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I have shifted to a lot more commenting and a lot less posting for that very reason. My goal is now 3-4 posts per week and 30-50 comments per day. My comments bring much more reward compared to my posting. Commenting a lot helps:

  • build my SP since I cannot afford to buy it.
  • widen my circle of connections here.
  • learn what others do to create content that earns over $10.

The sad thing I have found is that in order to get that $10 - most posts have one or more of these things:

  • Bot voting that the person paid for
  • A certain crew of voters who vote on every post
  • A certain whale/dolphin or two who vote on all their posts
  • Self-voting for a fairly high amount. (Low reputation with high SP they purchased)

So far I have not gone into any chats on Discord or anywhere else. I have been told a few times that if I go in there and "suck up" to certain whales this is a good strategy and they "might" start upvoting my posts. Ergh...

Then I went to one of those whale posts and a good portion of the comments were "Love your post! Please vote on mine" with links provided. The post itself was the Whale whining about how bad steemit is now with spam. I wanted to answer that Spam is rewarded while good content dies but stayed out of it.

What if that Whale went in daily and voted for 10-12 good posts for people with low payouts? Great content is not hard to find at all here. I find much more than I can vote on or comment on in any given day.

Whale assistance would improve the place tremendously, but there is no motivation for a whale to do this unless they want the platform to succeed in the long-term. Since many of them are draining out their investment/earnings right now, I am not sure they care if the place survives or not.

Note the difference in the whales above.

  • some are are all over the platform and I see many of them daily. You can see they spread their votes to many - I assume based on quality and interest.

  • some have a small handful who get all their votes. This means they are posting their own post, hitting their 5-7 people with votes, and leaving for the day. How is this voting pattern improving the platform? It's not.

Absolutely. I agree with you. That's currently how things work here and for people like you and me, it's incredibly unfair and annoying.

I could crank out awesome content every single day if I put my mind to it, but why? So I can make $3 or less on something I spent a couple hours thinking up, writing, editing, formatting, and finding images for? -- and that's just for 1 post.

What I find is that leaving comments on the posts of more popular Steemit users (this post, for example) very, very, very rarely prompts a response from the author, but often allows me to run into friendly, helpful people like yourself who I would enjoy following/upvoting.

I can't/don't want to buy SP either. I think your commenting/building relationships strategy is better for people like us and I will likely implement it as well. I haven't commented much outside my social circle lately. Thank you for sharing...

You're welcome, and I am so glad to connect today. I just ran into a post with some comments talking about cross posting on other platforms such as G+. I don't get the whole strategy yet, but I'm on every site known to man (exagg) and I can certainly promote out there.

The commenting works but you need a thick skin. For 30 comments I get about 5-8 replies and average I-2 upvotes on the comments. But like you mention, I get a lot of connections from this - people who would never see me otherwise.

I'm trying to think in the long-term for a platform I barely understand that changes constantly! There is no end to the chances I will take to get my message out.

You get only 1-2 upvotes because, after HF 19, people (i.e., dolphins and whales) have had to use their upvotes more wisely or spread them thin to something like 1% per upvote, which amounts to a few pennies in most cases. Of course you don't get a slider to adjust your voting percentage until you reach 400 SP...

In addition to consistent comments, I think it's important to actively engage the non-spammy comments on our own posts to maximize those relationships. I am starting to get my regular set of commenters/upvoters, which is really cool.

You have a great message and I'm happy that you're persistent about getting it out. DTube will also be a fantastic alternative to YouTube, if you haven't checked it out already. I haven't checked out your other presences online, but will do so...

You can find me by searching "fitinfun" on any search engine. It's all me me me and one of my best achievements. fitinfun was not a word when I started and google wanted to show "fit 'n fun" for the result. Vanity!

This I do not understand:
"people (i.e., dolphins and whales) have had to use their upvotes more wisely or spread them thin to something like 1% per upvote, which amounts to a few pennies in most cases."

I get the theory, but at 1% that means they can vote hundreds of times a day. Why not go to 40-60% and vote 20 times a day? That's what I thought I would do if I ever got to such lofty heights. That way I can make a bit of a difference and actually help people maybe.

I absolutely agree with you on the replying on my posts. I do have some repeating peeps and that's rewarding. And the financial rewards crawl upwards week by week - I've only been here 8 weeks. I just want that Alexa ranking and I guess I will have to work much harder to get it :)

I just got a message from a minnow friend telling me he is spending 8+ hours a day on the commenting and replying and is burnt out with the lack of response. I told him to work harder lol! He's a guy with awesome content and thoughtful comments. Ergh...

I'm holding off a bit on Dtube but will definitely go for it in September :)

You've got serious skills.

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