RE: What REALLY Goes On Behind The Scenes of The Daily Gems?
There is definitely money in this kind of consolidation/curation. @gavvet has done pretty well out of it too, among others.
I can't complain though. Since I was featured in dragonslayers ($332 and counting) post earlier today, I've received a whole 1 Upvote, 1 comment, and 1 subscriber, and my post is up to a whopping 6 dollars. I'm RICCHHHH!
And he has to scroll through spam for hours to find these "gems". He said it himself, on the internets, so it must be true.
Seriously though, I think part of the problem is the rewards incentive, which I keep bringing up, but the issue is not going away. People are incentivised to vote for "sure shots", rather than doing any genuine, sincere curation.
Look at the discrepancy between the Upvotes and actual interaction on dragonslayer109s posts. His account gets Upvotes - that doesn't mean his posts are actually read.
There's a reason so many people aren't happy to be "featured" on his posts - They simply aren't being promoted or rewarded.
There's only sure shots because whales upvote the same people predictably. Steem lives and dies with how forethoughtful the whales are with their votes and SP; making an effort to spread out their votes and actively curate new content from new authors is key.
This is unfortunately the typical outcome for most authors.
And another development. Apparently @dragonslayer109 does indeed share out, some of the rewards, to some people, sometimes.
He has now begrudgingly started to offer to share some of the SBD rewards with the authors whose work he features. But, much like a store that offers mail in rebates he is putting the burden on the authors to track him down and request a share of the proceeds. He is hoping that people don't actually do that.... and the language in his hidden gems post implies that it's somehow illegitimate for authors to request it... "If you feel you need some of the rewards, come find me"... it's a really weaselly way to go about it.
The subtext here is that you snooze, you lose. It's on you as the featured author to make the request in a timely manner.
It's JUST like those mail in rebates... terms and conditions may apply... shady.