I feel like Steemit has made it to where if one of the "cool kids" (aka the small fraction of users on here whose votes actually matter) upvotes your post, you are then considered one of them. It's basically our upvoted literally don't matter and don't make a shred of a difference while if one of the very few users whose do matter, suddenly you make money regardless of the actual value your story has.
Shouldn't everyone's likes have equal power and the pay is based on the quality and actual value each story gives?
The funny thing is that I have a sizeable YouTube audience, far bigger of an active audience and subscriber base than the users on here whose very first posts are "just so happening" to make them thousands of dollars, like of whom $15,000 in only 12 hours, whose work I follow and like as well.
I don't want to reveal my YouTube and Twitter name for a number of reasons. For one, I want to test this out before I mention it to my audience. In fact, I may not mention it all to them if I learn that it won't be of any benefit to them. I could make money by announcing who I am but it would not be fair to my fanbase who likely may make a fraction of what I could because of my subscribers? I don't know. That's what I'm hoping to learn here.
I totally get what you are saying about the "cool kids" and becoming one of them. I only started gaining a little traction with my posts after joining 3 other communication platforms to network and promote my articles on here. I've met some really cool people and had a lot of fun doing so but I'm not the normal user to base things off of. Having to join other platforms and forge friendships elsewhere to gain traction here is a big problem. Making people more stingy about their powerful votes is not going to help. I think this new voting system will just make the issue worse.
This system is not going to help the good posts of small minnows gain traction it is going to fortify the positioning of the elites that have already forged behind the scenes relationships and collude with votes.
Let's be real most of the shit on the front page is not good content and if upvotes were weighted equally those articles would probably never make it to the front page.
I wish I was wrong about this stuff but your tale of holding off on bringing in your fan base just shows that sadly I'm right.