Takeaway a Post - Task 3 of Sndbox Summer Camp: Travel, Food & Homesteading QUEST 1

Yesterday I completed my second task, apologies for putting you through that video 😀. Today is the third task, which means I'm past the half way mark on this quest. Yeah!!!

For the third task of this Sndbox Summer Camp I've chosen to analyse a post by @dontstopmenow. This is a Steemian that I haven't come across before but I like the sound of his name. I concluded my first task of the Quest with "Life is a never ending journey" ~ I believe once you've started you're the only person who can stop it.

The first thing that I notice about his post is its title A tour around punta del estes most expensive neighbor and the truth behind its empty luxurious mansions (Uruguay). I don't know anything about Uruguay, and if he didn't have the latter part of the title I probably would have skipped the post as to be honest I have no interest in seeing how the other half lives.

Next is the thumbnail for the post ie the first photo in your post. When followers go through their feed or the New page how do you lure them to open up and read your post instead of the many many others (if you've got onto the trending or hot page you won't have this problem). The title and thumbnail are your teasers and you have probably about a 10 second opportunity window here. Frankly speaking, the thumbnail for this post isn't the best out of all the photos. You can tell its a luxurious mansion but the front is obscured by the palm trees so you can't see it very well.

I probably would have used this photo instead where there's a drive way leading your eyes towards the mansion

Or even better still, this one which would have complemented his opening sentence very well "Not so long ago I went out on my motorcycle and visited the less populated neighborhoods of Punta del Este, appreciating the architecture of its large and ostentatious houses"

Since joining Steemit, I've learnt to touch up all my photos. It's a bit fiddly but the results are totally worth it especially if you take crappy photos like I do. Sometimes the differences are minute but most of the time its worth that extra ten minutes of work. I'm more of a visual person and good photos definitely helps with that 10 second opportunity window I mentioned.

There are quite a lot of places in this world where people buy houses but don't often live in them so its always interesting to understand the story behind them. For example many wealthy people around the world flock to London to buy properties and leave them vacant for a lot of the time. Often this attracts squatters (people who deliberately enters property without permission and lives there or intends to live there) and has caused quite some controversy. Punta del Este doesn't seem to have this problem. Its problem seems to be on another level.

When I read the post, I was actually surprised about the similarities between the situation in Uruguay and Steemit. The divide between the rich and the poor is a bit like the whales vs the minnows where the latter have to work a lot lot harder for the limited resources. The other thing is the tax haven. This is always a controversial issue. It's not illegal, everyone have their opinion on it depending on which side of the fence you sit, and there's a fine line between tax avoidance and tax evasion. On Steemit there are some things which are clearly against the rules such as plagarism, abuse, spam and theft. Some things are frowned upon by many such as raping the reward pool or begging for upvotes or follow. And everyone have their own view on things such as bot voting, self voting.

My biggest takeaway from the post, is the death of the director of the National Secretary for Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing who suffered a heart attack and was found dead in his swimming pool. I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the matter, but when someone who is responsible for investigating drug trafficking and the Panama Papers dies under these circumstances, it surely does sound a bit suspicious.

My last word on @dontstopmenow post is the takeaway. A good post should always have a takeway, something that the readers remembers or does after reading the post. This could be something like "I definitely wanna go there now" "I'm going to try that next time" or "I wonder what my friends would think about that". In my case, my takeaway was to look up where Uruguay rank globally on corruption. In fact, they don't do that bad - 23rd out of 180 worldwide, and 3rd in the Americas, after US and Canada. So how did the situation end up like that? By the way, well done to the Kiwi's on topping the table!! Sorry I've digressed, but you see, that was a good takeway on @dontstopmenow part.

Tomorrow I'll be doing my compilation post, till then enjoy your weekend!