Why Do Smaller Accounts Support Those They Complain About???
This post came after reading a post a few days ago by @crypto2crypto.
The hatred for the bigger accounts on Steemit is pretty obvious. People love to complain and the Whales are a great target. They do not upvote anyone other than themselves, hence showing that they care nothing for the newer people.
In reading @crypto2crypto's post, it is interesting to note the conclusion he came to.
https://steemit.com/steem/@crypto2crypto/i-know-i-have-been-ranting-but
Which brings me to this point....why should larger accounts support Minnows when Minnows refuse to support each other? (I presume Red Fish are also in that camp)
This is what was written...
MINNOWS DON'T SUPPORT MINNOWS!!!!!!!!!!
This is also added.....
Now go to the trending page, and see how many trash posts have hundreds of upvotes..
Do you think the Whales and Orcas are doing all that upvoting? We know the trending page is often the result of bid bot voting, so where do all the votes come from?
You guessed it, the smaller accounts.
Now, this might ruffle some feathers but so be it. People need to be realistic. Do you think an account with a couple hundred thousand SP is going to even notice your upvote let alone support you? Look at the drop down arrow on each post next to the votes, only the highest votes appear. The lower vote amounts are not even visible without doing some digging.
One of the things I noticed is that people fail to remember this is social media. Part of it is the way some people on here promote STEEM saying post and you will make a ton of money on your first post. I saw a headline of a post the other day (I cannot remember who wrote it) that said he blanked on his for 90 posts.
The key to social media is being social. I am continually amazed that people come on here and expect instant success. They either throw up a few posts, complain that the system is unfair, and then leave. Another tactic is they post off and on expecting results. Consistency is required for success on here.
That said, there are no guarantees larger accounts will even know you exist or support you. There are many of the top 300 accounts who have no clue that I exist even though I have close to 11K posts. There are 50K-60K transacting on here each day. It is impossible to interact with even a small portion of those users.
Which brings me back to smaller accounts. The question is why do they not support other smaller accounts? Like @crypto2crypto pointed out, Minnows don't support Minnows.
If I had to guess, it is because everyone wants the instant success. Upvoting a large account a bunch of times takes very little effort and could pay off huge if it is reciprocated. Sadly, it usually is not. Hence, the new person leaves disgruntled.
I believe that success on STEEM requires the long-term view. This is not an overnight process. The key is developing relationships with others on here. The advantage the smaller accounts have is there are a ton of them. People often talk about the power of the Whales (and Orcas). They really would not have a chance if the other 900K accounts posted 3-4 times each day and used their 10 votes each day. The numbers simply get too staggering.
I say all that to say this. You can't complain of a broken system if you are partially to blame.
This doesn't pull any punches yet I have to agree with the sentiment. One of the reason I post the monthly numbers and provide a contrast of the MVest breakdown is to encourage the smaller accounts to keep working to grow their accounts. My central thesis with this is the power of the numbers. A couple hundred accounts cannot withstand the onslaught especially when 75% of the reward pool is given to authors.
My suggestion to newer people is to ignore the larger accounts. Focus the attention upon the Dolphins, Minnows, and other Red Fish. Give your upvotes to these people and comment on their stuff. The likelihood of them supporting you back is much greater.
It is time for people to stop expecting the system to be corrected from the top down. The strength in numbers means that we are capable of altering STEEM from the bottom up.
According to @arcange's posts today, there are 153,148 accounts in the range that I am referring. Together, these accounts have more power than all the Orcas combined.
https://steemit.com/pt/@arcange/steemit-statistics-20180505-pt
Imagine what would happen if all these accounts supported each other with upvotes and comments. All the sub 1000 SP accounts, collectively, have enormous power.
The problem is that they are not using it to support each other. Instead, many are giving their precious upvotes to the trending posts instead.
Perhaps it is time to alter the approach.
If you found this post informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
@taskmaster4450 Thank you for the shout out and professional breakdown of my post. You are great at your craft.
To whom it may concern I wrote this post after HOURS of data studies. I came to the conclusion that this platform has a system that requires polish but a lot of us here are scuffing our boots on the floor in the meantime.
I originally started on this platform of May 2017. After a month of posting and not gaining any traction I left. Thing is I didn't leave because I wasn't making money, I left because I could even get a single comment on what i considered solid content and would see 100s of interactions on a picture of a apple.
I came back in Feb learned how the system worked and PAID the price for increased influence. After doing so I came to realize that not everyone was in the same position as me so I started a initiative to give back to the community. Provide good content and interactions and I would upvote resteem and comment as well. I planned to dedicated 15% min to quality new content and awesome interactions in my own post.
Then a pattern appeared that had me write that post. I would put a post up and 20 comments would accumulate but only receive 7-8 votes. Ok no problem maybe I did not earn said vote, but no If you dig deep that same account just full power voted a Meme from a whale account.
So I asked myself Why the hell am I upvoting comments just to have those same accounts go upvote some random flower pic. Now the question becomes, do I share the wealth or via trickle up effect give it to the whales.
This I am not decided on but I am a lot more selective with where my vote goes.
So @simplymike yes you may have a community that supports each other, but trust and belive your group is the Enigma not the Norm.
No problem on the shout out since it was your post that inspired this one and where I got a lot of the information.
Perhaps I should have mentioned in my post that you did spend a great deal of time delving into hundreds of different posts to gather the data for your conclusions. It was not an off the cuff post by you.
STEEM will be a top 5 token as long as we lead the world in apple pics.
That is an under served market...
No problem my friend, It's a touchy subject that needs to be confronted. I am all about equal equity, you get out what you put in.
Unless its Apples, that is a severly undersold hidden gem for sure.
It’s a shame, ‘cos it should be.
My life on SteemIt exists of almost nothing else than working with the communities to help others. Of course I knew not everyone had those same ideas, but I think I forgot to look a bit further than my own ‘world’, in which everyone is volunteering, and that I didn’t see the big picture anymore...
To be honest: I don’t know in which part of the SteemIt world you live in, but in my part the only thing minnows do is support minnows. @newbieresteemday, @newbiegames, @asapers, @greetersguild, @helpie, just to name a few, are communities that have all grown because some little guys wanted to help some other little guys. Meanwhile, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of minnows involved in the support and education of other minnows. And that number is growing every day.
So I would like to ask you to stop generalizing.
I agree that there will be minnows who do what you say and try to make friends with the bigger guys, not looking further than that. But, I’ve never met one, and I spend 99% of my SteemIt time amongst red fish and minnows.
I can only say that your post offended me, because from where I’m standing, I see hundreds of red fish and minnows work their ass off (often voluntarily, so without any form of payment - heck, I’m actually losing money on it) to help other minnows and red fish find their way around the platform, help them to get more visibilty and self-esteem.
And then you come around pointing your finger to all these people and say they don’t care about each other and don’t support each other...??!
Sitting on that high throne, it may look different than from down here. Maybe you could spend a week in our shoes, just follow us around, do what we do, ...
Just live the life of one of our newbies for a week. Maybe you’ll remember what it was like, maybe you will see what all these little guys are doing for other little guys, and understand how offensive your post is. Maybe afterwards, you will see how hard it is to help others when you have barely nothing yourself, and who knows, might even reach down and support a little
Thank you for the comment @simplymike.
I am sorry you are offended by what I wrote but I stand by it.
Yes there are communities that look to bring smaller accounts together and help them along. There are also accounts like minnowbooster that do all they can to help newer people.
But the numbers do not lie. You cite hundreds, I can cite thousands. I just looked at the top post on the trending page...over $1000...of course, bot voted up there...however,looking at the breakdown, 440 votes, 20 gave over $.50...the rest are under that...and most that were between .20 and .50 are voting at 100%. I wont even go into all the others that were sub .05.
That is one post, and I will be generous and say 10% (or 40) of them were either bots or decent sized accounts. That leaves 400 small accounts...on one post.
You want me to stop generalizing...sorry but that is the norm. You are the exception...I commend you fully for that but we need to stop making like the majority of the small accounts are even remotely doing what you describe.
As for the high horse, walk in our shoes and the other statements you made, well I will leave that one alone. You want to attack me thinking Im on my high horse, well my track record stands for itself.
Perhaps you should look at someone delegation list before levying attacking like "might even reach down and support a little"...
I’m sorry I got carried away yesterday.
The last part, it’s completely not like me for saying such things. I guess it was just the last drop that was needed for the bucket to overflow after a very rough day at the office. I’ll take the last part back, and hope you can accept my apologies.
I guess you’re right if you indicate that I should look further than my own little part of SteemIt, where minnows look out for each other and work together to grow together.
I’m going to pay mote attention to what happens in the world outside my world. Maybe it’s not too late too educate some of those people act differently. Perhaps not, but I think I should at least give it a try.
Thanks for replying to my comment, which was not very polite, to say the least.
Takes a strong person to reply like this. Good for you.
Thanks :0)
Im not sure where I sit in the swimming pool these days, looking over the comments accoring to @preparedwombat with over 200sp of my own I must be in that top 5% which is funny as I consider myself a plankton/minnow. I am also one of those minnows that help other minnows and have as soon as I realised the difference and learnt something about how steemit works.
We, my hubby @shai-hulud and I started the @asapers after a delegation from @hitmeasap all aimed at paying it forward and giving back to undervalued quality writers. So far we have been running for three months and have out out 46 issues featuring three minnows an issue, thats over 130 plankton helped. We then share 30% of the profits directly woth those authors. Its hinders our growth but it helps those who need it most.
I know this isn't huge in the scheme of things but its something that focuses on the issue you have identified above.
Side note: you are one of the first people that we followed upon joining Steemit and your advice about commenting on others post when you are starting out and ensuring you respond and if VP allows it upvoting them to ensure continued engagement has done wonders for my SP and followers.
P.S if you are a minnow and you got this far down to read. Do consider joining these minnow support groups. They are all doing awesome things for our community and @taskmaster4450 is correct in that there is no use complaing about it lets just do it together. I hope to see you soon.
@newbieresteemday, @newbiegames, @asapers, @greetersguild, @helpie.
The stats from @preparedwombat show how much of an early adopter EVERYONE who is on this platform is.
We are all ahead of the masses by a mile. If this thing takes off the way many of us expect, your 200 SP is going to be worth a lot at some point...
Keep doing what you are doing @insideoutlet. Focus upon growing your account consistently. Work towards that 300 SP. It might see like 100 SP now, but it might be worth $10K at some point....or even more....who knows...
We are so early in this game...
It is because people with the scarcity mindset will follow the money. They might bemoan and even curse these accounts and say they are selfish and don't do anything for the good of the platform but they will upvote and comment professing their eternal support and love just so they can receive an upvote or a follow and maybe get some upvotes on their posts.
Because we are are looking at making a fast buck and don't realize that it is only by putting in the time, effort and building relationship that can make someone an engager.
I look at the people in both my Followers but more importantly in my Ginabot notifications and I have some whales about 2, about 10 dolphins and 15 minnows and redfishes that I find interesting.
These are the people that I would usually cpmment and upvote not because I am begging for upvotes but I truly like commmenting and reading their posts.
I may not be the norm and I could really do better if all I want are curation rewards and just front run large bid bots but I want to go out there and upvote people that I find interesting and mostly they don't get paid well but I do it to support them and make them know that I read their post.
Your comments tend to find an upvote from me because I truly appreciate them since they add to the post. They are thought out and add to or contest an idea in the article.
That is what the comment section is about.
I spent my first month or so running after the whales, the race to comment and upvote everything they post was frantic.
But then I realised, they don't give a fuck about a minnow (or is it redfish like me), if though I got a 1% or less upvote occasionally. That is not a way to grow. As a minnow coming up, the key is to have an 'army' of minnows that easily find your posts interesting and also target some community votes. It takes time but that is a great to grow, and you grow together.
That is where its at.
When Steem goes 100x every minnow (500 sp to 5000 sp) will be making $10,000 to $100,000 a year just by self upvoting. Let's see how much they complain then.
The new people who get here and put in none of the work are always going to look up and complain... just the way it is.
The real issue here is that people want to get paid by Steem but no one wants to invest in it. ALL of you red fish out there should be saving whatever you can and powering up your account while the getting is good.
Realize the value of the new paradigm... stop going out to bars... stop buying brand name items that get made in sweat shops. 95% of Americans are terrible with money. BUY BUY BUY!!!! STOP! Reject the old competitive system and embrace cooperative capitalism. You have no legs to stand on until you do.
I never worked the numbers so I will take your word on it.
It is true that many who have invested the time and effort get reamed by those who just want everything handed to them. It is not easy but it was not easy for any of us.
Many minnows are chasing curation money. What they don’t realize is the payoff for a minnow on a trending post is usually zero. Much better off curating other minnows and self voting.
I agree @taskmaster4450 it's better to swim with a school of minnows than chase a whale.
Thanks for the comment @wizardave.
I do not follow what you mean by groups? Could you clarify a bit more for me?
Oops for some reason I didn't get my reply posted. Deleted all that and starting over...
There are dozens of groups different people have put together to help newbies. People have already pointed several of them out in the comments to your post, so I'll not repeat. I'll just add my observation... not all groups actually do help. They have all these hoops for you to jump through and it doesn't look to me like it's worth it. There are other's that it's definitely worth it, like joining Qurator. To get an idea of the difference, some of those groups I think are worth it already have people here pointing them out with their comments. I don't see any of the groups I've ran across that I didn't think were going to be worth the effort mentioned in anyone's comments.
For a new steemian, all they can see is trending, new, hot, and promoted. They haven't built a list of people to follow. So the only place they could even find other minnows is in new.
And new has zero quality control, so it's easy to get discouraged in finding quality content/relationships.
I wish there were a decent search function that would allow people to find others that are above trash tier, but below the dolphins and whales.
There is no doubt the site needs some work. Try using busy.org or oneplace.media
They have a bit more refined searches and filtering systems.
Yeah I go back and forth with busy and steemit. None of them are great tbh