SteemVoter and the organic curator
Were you aware that I use a voting bot?
Well... I do. And I also claim to be an organic curator.
I've been debating whether or not to "go public" with the fact that I use SteemVoter. Clearly you can see which side of the argument won - but this is not a in any way a product or service endorsement.
I'd rather call it a teaching moment with a good bit of transparency.
Screen shot I took of the SteemVoter site
What is SteemVoter?
SteemVoter is a program which allows a user to create voting rules.
You can:
- Select which user you wish to upvote.
- Set the vote power percentage.
- Set the vote delay in minutes.
They clearly state that they reserve the right to use one vote every day from every account to self-promote the @steemvoter account. "This may not happen exactly every day and we may catch up on historical votes due in small batches."
And if you haven't seen it, they made a huge announcement!
How can you use a voting bot and call yourself an organic curator?
It you take a look at my account on SteemD.com you will notice a bunch of replies. This is NOT bot generated. This is me actually spending a good portion of time throughout the day to catch up on reading and interacting with my friends and followers.
I'll get to the importance of SteemD as part of my curation toolbox in a moment.
First, I'd like to share the screenshots of who I bot vote and then I'll explain my selection process.
Okay, you've seen the who but maybe you're now curious about the WHY - and maybe even more curious why you might not be on the list, right?
I've given myself strict guidelines to adhere to and it's worked for me so far.
See, when I first used SteemVoter, I was also following Streemian trails. So in addition to being a very active curator in my own right, SV and Streemian wiped me out. My vote strength was DRAINED and it took weeks to get it back to 80% strength. I stopped following the Streemian trails and deleted everyone on my SteemVoter list. If I was going to use these tools I had to be smart about it.
The SteemVoter Guidelines
Please note that these are guidelines that I created and follow because it enhances and compliments my normal activity.
- Rarely posts more than 3 times a day.
- I subscribe to and support their initiatives
- Quality consistency
- Strictly for curation earnings
And if you look at the list I bet you can find the one account which has a bot vote "strictly for curation earnings."
- Notice there are only 30 users on my list. My personal maximum is 40.
- Notice that everyone is getting a 100% vote.
As a dolphin, my votes still do not carry a lot of weight and I've made it a practice to upvote 100% all the time with the exception of using the slider to vote 50% on comments.
- Notice that with the exception of the ONE account, I've set voting delay to 30 minutes.
Why 30 minutes? Because unless things have changed, the majority of the curation awards go back to the author if you upvote after 30 minutes. Hmm... Come to think of it, maybe I should adjust those to 40 minutes just to be safe.
If I was only here for the rewards my list would be FULL of high-earning members of Steemit. My core motivation is not earning. I want to help people. I want to grow an an individual. I want to have fun. Earning is a secondary perk for which I'm grateful for.
What's your core motivation for being on Steemit?
Using SteemD as a tool to compliment SteemVoter
When visiting my account on SteemD.com I see my account's incoming and outgoing activity. If my bot voted, I do my best to click the link, read it AND follow up with a comment.
How do you think I got past 7,100 posts, y'all?
Words of Caution
There is nothing wrong with trying to boost your curation rewards, but make sure your vote power isn't drained because you've assigned it to trails and forgot to account for your own organic interaction!
Check your account status on:
https://Steemd.com/@ YOUR_USERNAME
https://SteemDB.com/@ YOUR_USERNAME
https://Steemstats.com
If you follow a Streemian trail make certain they are not draining your vote power!
A recommendation
Think of your upvotes as leaving tips for your favorite waitress or bartender...or artist, musician, writer, cryptogeek.
This does not apply to all of my readers but...
I just checked SteemStats and it states that I've made 45 votes in 24 hours.
100% voting power on them all
AND my vote strength is only down to 77.3%
If you're gonna vote - leave a good tip!
Everything in this post is my opinion and based solely on my personal Steemit activity. Your account is your own. Steemit responsibly. I'm Meredith Loughran and I approve this message.
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Join my curation trail on Streemian
Hey @merej99 you rock!! I just added you to my autovote list. :) Thanks for making Steemvoter feel valued. Keep being awesome!
She absolutely rocks :)
Can't deny that :)
Thanks for that @thecryptodrive
SteemVoter is definitely valued by me and... well... that's good enough for me! LOL
Great post, @merej99 (and thanks so much for including me in your list).
I too struggled with using a bot or not. A while back, I even wrote my own voting bot in PHP so I could follow vote some accounts. I realized I didn't want to take that approach because some people vote for stuff I personally wouldn't vote for. Then I started using Steemvoter also because I realized I almost always vote up those same authors and sometimes I'm sad I missed a post of there's and by the time I get to voting for them, the first payout window is already gone. So yeah, I use Steemvoter also for a select group of authors I think consistently put out great content (or, in some cases, are friends of mine which mostly put out great content). :)
As for the thirty minute thing, you can vote inside of 30 minutes (and many bots do, in order to get more curation rewards), but a portion will go to the author. If you vote too late on a popular post, you may get no curation rewards at all (or very low ones) if most people with higher steem power voted before you.
LOL - isn't that the truth about "mostly good content" LOL
Like anything, there is room for adjustment and the list can be tweaked but keeping an eye on the people I've got on the list, I can tell you that I've never seen EVERYONE post at the same time on the same day because that would be 30 votes gone in a snap! A small list helps me stay on top of things. And I know you've seen my comments. They're about as short as yours! LOL
I've thought about voting inside 30 minutes and I might change it to 15 or 20 minutes but honestly, I do enough manual curation that I barely look at those rewards.
Do you have any thoughts on how things might change with curation with the HF?
I have no idea on where the HF will land and how that will impact things. At this point, I'm okay with trusting the witnesses who have invested the most into this platforms success, and I'm okay with experiments to see what works and what doesn't. I've seen good arguments for and against curation rewards. Ultimately, we need growth. Social media platforms work when they gain the network effect. If your friends and family are there, you want to be there also. If we can't achieve that, no amount of tweaking with the rewards will matter long term, IMO.
As for vote time, I adjust my times based on the author. Some authors posts go viral so quickly that I know my vote won't get much in the way of a curation reward unless I vote on that author earlier. Other authors, not so much. I haven't looked at that stuff in a while though. Maybe it's time I revisit it. :)
I'm definite okay with experiments as long as I know what's coming. Surprise initiatives like we've just recently been through was like standing on a soap box yelling for everyone to calm down while the city was on fire. LOL
Sounds like we both might be tweaking it a little. LOL but honestly, I can't even remember the last time I checked the curation reward in my wallet. I see it on the SteemD list but never add it up. I wonder... Would I even miss curation rewards? Hmm...
Indeed.
Frankly I don't like bots, when I upvote a post it's because I think it has some merit and I'm not interested in who writes it, if it's good to me I upvote. Only one I would use a bot on is @lordvader who is awesome, so his posts are always great, or so he says. Also my vote is worth practically nothing so a bot for me would be useless.
I know exactly how you feel. I was completely against bots when I first started but I started to change my thinking when I needed to take time away from the computer. I still wanted to show my peeps support and the bot does that...and your votes mean a lot to the people you've connected to whether it's got monetary value or not.
Yeah, @lordvader is awesome. I do hope to see his Force choke in action soon. :)
I use SteemVoter in an almost identical fashion. I've never been a fan of curation trails, only the consistent author support that SteemVoter provides.
If an author slips in quality or I find they post a mix of topics I don't want auto voted then they come off the list. For instance, I may love someone's art but don't want to upvote any frequent political posts they make, so they just get manually curated by me.
I think the automated tools are fine and helpful. Certain authors I set to shorter upvote times, when I know it is an account funding development, like esteem or Busy, specifically to give them a larger reward share.
Don't worry that I'm commenting and not upvoting... it should be coming in about 20 minutes ;)
I'll take comments before upvotes every day. I'm always looking at the number of upvotes to number of comments. If it's a 3:1 vote to comment ratio I feel like I'm doing really well. When it's like 10:1 I pout. LOL
Some of the people on my list aren't active anymore. I haven't taken them off because there's no point since it's not taking a vote to be there. BUT I also leave them there in case they come back! So when I scroll the blockchain and see them, I can hurry over with a virtual hug.
I've got people that I check in with every day but the sheer volume of their posts prevent me from placing them on the list. I'd rather manually curate them.
I am so pleased that you have posted this.
You have explained the systems very concisely.
The reason being that, much as I do not particularly like the auto-voting systems, one has to abide by and work with the law of the land.
I have a steemvoter account and a streemian account and I work a lot with the guys at SteemTrail who are brilliant.
Thank you! Namaste to you ... again this evening, @merej99!
PS Going to follow you on Twitter too!
You are very welcome @ebryans - as long as you have a little more understanding then you can implement your own system and be confident in those decisions. :)
I hear you very well, @merej99! Please know that much as I am aware of my reputation, the powers that be are grateful for the work I produce for them. The delivery could be couched in language more palatable at times and I am sorry for any upset caused to you. Respect to you for your contribution too!
Oh, I think you may have misunderstood. I'm not upset at all - instead I was giving encouragement. I am always looking for helpful tools and will continue to share my experiences to help others and would love to hear about the tools you use to make Steemit easier.
I don't know what I don't know until someone shares something new.
OK, thank you. If you recall, we got off to a shaky start. I am glad that is behind us.
I am learning something new about steemit every day. The funny thing is that I also teach people something new most days too. This is where we should be. The things I find most helpful are steemdb and steemd - the most fun I have is working with the guys at StreemTrail on the contests I run and share with them. I am also happy to say that I have a very happy little Fb Group which has about 7 members and we have a very BIG thing to announce - hopefully - Friday.
It is at the moment a laboratory for some ideas of mine - one starting tomorrow - but everyone is welcome to join in, contribute, share, get rewarded, bring fresh ideas etc.
It is just a closed group to safeguard the ideas!
I am looking forward to the announcement. :)
Thanks for this info. As you know I am new to the slider and wasn't really sure what to do. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts coz I can then pick up some good ideas!
I can only lead by example. This has worked for me but it's not for everyone. It really depends on your core motivation, I suppose. I'm not here to win the curation king crown. But maybe going for top ranking curation is what keeps some people coming back.
I rarely succeed but I usually try to drop a vote inside the first 30min so the author gets most of the reward XD
I like your use of bots has a helper tool for highly active curators.
And I think I might be in love at first sight with SteemDB.
SteemDB is definitely prettier than SteemD. I don't know why I don't use it more. LOL Plain Jane syndrome maybe. LOL
Good job @merej99
Perfect.. Resteem
Thanks @barvon - Steem on, love. :)
Okay @merej99 *_^
Thanks for the write up. I use the same 3 tools to monitor too though no bot for now.:-)
with nearly 10000 posts/comments I can't imagine that you need a bot... unless you are a bot? Or super human? LOL Seriously, your engagement is AMAZING.
I'm like you? Looking for real work still?
I hear that!
I would LOVE a steady income...but I don't want a job! Hopefully some of my projects will start earning something so I can justify staying home to Steemit.
Who needs a job when you have steady income?
WHEN I have steady income doing the things I love - I will NEVER WORK AGAIN. :D
I prefer to do it by myself, I prefer the human touch. Don't think I could trust a bot I like to see what I'm doing when I'm doing it.
Nods
Yup - that's why I like to check SteemD so I can follow up the auto vote with a comment. How's hubby doing? Is he well enough to work now? Did YOU get to relax for Mother's Day?
I had a lovely day thank you and yeah he's onto his 2nd week back but still not allowed to lift anything
Be honest now... are you glad he's out of the house? LOL
I tell my husband he needs to find friends when he's off 2 days in a row. When he takes vacation, OY! I want to strangle him! hahaha
Not really as I'm stuck in the house all day it gets very lonely. Having the company was nice for a change. Not sure If I would be happy if it was permanent but I enjoyed the 5 weeks of not being lonely
When I was in the Adirondacks and hubby had to go south to take care of some family business he was gone for about 2 weeks and never felt lonely. I guess that's why I love online communities. It might not be flesh and blood breathing next to you, but it is somewhat of a human connection. And when he came back I was so used to the quiet. Well, he wouldn't stop talking and then he turned on the TV and the radio and it was so loud! After about 2 hours I was like STOPPPPP Please be quiet for 5 minutes before I go insane! I think I could definitely be a hermit.
I sit in silence when hubby isn't here no tv or radio just me and the laptop. It does get tedious when you have been doing it for years but I prefer my own company I have got used to he silence, it was nice to have someone to talk to not that hubby talks much