A simple google search for information about "steemit" results in sites that claim:

“Steemit is a social media platform where everyone gets paid for creating and curating content.”

And

“Steemit: New Social Media Platform Which Pays You to Post”

And

“A social media platform where everyone gets paid to post. https://steemit.com” / https://github.com/steemit/steem

Amongst others…

I bring this up as I have recent noticed an article by @nonlinearone titled Why I Gave The Free Money ($26.087) From a Featured Author Post Back that I felt compelled to weigh in on because I have been featured by @dragonslayer109 before here, here and here.

As a side note, I don’t know anything about the issue of getting unsolicited payments as described by @nonlinearone.

I know there are two similar but seperate issues at play here with “featured post” and “hidden gems”, but both are associated with @dragonslayer109 and his reputation which I would like to address.

Additionally I recently read an article by @bacchist concerning @dragonslayer109

It is called How Much Are @dragonslayer109's Hidden Gems Worth? And To Whom?.

This article points out some ways @dragonslayer109 could improve his post and improve certain criteria for selection of "Hidden Gems".

I agree with this constructive criticism.

However, I disagree with his disparaging address of this in what reads as a negative “hit-piece” rather than an open discussion format with @dragonslayer109.

I also disagree with @bacchist when he says:

“For one, I don't like people posting links to their posts in the comments of my blog in general. It's spam, plain and simple.

I don’t think link posting is spam. And it is not “plain and simple”. Preferences that you “don’t like” are not rules.

I will get to the reason for this in a moment, but first let me discuss the agreement I made with @dragonslayer109 because although he keeps the Steem Power, as he adds to all featured articles: "ALL STEEM Dollars for this post go to the featured author".

From my perspective that is a good deal.

It is an agreement to sell him my content to feature to earn more than I did posting solely on my own. Or leveraging his notoriety for our mutual benefit.

In fact I appreciate his services provided (at a agreed upon cost i.e. he keeps the Steem Power as payment, I get the Steem Dollars). This is actually more of a risk for @dragonslayer109 because featuring unknown authors may result in in negative response such as with @bacchist. On the other side, me a featured author has little to nothing to risk to get promoted by @dragonslyaer109.

I agree with @nonlinearone that:

“People should be able to publish under their own name and be successful through upvotes.”

But should be able to be successful and are successful are two very different things.

My intention with working with @dragonslayer109 was also to develop a base of followers to which I could get up votes directly without the intermediary.

However, admittedly, so far that has not panned out as well as I had hoped.

In order to have this happen I plan on having him post one more from me that will be a Part 1 of a serialization fiction story that I am writing. Therefore, anyone interested in following the story will follow me, else my work will be lost into oblivion.

If I wanted to keep posting with @dragonslayer109 as a featured author for our mutual benefit, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to, but maybe I am missing something.

As I started the post, and as titled Steemit, a place Which Pays You to Post, unless you leverage the system to maximize your earnings and then, look out!.

As a result, my actions here are in part motivated at maximizing the amount of money I earn here.

Popular steemit author and friend, @ericvancewalton, was interviewed by @cristi in his article Q&A with Steemit Prolific Author - Eric Vance Walton in which Eric described his experience here on steemit and why he post here:

“My life-long goal has always been to write full-time and be a digital nomad, traveling the world and writing about my experiences. Thanks to Steemit I’m closer than ever to achieving this goal!”

“When I began writing there were decent payouts for your first “introduceyourself” post. This instantly hooked me in and got me posting at least once per day. It wasn’t as much about the money as it was the freedom the money could provide. As I said before, my goal was to be able to write full-time and I saw this as a major way to accomplish that goal.”

“I got very frustrated just a few days before my writing was discovered on the platform. I actually almost quit then. I was pouring so much energy into this and only seeing pennies per day in upvotes. One individual in particular, @mctiller, gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going. It was only a few days after this that I started taking off.”

The thing is, we authors and posters, don’t all get this “taking off” moment that @ericvancewalton has had.

The point being though, that @ericvancewalton wanted to earn not for the sake of the money but his “goal was to be able to write full-time” and he “saw this [steemit] as a major way to accomplish that goal.”

As do I.

If it is of any interest to you, I have converted my entire earnings from @dragonslayer109 to Steem Power and have used the increase in leverage to grow my influence.

I cannot say the same for other featured others, but we could check their wallets…

If my next post with @dragonslayer109 doesn’t net an increase in followers and subsequent up votes on the second part of my story, I am unlikely to continue being a contributor to be featured.

However, I understand the #steemitcommunity concern with the arrangement and would like to hear what you would propose instead in terms of how to increase visibility for authors to earn more on their own?

This is the reason I think posting links in article replies is a valid form of gaining views and subsequent up votes.

Are we to wait for whales to deign their votes upon us?

Or do you have any marketing tips beyond sharing a link on other social media and steemit.chat?

How is one to get noticed in the flood of new post?

Thanks
@strangerarray

P.S. As I was writing this I had another thought on how reputation is supposed to be important on this platform. These discussions about who does what is important, but there currently is no feature that alerts users of mentions and therefore users can discuss others who may not get the chance to explain or defend their actions. This is a huge issue for managing and maintaining a positive reputation if you can be disparaged without defense.

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