#minnowuprising | #needleworkmonday | Final Report (and other news ...)

This is the final report which looks at progress to build the wealth of 22 accounts posting under the #needleworkmonday tag as part of the July #minnowuprising campaign initiated by @taskmaster4450. This post set the baseline for reviewing progress.

Progress in the second half of the month

Well, things slowed down a little. The underlying pattern is that the accounts that are regularly active (posting 3-5 times a week and consistently upvoting) are making steady progress, earning between 2 and 15 steem power every week.

Final numbers for 22 #needleworkmonday accounts for #minnowuprising campaign.

Active Accounts Continue to Earn

Posting

Posting two or three times a week is enough to keep earning SP.
If you're looking for ideas about how to improve your posts, here's the Ultimate Markdown Tutorial by @carrieallen, which includes how to find free images and free basic image editing options. There's also Pimp Your Post Thursday on discord - you can find out more in this post from @shadowspub.

Joining the #freewrite community is a great way to boost your writing ideas - just five minutes writing in response to a daily prompt. There's an extended version every weekend, a great community and lots of contests. Here's Sunday's post by @mariannewest with all the details.

Voting - Curation Rewards

Using all your votes (that's about ten a day if you have less than 500SP) is the One Thing You Can Do. This week's Curation and Engagement Leagues show that even accounts with very small amounts of SP can earn very well through careful voting.

This post by @revisesociology has lots of income earning ideas - including how to use your votes to full advantage. One of the things mentioned in the post is the increased curation rewards for votes on dapps like dtube, dlike and dlive - I've noticed this myself!

What have I learned?

This post from @mrscwin says it all: consistency, consistency, consistency and provides great ideas about how to go about it (this post is out of voting time now, but you can show your support for @mrscwin by voting for one of her posts that is less than seven days old).

I suppose, in some ways, my prejudices were confirmed over the month :) This little exercise has made me more discriminating and more careful where I put my attention. I guess the major reinforcement is to be clear about what I want from Steemit and to focus on that - though it is easy to get side-tracked sometimes!

Over the month, I earned 35 SP (or about one SP a day). I hadn't been keeping a record of what I had been earning in previous months, so I wasn't sure how this compared, but I was pleased with it :).The big lesson for me was how important curation is - at least a third of the SP I earned came from voting for other people. Consistency about voting (when, how often and who for) can be as important as posting.

What now, grasshopper?

Well, I have been slowly investing in Steem over the summer. I had been saving a little each month since early in the year and, yesterday, I decided to power up to dolphin level. I had planned to do this, but I thought it would take much longer. I have made a plan about how I want to use my investment, which you can read about in the post I wrote yesterday.

I've aimed for a balance of continuing to build my account, supporting community initiatives and managing all the other things we have to do in life. At the moment, my posts earn an average of about $1.50, so I have set my SP so that I have a daily voting budget of about $1.60 and the remainder I have delegated.

About 20% of those delegations are to broadly community initiatives including 250 SP to @needleworkmonday. Now, I haven't asked @crosheille about this in advance, so I hope she will forgive me - those SP were burning a hole in my pocket! I feel the #needleworkmonday community is really important and brings a lot of joy to the people who participate. It is one of the most supportive communities, with great interaction. I'd like to see it grow, and I'd like to see members rewarded for their commitment and support (and work)!

I have got a dilemma, though. I really like the ideas that @crosheille set out for the account in this post. However, you know I have a bee in my bonnet about Voting Power sitting at 100% and wasting valuable votes (it just brings me out in a rash, I get all itchy-scratchy). I'm just wondering what is going to happen to @needleworkmonday's Voting Power on days other than Mondays? (I know there will be some overspill into adjoining days to ensure that everyone who should gets a vote).

I do have an idea about how we could grow the account and use all the Voting Power and not create too much work for anyone, especially @crosheille:

#needleworkmonday remains as it always has plus the brilliant ideas that @crosheille has outlined for curating and resteeming; this is open to anyone who meets the #needleworkmonday posting guidelines.

In addition, people who meet quality posting guidelines for all their posts (not just ones tagged #needleworkmonday) could apply to become Approved Needleworkers (or another title). Approval would focus around things like good quality posts, good engagement, using their VP most of the time (sorry, can't help myself) and some thing like "fair use" eg not swamping everyone's feed with ten posts a day, as well as evidence of good #needleworkmonday posts.

Anyone who is approved transfers an enrolment fee of, say, 1 SBD to @needleworkmonday and in return receives a small upvote (say 35%) on all their posts, which is set up via steemauto.com, forever (or until circumstances dictate that the rules change). Only posts which meet the @needleworkmonday posting guidelines are eligibile for re-steeming or appearing in the curation post from that account.

I joined @runningproject which has a similar set up and seems to run very well. I'm sure if we had questions, @toofasteddie would help us with some ideas and answers.

This is just my suggestion - I welcome everyone else's ideas and thoughts - and, most importantly, I hope it doesn't create too much work (possibly, on the contrary) for @crosheille. I'd also be interested in any other ideas #needleworkmonday people have for building the @needleworkmonday account.

Knitting

Mm, the big news is a life change that I'm going to be making over the next year or so. This may involve moving home, if I can get the numbers to stack up, but whether I move or not, I will be getting a studio. I've seen a house that I would like to buy. It's in another part of the country, but with the same easy access to London (where I work), and near the sea.

I've just started to negotiate another five year contract where I will work part-time and, ideally, less and less time over the five years, as I move more into knitting and designing. The house also has a very ramshackle but potentially very lovely garden, which is my other great interest - it would be ideal for creating a food forest.

Meanwhile, my Big Wool jumper is ready for sewing up:

My next adventures are going to be with this book, recommended by @neumannsalva:

Amazon.co.uk Top Down Crochet Sweaters, Dora Ohrenstein

I might learn how to edit pictures for my posts as well :)

I'm still on holiday, back in September. Happy Needlework Monday!