Why I powered up, and why you should too.
If you’re an active contributor and you also own STEEM, powering up is simply a no-brainer! Let me tell you why I think so.
The Main Reason
As an investor in STEEM, and an active blogger and contributor, it just makes no sense at all not to power up. First and foremost, as an active contributor, powering up is the best way to get the most out of your overall contribution towards the continued success of your investment. Obviously posting quality content is extremely important to begin with, but with Steem Power your curation also works towards the goal of ensuring that Steemit is a trusted source of quality content. Quality content is what will drive Steemit’s success, and while this responsibility begins with authors, it’s the audience who ultimately bears the brunt of that responsibility, especially if your platform gives you a financial mechanism for curating. When you power up, you start promoting quality content using real monetary incentives. If you self upvote your own quality work (articles, comments, and the like), you’ll also earn money yourself. That having been said, you’ll have to work, no doubt about it, but if you’re an investor in STEEM, and an active blogger and contributor as well, you really have no excuse for not doing your most in making Steemit a success.
My Strategy
My strategy is simple since it’s dictated by common sense: post on things I know and curate on the same. I’m a language teacher with degree in Legal Studies who also has broad experience in both IT and investing. The truth of the matter is that my areas of so called expertise are limited (and relative as well). They define exactly where I plan to contribute, and, as would logically be expected, I’m not going to post or curate on something I don’t know or understand. That having been said, I’m also a photography hobbyist, book lover, film buff, etc., etc., so I might make an occasional comment outside of my areas of expertise.
I also have limitations within my areas of expertise as well. I was mainly into hardware, operating systems, and sys admin, but I also designed, created and maintained websites and their servers so I know a little html, javascript and php, etc. With the advent of crypto I learnt enough about C+ to be able to read and understand code, thanks to the comments. 😅 And what does all that mean? It means that I know enough to be dangerous, and that means being cautious with curation efforts where my knowledge is limited. I’ve been in crypto since 2013 and I’m quite knowledgeable on the subject, but caution is still the word here with upvotes and comments. It’s not like we can look at the URL to get an idea on the credibility and accuracy of something . . . even though we do have the rep rating. 😉
Even where my experience and knowledge has a stronger foundation, like in the world of business, economics, finance and investing where nothing is ever black and white, I still think healthy humility is an imperative.
In short, my strategy, and the strategy I recommend to everyone, is to engage in a healthy give and take of ideas, opinions and knowledge with others in the areas where you’re an “expert”. If your area of expertise is food, or travel, or health, or science, or politics, or whatever, then, after steeming up, that is where you should focus your curation efforts. That is how you, how I, how we all, working together, can each make our most effective individual contributions towards making Steemit the high quality content provider we dream it to be.
It’s Tough Work, and You Deserve to Reward Yourself
Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve to upvote yourself – if you’ve ever worked on quality curation and/or quality content posting, you know you’re worth every cent of your self upvoting! Truth is we’re really worth much more since, for the majority of us, what we end up seeing in terms of “ROI” on our hard work is well below the minimum wage, so please, upvote yourself.
I certainly will be upvoting myself, but I will limit it to half of my upvoting – the other half will go to original quality content and/or meaningful comments and material contributed by other Steemians. A 50/50 split at 100% power is my rough target, unless I post something fairly insignificant like a smilie, in which case I won’t upvote myself, or in the case where someone else has given a good faith effort but didn’t quite perform up to standard, a 20-50% upvote might be appropriate.
As I’ve already said, what the majority of us make doing this is next to nothing, and as such, we obviously don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the task. In my case, I’m going to commit 7 hours a week to the effort – I need to find and/or create (because my half has to be quality content as well) 10-12 upvotes worth of quality content in an average of 1 hour a day, and that’s not easy to do if you give a good 30 minutes to /created/your_area_of_expertise looking for new stuff before you move on to the overlooked in /hot/your_area_of_expertise after first giving a quick look at your feed to see if there’s some overlooked quality content that’s been missed . . .
Networking with other Steemians working towards similar ends in shared areas of expertise would likely help to make curation more efficient. One model might be an informal group of 30-40 or so, each publishing once a week which would give each contributor a good 5-6 100% upvotes a day (or 10-12 50% upvotes, whatever you most prefer, time allowing, but you get my idea, right?).
It’s pretty easy to just go around giving out random upvotes; it’s quite a different story if you’re looking to really reward quality content. It’s been said that blogging is the new mining. Unlike mining, with blogging you don’t need to spend big bucks on hardware, or pay expensive electricity bills. But you don’t get to sit on your butt either. No, with this you must work! That’s the price for not having huge electric bills and huge capital investment. 😎
The Second Reason for Powering Up
This really brings us back to the main reason itself, but it’s slightly independent as it is more immediate and guaranteed in terms of return on investment: as mentioned, you can, and should, upvote your own posts and comments, and if you upvote 10-12 times a day, half to other contributors you deem to have posted quality content, and the other half to yourself for having found and commented on that quality content, you’ll earn an additional 10% per annum, more or less, on your investment. When you combine that 10% to the roughly 9.5% your SP earns every year, you’ve got an almost 20% yearly gain just for starters, leaving aside longer term price appreciation of STEEM brought about by your community motivated quality content.
Conclusion
By powering up AND actively posting and/or curating quality content we not only increase our individual annual ROI to roughly 20%, but we also do everything in our power to make Steemit the high quality content provider we want it to be, which is, beyond any shadow of doubt, the best way we can contribute to making our collective investment in STEEM the most profitable it can be.
Sound like good enough reasons to power up?
![SteemitAvatar.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmbY4do3QsX2UuD4govpJ3LMoxgQMVfi3qQQirvoKJfegp/SteemitAvatar.jpg)
@cryptographic
Welcome to Steem Community @cryptographic! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.
In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch
Very nice initiative. Helping to educate new members of the community about "security, different terminologies, and best practises" can't be underestimated, especially security. If you're posting this comment to every new member, my commendation! Best of luck with it, and do let me know if there's any way I can help.
BTW, I've followed you (for all the right reasons) and since I'm still under 500 followers . . . 😋
Excellent posts, clarifying many matters that newbies such as myself need to know in order to build our presence and earnings.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should do what we can to ensure more and more quality content.
While Steemit's business model is so much more respectable than those of other social media sites, and while it's content is generally better, there is much content that is of debatable value.
Fair enough, as the platform is open to everybody. But Steemit has great potential as a publishing venture, and we should all work to ensure that its content is known to be high quality.
Extremely succient and well balanced appraisal on Steemit's potential, main challenge, and where responsibility ultimate lies. Thank you for that.
I agree, very good post, but I'd still like some clarification on exactly what the process of powering up is exactly and how to go about it... I understand the basics thought I think. Anyone got some good articles to link about it?
It's clear that your expertise area is the language and communication man. You convinced me, I'm going to power up as much as possible and also upvote even more my own posts. Good work!
That kind of well founded flattery will get you an upvote everytime! 😂
Seriously, I give it my best, and very much appreciate that kind of positive feedback.
Glad you liked it!
😂😂👍🏻 believe me! I read it till the end because you caught my total attention and I enjoyed while reading it and learning.
Thanks for the upvote
That's really great to hear. It means that I did my job right. One of the most important aspects of writing is to capture the reader's attention and hold it to the end. It's not an easy task, especially with articles whose titles end in "why you should too". Thanks again.
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how the qualify of this @originalworks for video contents? video that created by ourself and edited also qualified?
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Interesting take. Don't know how I feel about the 50/50. and someone already mentioned the whales who do that and just serve themselves.
The criticism regarding self upvoting on the part of some whales is that they do so on trash posting. They post memes and upvote themselves, or they make worthless comments and upvote themselves that way. Sometimes they upvote each other's trash. Of course, the worst of the worst are those with double and triple figure upvoting power. The key word in all of this is trash.
I'm talking about upvoting quality content, and I'm even more in favor if that quality content is your own.
There's a huge difference.
And, let's remember to not make a blanket observation: it's a select minority whales that I think is getting smaller and smaller the more they realize the long term damage they're doing.
Thanks for bringing it up again. It's an issue that I think we should keep in the forefront.
I am all for upvoting quality content. Just a bit concerned. I just saw a post by someone on how to keep all the money to yourself. Just think that kind of thinking is the end to a social platform and probably to quality content as well....
And yes, I didn't mean to imply that all of any group do this - I really wouldn't know and it is never fair to say that all of any given group do the same. That is prejudice, right?
Great post. I 100% agree with you on it. The only place i get worried is with the whales who seem to only push themselves and their inner circle. For the ten cent voters i see a lot of love and help being spread around the site so fair play to them.
That is a concern shared and commented on by many a Steemian. Frankly I'm puzzled by their shortsightedness. You'd think they were smart enough to realize that long term they're cutting their noses off to spite their faces.
Three cheers to all those little ol' minnows setting a Steemit Best Practice example! Hopefully those self-interested whales (I say "those" to make clear that I don't think all whales fit into this group) will learn something very positive from their plebeian counterparts. 😍
Absolutely. There are a few great whales actively working on the site and helping the minnows. But they really need to, if people cant see a reason to use the site there are plenty other ways to spend their time. The long term future of steemit depends on on active and functioning membership.
I am grateful for this post. Have been educated with you thought. Now I know the reason why I need to power up and prioritize my upvote to my area of interest. Thanks @cryptographic
Area of interest is key. That's where we all need to really focus. Thanks for pointing that out again. It can't be said enough!
Cheers
@cryptographic great post , congrats . Keep working and with power up you'll raise for sure ! Followed and upvoted , I'd like to keep in touch !
Sounds like a plan. Count me in!
Thank you ! Now the connection is made, we must maintain it being reciprocal active . See you bro
Great post! Glad to have you here!
Glad to be here in such good company contributing my grain of salt. 🙂