who just get richer, plus the fragile Steemit economy takes a hit, every time someone pays them.
You can choose how much voting power you want @promoted to vote for you depending on the amount you pay for promotion.
You can check how much you will get in return using https://steemnow.com, just add @promoted and you can see his voting power and how much SBD his vote is worth.
What's more, you don't get an annoying spam on your comments. So, start promoting your posts, just use the PROMOTE button in the lower right corner of your posts and help Steemit grow, not just the handful of people who use the platform for their own advantage.
Steem on, and be safe!
On topic:
https://steemit.com/tag/@rossenpavlov/paying-for-votes-is-bad-m-kay
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Until "promoted" posts actually appear in your general feed...the promoted tab is useless.
It's returns are laughable at best.
I don't personally use voting bots but there is nothing wrong with them.
The accounts that power those bots have every right to use Their Stake however they see fit.
Even when we don't agree with them...it's Their Stake!
Wanting to utilize a better system in your opinion, totally fine, shitting on the creators of other systems that has absolutely benefited users, completely shallow.
To much time complaining and less time creating, yeah that's beneficial to our society.
Only way to fight the bad things, do a better things available )
I thought Steemit was about creating engaging content and making a profit, but it seems for most users it's just making a profit. The top trending posts are usually crap, good authors are left behind and now you can pay whales to upvote on irrelevant posts. As you said, nothing wrong with that.
I agree with you too @rossenpavlov. I've seen some horrible posts with just a picture taken randomly from the internet, without even an explanation text or source: upvoted to 10$ and even more by booster, randowhale, bellyrub, minnowbooster. I don't say that their service is bad, I just say that they should actually look at what is upvoted...
@johnnyclearwater very well said. I agree with you big time.
@rossenpavlov, I would say that IF you are in a position to throw SBD at greater visibility, doing so through "promoted" makes more sense... and it's definitely better for the community, in the long run.
Seems to me the problem with ALL these "services" is that as soon as people think they can "make money" with them, the voting power declines to 20% or less because "everyone" uses the service. At least with this, we're burning some SBD... which is a positive. So if I'm going to get only a small return on my investment, at least I'd rather it comes as a result of also "doing good" for Steemit, as a whole.
My point exactly. As long as your post makes more than you put in as an investment you are all set.
My thoughts also, there are so many me too promotion gigs on Steemit that it is nullifying any effect it ever had. I have never ever used these services as I feel it only encourages people to focus on trying to climb to the top, rather than create good content.
Yes, many people don't get that unfortunately. I guess making two bucks from a post is a huge deal for them.
That's part of the "scam", people think it will earn them more than two bucks. After trying it a couple of times they soon figure it out. I have read countless comments about the low returns, and not a single one about the jackpot they made or the increased exposure it brought them. There is always a fresh wave of noobs that are pounced upon by these minnow groups in the comments.
I will change my mind when I see someone become a dolphin thanks to these services. Maybe I was wrong the whole time :)
;-)
Thanks. I'll try it
Thank you too!
Personally, I found @minnowbooster to be more rewarding, my husband uses the @promotion function and he didn't receive even half he paid for nor did he receive any extra upvotes or views. But I guess in the end @Steemit is not only about hard work but luck.
It's not ALL about the money. I wish Steemit was that simple: post absolutely whatever, pay for votes, become a whale. In a perfect world :)
Resteemed for increasing diffusion. I would like to translate this article to Spanish, with your permission.
Be my guest.Let's spread the word!
Done.
https://steemit.com/spanish/@ropaga/cerremos-los-corruptos-servicios-de-pago-por-voto-ahora-hay-una-alternativa-mucho-mejor
This is a great post man, I'm a constant user of booster, I admit it. But I have to tell this helped me a lot with getting more views and make it to the trending or hot page, I know its kinda bad, and is not a total honest thing to do, but so far it was doing good.
On the other side I totally get what you are saying and the fact that we are paying for votes is just wrong, and in no way it could be a good thing to the community, as you said it makes some people go richer and most of us don't.
I use promote always, I don't Upvote myself because in my oppinion is worst than buying votes, we don't need to autolike just to save a couple of cents.
Anyway talking about the promote thing, as I said, overtime I make a post, I upload it and instantly promote it, and I have to tell you, I don't think its making a difference, I always promote with less than 1.0 SBD and the benefits are much less than that.
Im not trying to discus your post, I get your point and I know what you are saying is true, we must stop this buying votes thing, but is really hard because we, the new users don't have much to help ourselves. I try to write original and interesting contest, make a research, try to make my post look good, and make it easier to read, and I still got like 8 views. We need more real readers, more people wiling to read and upvote good content, not lots and lots of just authors, and to make it possible, it would be awesome to have a different curation reward system. I don't have the solution but I can see this is getting a problem, 300 posts to 50 people reading them, is just imposible.
Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing your info, I'm trying no to use bots, and I hope we can get rid of them soon. Cheers my friend.
Thak you for the comment. Really good analysis!
I think the main reason for all of this is the simple fact that there are not enough readers vs authors, as you said, other authors are your readers. Curators get about 25% of all the rewards, so it's not very incentivizing for a non-author to invest in Steem Power just to collect just a fraction of these awards. It's true that many great authors get left behind, and it's frustrating to see so many shitposts from the same "authors" collecting all the fat rewards on the trending tabs. But as long as we feed the whales and let them feed each other and stay quiet and just keep on upvoting and paying them, we are not in a position to complain. Decentralization rules!
You are totally right, we are not in a position of complain, I try to be really thankful about this, and not only because the money, which in my case is not much, this platform has a lot of potential that is still kinda blurry because the money involved. As you said Decentralization rules! and we all must fight together as a community to make us individually stronger.
Because just like in real life 99% of the wealth goes to 1% and when we continue to play along and pay them and upvote their crap for curation rewards, who are we really helping?
It's up for us to stand up. I'm not talking about a revolution or anything. I just want people to understand that they are harming the platform, and in return harming their selves. Steem on!
I am still trying to wrap my tiny brain about the promoted post things and this but have an overall question of is what @promoted doing something that should just be implemented into the Steemit default code and how promotion should work, or is @promoted another type of bot that will give an advantage only to users who know about this post? Basically is using it 'fair'? Or basically just as fair as every other bot on Steemit?
I'm not sure if it has to be implemented in the code. It's just a whale but who will upvote you when you burn some SBD. I never said that if you burn more SBD you will get more money back. It's not a substitute for the other services, it's a better alternative. When you promote the goal is to put less and get more for your investment. I think people get confused because of that. It just adds an extra Steem on your overall payout. It's just sad seeing people who post something, pay, get a whale vote, have almost no other comments or interaction and the post is basically dead after that. I can't see how this counts as success. Maybe this is the reason some can't understand my point of view.
super toll
Agree! I stopped using bid bots and I'm happy I did. @Promoted is really better imho. Thanks for sharing.
spreading this with a resteem!
Just don't spend more than what you can afford. Sometimes a couple of cents are enough to be on the top list in the promoted tab on tags that don't get much traffic right now, but are slowly growing. I'm not stating that you will get your investment back, so just put a little, @promoted will compensate you also a little. But to make a successful post takes more than just promoting and paying for a whale vote.
Steem on!
upvoted! Thank you so much for this info, I had no idea! Thanks to you I will start promoting my posts ;)
Spread the word!