Hey Followers! Why So Quiet? Marking 600 Followers (and a quick tip for higher payouts)
It's been three weeks since my return to Steemit after a year of absence. I am not sure how many followers I had when I started posting again, but the number has risen quickly, and yesterday I hit (and passed) 600 followers. Which is awesome, right?
But I noticed another thing, that kind-of rained on my parade. The difference in the number of active voters.
Exactly a year ago, my posts would receive a minimum of 100 upvotes. Regardless of their value, there were always at least 100 votes on every post I uploaded. This was before the days of automated upvote bots like @minnowbooster and in the early days of curation groups like @curie . So assuming I had 400 followers (200 fewer than I do now) a quarter of my followers voted. I am going to assume at least a few of them actually read the content too.
In the past three weeks I've experimented with uploading various types of original content - from rather good short sci fi stories to crappy poetry and random rants. Not a single one of these posts received more than 55 upvotes. These include various bots, @minnowbooster upvotes and mostly upvotes people I *know* from previous interactions on Discord and Steemit comments. And still, they make up less than 10% of my follower audience (over 610 at this point).
Why is this happening?
One conclusion can be that my content sucks. Last year it was good, and now it's not. I seriously doubt that, and am going to assume this is not the case.
Another (far likelier) conclusion is that retention rate on Steemit is such, that the vast majority of my followers from November 2016 are simply not here anymore. I can say (very roughly) that at least 50% of the ~100 accounts that upvoted me a year ago are no longer active. Based on that, I can guess that the platform's annual retention rate is lower than 50%, and this is bad news for all of us.
I could be wrong. This is just a theory and I would be more than happy to see numbers that prove otherwise. If you have them - show them to me so I can properly celebrate my 600+ followers.
Oh yeah! A tip!
Another thing I noticed recently is that many successful Steemians links to their previous posts at the end of each new post. I found that this really helps expose people to previously published content. Which results in more upvotes and followers.
So try doing that and see if your level of engagement and payout sums rise on older posts linked from new ones. And here is how it's done:
Had fun? Check out my previous posts!
- A Part for The Community [Short Science Fiction Story] [Steemit Exclusive]
- 5 Benefits of Commenting on Steemit
- Understanding Polyamory: The Five Elements of a Relationship
Image created using Canva.com
Nice to meet you. I joined in May and started doing Steemit full time for a while; and then realized that development for new features is a bit stuck; and that several things need to occur to move forward with Steemit as a product. Meanwhile, SMTs and so forth, had added another head to the beast...
To move forward, Steemit needs:
a) Communities - something like sub-reddits (this is not trival)
b) Mass login capabilities for thousands of users a day (does not yet exist)
c) Marketing that will push the above 2 new features
until this happens and is released, Steemit for me, is dead in the water and I hope these things happen sooner rather than later.
Agreed, and may I add some ideas of my own:
d) Simplification of things to allow non-technical authors easier onboarding.
e) Maximum vote value - if whales can't vote with full power on any one post, it might help decentralize the steem economy and help users grow.
I'm following you
Good luck
Thank you
If you would like to recieve upvotes from me on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @NirGF
▀
Yeah, some people (mostly Americans) look at my online handle funny. I find innovation hot. It always draws my interest. I love geeks, and geek culture, and talk of tech advancement get me really engaged. So... techslut. Because innovation is HOT.
Says so on my business card. :)
Being a slut for a special piece of tech can be - especially for a woman - quite funny. We man have it harder in that respect.
In my world the term "slut" is not necessarily sexual. To me, it is indiscriminate passion or interest in a particular subject. So since technological advancement in any field that can benefit mankind excites me - I named myself techslut many years ago. :)
Yeah, I understand. It is the same when I say I am a bibliophile. Some people just can't understand the joy of bookshelf porn
I am married to a book slut.
diky-dik post
;p
following..
omg HAHAHAHAHA....
thats the creepiest little cutest monster I ever seen
get that diky-dik nose away from me
xD hahaha
Muahahah! Love the Dik dik! You know you do!!!
ohhhhhhhhhhh...
I just found out it is the real name of the animal...
am dead!!
all this time....lol
What, you thought I was making it up?
yes!!!! english is not my mother language, I thought dirty thoughts..especially when I saw that nose wiggle left and right I was like OH nooooo...lol
...excuse my ignorance!!! xP
;p
It's okay. It's what Google is for. :)
thanks for speaking out.. although I am not of the same political stance as you, I love Israel and support the right of the people to their homeland. It is a great country that has it's own problems.. but you are probably going to see more hatred from this platform than you realized. Good luck to you!
You can scroll back to my posts from last year. Got over $100 payout on my rant about anti semitism on steemit.
The platform is changing wildly. I've noticed the same thing - I would often pass 100 votes, myself. One thing is that, because of the way things are on Steemit, leaving for any length of time is punished hard. That's because you need to be gaining followers and new readers faster than the atrophy (retention) rate in order to grow on the platform. As you know, it can be a real uphill battle.
The 50% retention rate guess may not be wrong. Remember that these are early days for the platform and not everyone is 'all in' yet. In other words, I'll bet anything that the same was true of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram when they first got started.
Also, Steemit is inherently bloggy. That takes more brainpower, a big no-no for social networks that want high engagement. This is why apps like Zappl are really good for the Steem blockchain and, at the end of the day, for Steemit.
If you don't mind my asking: how did you figure out that 50% of the accounts voting for you before are now inactive (Did you go through all of them and look at their curation rewards, for example)?
I suck with numbers, so it was a guess. It's at least 50%. I have 620 followers and only 40-50 upvotes including bots. That doesn't make any sense.
From what I can see, having under 1000 followers is not much and I would not expect a lot of upvotes. Having participated in earlier days, I'm guessing the overall participation rate of 100K users, was much higher than it is now, at 350K users (most are not active).
Leaving for a year is punished hard, then, Steemit not having it's act together, has it's own effects as well. It's difficult to take seriously, when they don't take it seriously.
Sadly, I find that people who put out the most creative and exciting content tend to soon enough give up steemit altogether. That was my struggle at the beginning, not being able to find people with good quality content that would actually stick around. You find someone, you follow them and lo and behold, give it a week or two and they've vanished.
I do also understand how easy it is to give steemit up, I almost did too. At one point it felt like it's asking of me more than I have to offer and I didn't even want to open the page.
So to me it looks like - if you can't incorporate steemit to such a level that it becomes a major part of your life and daily routines, then you'll soon enough find that the hassle is just too much.
That's my two cents. xD
Everyone is at steemfest, its really quiet on here at the moment :)
Which is why I waited for 3 weeks of experimenting with posts before reaching this conclusion. Besides, I've gotten upvotes from people at the fest. So... not the issue. In addition, there was the first steemfest around the same time last year. Amsterdam, I believe.
That's the reason everyone keeps giving me when I ask, I just know there is a massive drop in votes lately
One reason could be the 1/4 of max number of votes of full power. If oyu are human, back then, you probably just spread your votes to anything with a nice headline to get curation reward. Those numbers are down by 3/4.
But I guess the main reason is the high number of short time accounts/money grabbers.
Sometimes back I had 200 followers. That was a huge party, and I gave away 40SBD. Took me half a year or longer to get that.
Then my number of followers skyrocketed, and that was not because I wrote especially much or good content.
Most of those followers are, as far as I can tell, the "I follow you, follow me back" spamers, that may or may not be bots.
I mute those. Downvote and mute.
You make an interesting observation about user retention on the platform. I'd like to see the official figures on that. I don't disagree with you. I am very active in Team Australia new people come in all the time only to never be seen again.
I've brought friends over who posted once or twice and just vanished. Some never even bothered to post. Reddit mentality.