... with 5000 SP or less, providing you with (despite average content) one of the most engaging blogs on Steem.

_{Alive works for me - although, you have an auto-vote set..... interesting.....}

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The tl;dr

Find decent people, invest a little SP and a good deal of time.

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Yesterday, I pulled all but one of my remaining delegations to the 50 'person' accounts I've delegated to over the past 18 months. Removing delegation is not something I enjoy doing, but most of these accounts reached the goal I set out in my mind when I originally delegated them some Steem Power.

Many of these accounts owned a couple of hundred Steem Power or less when the 'free SP' was provided, and the target was to see out the loan until they reached 500 SP, or quit.

And so, with a few pies and a bit of summary, hopefully we can see how this 'experiment' has turned out, as well as possibly answering the question set out to me on Discord a couple of weeks ago:

My answer at the time was as follows:

I've always tried to respond to everyone, except the total spammers - even those guys i'll respond to at times with something short. I guess running a league of engagement has helped, something for people to drop in on weekly. Lots of my engagers are minnows, or smaller - it is a lot of time.

In this reply I forgot to mention that I was delegating Steem Power to dozens of accounts, many of which (as the charts will show), joined towards the end of 2017 and in the first half of 2018.

Why is that important?

Steem Power was, in relation to it's lifetime average, very expensive over this period.

We had this boom of new users, who if they wanted to invest, needed to pay top wack to do so. Those that could afford to did, and many are still here, lowering their average, and earning by hook or crook.

However, those people aren't necessarily the best engagers, or the best authors. And by law of averages, those people were more likely to be found in the greater number of accounts that didn't have $2500 to buy 500 SP.

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When were these accounts created?

I mentioned above that many of the accounts I delegated to arrived around the boom period for both STEEM price and new users.

December, January, and March all had price peaks for STEEM and or SBD - not good months to buy, but with the large influx of new people, surely some good ones?

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Month of delegations

The busiest month followed the all time highs for new users and price. Lots of 'how to' posts, lot's of people still finding their way in a falling market.

In a network still termed 'complex' by some of our most educated authors, the rapid growth of the user-base, just in time for a year long collapse in price, created the perfect storm for shocking user retention.

Churn rates in the first half of last year were terrible, and I quote:

January (2018) showing that Steemit lost more active users than gained source

source

With the above data in mind, how did I do? Did I pick the right people? - Are they still around, engaging and powering up?

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Current status of previous delegates

As I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of these accounts held under 500 Steem Power when I originally delegated. It is pretty tough to track the exact number they held at the time and so you will just have to take my word for it.

Almost 60% of these accounts now hold at least 500 Steem Power of their own. That is a fair result I would say, considering 23 of the 50 accounts joined in December 2017 and January 2018 - a time where we lost more active users than we gained.

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Last post activity of previous delegates

Over half of my 50 previous delegates posted less than 24 hours ago, and 70% of them in the past week.

Yes, I'm pretty happy with that.

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So that was the 'little SP', what about 'the good deal of time'?

It's true, you can't throw 'money' at problems and expect that to solve them alone. The encouragement given by entrusting your Steem Power in someone is great (I know the feeling), but without the time spent engaging, answering questions, dealing with requests, etc, this is only half the solution.

I'm not going to dwell on this too much, but if you are interested you can check back on an analysis last year in relation to user retention and that league of mine here: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@paulag/how-to-engage-and-retain-users-backed-up-with-steemit-data

It does take time to manage, produce, and follow up with commentary, but it's part of the answer to how to engage and retain users.

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I don't have a whale-sized stake, I don't write anywhere close to the most interesting content.....

... but I do share a witness and you can vote for it here!

https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemcommunity&approve=1

or here: https://steemitwallet.com/~witnesses

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Cheers

Asher