Beginners Guide to Promoting Yourself and your Post
I've been a Steemian for about a month!
Imagine that!
There have been a few times that I felt defeated and wanted to quit.
I worked hard on all of my posts and, had it not been for those running the minnow support initiatives, I may have picked up my toys and gone home.
It was very disheartening to pour my soul into producing good content only to receive a pittance for the effort. It seemed I was a speck of plankton that jumped into the pool to feed the big fish!
I saw post that were drawing huge amounts of revenue and I failed to see the value! What's going on here?
I needed to educate myself.
Where do I go if I need information on a topic? Yep! YouTube!
I poured over how-to videos until I found some real winners. I picked three that I learned the most from, @jerrybanfield, @joeparys, and @brandonfrye.
The number one thing all of these individuals stressed is the necessity to produce good content.
Whatever your genre is, strive to be the best! Take time to put together good post and edit, edit, edit until it is as perfect as you can make it.
If you consistently produce great content, you will be discovered. I'm still working on this.
Then there is self promotion.
The most disheartening thing I saw when I first started posting was my work appearing at the top of the new list and then getting
b
u
r
i
e
d
in the volume of new post entering the blockchain.
I'll never be discovered this way! "There has to be a way to at least get on the trending list for a short period of time," I thought.
"Ha!" the promotion tab, "I'll do that!"
That was expensive and I quickly found that I didn't get many upvotes or comments for the money spent.
Then I discovered voting bots. Is this ethical??? Whales selling their votes to the highest bidder?
Consider for a moment the number of individuals begging the big fish to at least read one of their post. I envisioned that scene in Finding Nemo , of the gulls saying, "mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!" Except I imagined a bunch of minnows leaping from the pool screaming "pick me, pick me!"
That had to have been annoying for the whales.
Thus, voting bots were invented and Steem Bot Tracker was born!
Now minnows can risk their funds to self promote their content and have it stay at the top of the trending, and hot list long enough for a few people to notice. They just have to have the opportunity to see it first!
And it is a considerable risk, if you happen to bid on votes that aren't profitable, and fail to attract votes from your peers to compensate for your loss, then you lose money.
If you happen to post crap for content then you will lose money! Or will you?
Enter the opportunist, abusing the reward pool! It didn't take long for a few unscrupulous individuals to catch on that they could post garbage, wait until the eleventh hour and bid up this spam for a profit.
The more conscientious voting bot operators decided to limit accepting bids for post older than a certain time. I think the consensus is a post older than 3.5 days old shouldn't be allowed to bid for votes. This, at least gives people the opportunity to down vote crap.
This is also why, when you find something that is obvious garbage you should VOTE IT DOWN! Too many people don't take this responsibility seriously and allow crap to continue without repercussions. Do the right thing and take a stand against spammers.
There are many voting bot operators that care more for profit than protecting the integrity of the platform. This has angered a certain disgruntled cat (@grumpycat). This guy/gal/group has taken it upon itself to force them out.
Unfortunately his tactics are unjust. I know, I had one of my best earning post clobbered by his considerable down vote because I happened to use a voting bot that allowed a posting age of more than 3.5 days.
The post in question was only minutes old when I bid it up, but the cat doesn't care about that. He can't fight the bot operators directly because of their power so he targets their customers.
He must have read The Art of War because his tactics are very successful! If you can't fight the power, fight the power base, in this case the minnows whose bids support these bots.
Still, losing that money hurt. I no longer use bots that aren't limited to 3.5 days, on account of I work hard on producing good content and don't want to steal from the reward pool. I don't want the attention of this bully cat again either!
Then there is curation, or upvoting and making comments on other's post!
This is where I try to build a rapport with those folks that were kind enough to drop in and read my post and upvote or comment!
If someone took the time to drop in and make a meaningful comment about my post, then I'm going to upvote that comment! All it cost me is a smidgen of voting power that recuperates over time!
I'm not talking spamming either. Like this guy:
hotpacks (14) · 3 days ago
Upvoted ☝ Have a great day!
$0.00
1 vote
Reply
I did a quick check of steemd.com and found that he hadn't upvoted my post at all.
A look at the comments tab on his blog page. It showed that he had made the exact comment, claiming he had upvoted content, for about fifty other post!
By the way, that one vote showing up there was mine...a down vote from me for spamming! Instant flag.
If someone takes the time to leave you an intelligent reply, for gosh sakes, upvote that comment...encourage them to leave more comments! That's how you build a relationship with other steemians. And upvoters and commenters get 25% of the final payout distributed among the curators.
I take the time to look at those who comment or upvote my blog page and review their content! Most of the time I find some great stuff.
I will leave a comment on their blog thanking them for visiting my post, with a hyperlink to the article of mine they commented on.
Back on my page I will respond to their comment and leave a hyperlink to the post they wrote with a short remark about why I enjoyed it!
Others looking at my post, will get a heads up on someone that is worthy of their attention!
It's all about helping each other out!
It will build your reputation fast! Look for ways to help others....you will be rewarded!
Be generous with your success and it will come back to you.
Consider delegating some of your steem power to a reputable voting bot or use MinnowBoosters Steem Voter to vote for your favorite Steemians automatically. You earn rewards for this.
Support initiatives that encourage new users on Steemit.
Focus on providing value to the community and let the rewards take care of themselves.
Steemit has a steep learning curve! As of this post I haven't found a Steemit for Dummies book anywhere. Youtube and more often now DTube is my first source of information.
If you use "steemit" in your search string, you can dig up countless articles on how to boost your votes and followers.
NEVER, never, never, beg for upvotes or a resteem or followers on other people's blog pages.
It is acceptable to promote your own work at the end of your post. Why not? If you can't believe in yourself enough to promote it then who will?
Try using a neat gif like the one at the bottom of this one.
I learn something new every day, but these are a few of the things I've discovered. I hope you find them useful too.
Very useful post, thank you, I've bookmarked it (in case I forget about it). I was considering re-steeming but I fear the topic might appear awkward in the list of my posts. Anyway, I've been here much longer than one month and I still have a lot to learn and a lot of digging to do. I've only today learned about the grumpy cat and only today I've discovered the very detailed infographic of Julian Gonzalez aka @jga about how the rewards get channeled and split between the author and the curators depending on the time ... and he has other very instructive posts
I checked that out! Thanks for letting us know! Good stuff. Carry On!
This article arrived in time ! I have been thinking to start a new line of blog .. and I was thinking to read about how to promote my posts to get initial attention base. Then this post popped out to me :) it is very informative as a beginners guide as its title suggests , however, I would like to ask your help appointing the best top bots you recommend if you arevable to do . I appreciate 🙏🏼
I don't know if there is a best....you just need to get on Steembottracker.com and watch for the best opportunities...I like boomerang and the others that limit post to younger than 3.5 days.
Thank you 🙏🏼 I didn’t know about this suite I started exploring there :)
It seems like mr. @grumpycat noticed this post, good thing he upvoted AND resteemed it AND luckily didn't flag this hahahah. BTW you've stated the matter very well. Since steemit is decentralized the community should take the issue in its hands, although the early bird will always get the worm if you know what I mean. Happy steeming bro!
Day-um! He did! I donno if I want his attention...good or not! LOL! Good points there my man! CARRY ON!
On a side note - there are bots that don't operate on bids, they just upvote you when you send them sbd :) and usually the profit is guaranteed to be like 200% or more. Bots like these are @minnowbooster, @tipu or @randowhale.
Usually you can also invest in those bots for income :)
Thanks for that useful information! I've seen them listed at the bottom of steem bot tracker, I think. I delegated to minnowbooster a few days ago. I'm planning a future post about how to delegate SP to boost income......just starting to research that.
So it seems bots may be the ticket to treading water and staying alive as a minnow, will keep in mind the 3.5 days old post bots only as it does make sense. Got to give those whales a chance to down vote if they choose.
How do you add GIFs to the bottom of your post ?
Well, first, make sure it is free. then you can right click on it, do a copy image then paste it in your editor. Example this image:
Will look like this as code when pasted into your editor:
https://steemitimages.com/DQmXmdadCYFMH2MEcHc92CYHHhVCUyCzqEUw4V3GXxWUosF/bar1.PNG
There are many great post on using the Steemit editor. A couple favorites of mine are this one buy @thinkagain and this one by @itadakimasu there are tons of others. I usually enter a search like... "how to center a picture in steemit markdown editor?
I hope this helps..Thanks for the comment! CARRY ON!
thanks for the detailed reply, really appreciate it. :-)
I love this:
Some keep begging. But thanks for this post. It was very imformative.
Please, keep doing what you do. It is beneficial to many.
Yeah, annoying, right?
I didn't know upvoters and commenters get 25% of the total payout distributed among the curators. I thought it was just the curators getting 25% of the author's payout. Thanks for this post @beekerst! Indeed its a steep learning curve for newbies on this platform. To think I enrolled in @joeparys' course on how to blog on steemit.
Yeah, well....this is what I found in the FAQ :
How is the reward pool split between authors and curators?
Up to 25% of a post's payout is awarded to curators (the people who upvoted the post) as a reward for discovering the content. The other 75% is awarded to the author.
If curators vote for a post within the first 30 minutes of it being created, a portion of their curation reward is added to the author payout. This portion is linear to the age of the post between 0 and 30 minutes. As an example: upvoting at 15 minutes will donate half of your potential curation reward to the author.
And if your comment is upvoted, and it should be if it's brilliant, not spam you get a share too like it says here from the FAQ:
Yes, comments that are upvoted can earn rewards just like posts!
Source: Steemit FAQ
Any would-be guitar players here should check out @deeherald 's post ---->here great opportunity!
I didn't check the FAQ. Hahaha! My bad! And thank you for promoting my post. I didn't see that coming.
WOW! excellent your explanation and totally agree it is about helping each other, I invite you to go through my new drawing Here and Thanks for your support
Hey hey! My talented friend! Hey guys if you want to see an awesome artist at her best, check out this girl! She is the BEST! Click her link above to see how she did this!
Friend is incredible the support you give me, thank you very much!
Dude we should have more people like you over here.
Really nice post :)
Thanks for the kind comment!
How do u know what bot to use and can u use more than one bot ? Just curious. Appreciate your post thanks
Check out this web site it has a list of all the bots and shows which ones adhere to the max post age.....use only those with max age of 3.5 if you don't want to be hammered by the cat, I always wait for bots that have a profitable bid....they will show up as green and I try for those with a 5 minute window before the payout. It doesn't take long to catch on. If you wait long enough a profitable opportunity will come around. I liked your photo of the boat in the water.
You can use as many bots as you want.