ALERT! Steemians Are LOSING $1000USD Per Week To Randowhale When The Vote Isn't Completed Fast Enough!
I've been using the Randowhale service (and some other new ones) to boost the value of my posts at Steemit with generally decent results -but something just occurred to me that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet. The curation rules at Steemit mean that if a post is upvoted in the first few minutes after it is made, then the curation rewards go to the Post's Author, but the more time passes, the more money will go to the one making the upvote and the less that will go to the Author!
So, this essentially means that if you don't use randowhale and other upvote services right away after posting, that the operators of the account being used to run the upvote service will be earning curation rewards that could have been paid to you instead!
A whale eats small fish for breakfast!
The Steemit FAQ says:
"If a post is upvoted the moment of posting, 100% of the curation reward goes to the author.
At 3 minutes, 90% goes to the author and 10% to the curator.
At 15 minutes it's a 50/50 split.
At 27 minutes, 10% goes to the author and 90% to the curator.
If a post is upvoted 30 min after posting, 100% of the curation reward goes to the curator."
Is this why some of the services have a long delay between you making the payment and the vote being cast?
At the time of me writing here, Randowhale has earned it's operators 522.775 STEEM POWER In the previous week alone just in curation payments, which is nearly $1000USD per week that could have gone to Steemit users that all went to Randowhale's operators instead!
You can check to see whether your posts have not returned you an optimum payout from RandoWhale in the Curation listing here: https://steemit.com/@randowhale/curation-rewards
What do you think?
Is this a fair situation? Ultimately it all depends on how much profit/reward is in it for you the 'customer' of the service, but when some of that profit is syphoned away without your knowledge, you are not in a good position to make the best decision.
Am I missing something? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below. thanks!
Wishing you well, Ura
It's not that it's fair or unfair, it's just part of understanding the "game" that is STEEMIT! To say it's "unfair" would also be saying that it's unfair to incentivize people with curation rewards to vote. Ironically, the 30 minute algorithm was implemented as a way to give manual curators a chance to vote over bots that would immediately vote the second a post went up. You may also be interested in this post around the time the change took place: "Latest Curation Reward Solution".
Regardless, it's great that you wrote an article that helps more people understand this dynamic! :)
I kind of agree with @ura-soul...and this is coming from someone that uses @randowhale a lot. The part that does seem unfair is that randowhale is marketed as a service to help minnows. If it was really there to help minnows in full transparency, then this info should be made available by randowhale...and maybe it should be a non-profit bot, as opposed to making so much money.
a slippery slope, if ever I heard one. perhaps the blockchain should also limit the price of STEEM as well to make sure no one overpays, in case they don't know any better? Just like putting "smoking kills you" warnings on cigarette boxes, still won't stop people from smoking anyway...
And who judges what's "too much money"? Maybe the blockchain should take that $2500 post payout and "redistribute the wealth" to everyone else? That person will never post again, and we'll now each be 0.01 STEEM richer, yay! lol Abusive behavior is another story, and that's a "cat and mouse" game that the community continually seeks to address in various ways (including how the 30 minute rule came to be).
And along those lines, some steemians think it's in "bad taste" to use any of these services. If they had their way, they'd be banned altogether. Hmmm... "censorship" sounds like perhaps the perfect solution! See what I mean about those "slippery slopes"?
For a while people were making a case for why BOTs shouldn't be allowed on STEEMIT either. Of course, they didn't understand by banning BOTs, you'd also be blocking STEEMIT.com from functioning at all, since they basically all access the blockchain in the same way!
And just for the record, since we do seem to be picking a bit on @randowhale here, I'll kick it up a notch for ya. This "dynamic" also will affect @booster, @minnowbooster, Whaleshares, and Beyondbits as well.
One more point worth mentioning is that this dynamic has been accentuated post HF19. Before that, even though you may have been giving up more in curation rewards, the N^2 algorithm meant you could earn 10x your money due to the additional "vote gravity". I can definitely say using rando and others pre-HF19 provided a much greater "bang for your buck". I've written about this in a few recent articles.
Since HF19, however, it does seem more advantageous to use these services early on, as you may also have a greater chance of hitting the leader boards as well (not to mention the additional curation rewards you'll receive as well).
Better stop here, cuz at the rate I'm going, I'll soon be "reinvented" the "Wallstreet Disclosure Prospectus"! lol
As always, buyer beware, do your own due diligence, and if you do discover anything helpful to the community, please feel free to post and share about it! :)
I'm all for bots and capitalism. My perception is that randowhale is being promoted as a minnow helper, when it is not that.
Actually (and I could be wrong on this), I believe other users are promoting it more as a "minnow helper" than @randowhale is! If anything, you can say it's more for "degenerate gamblers" hoping to get that big 'ole 5% vote! (joke!)
I just searched through a bunch of rando's posts, and none of them really mention anything about randowhale being a "minnow helper". But please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that! :)
I looked back at the previous posts and you are right! My perception was incorrect.
I so use randowhale a lot (maybe even on every post)...but there was definitely a learning curve trying to figure out when to best use it. And I don't see it as a way to make money...it's more for the tip jar effect. You don't want to have an empty tip jar.
agreed!
It would be fair if the operators of the Voting 'Services' informed people that this is the situation - since the 'profit margin' is sometimes slim with these services anyway. I have just stopped using the 'booster' service after a couple of days of testing, since I found that once the curation payouts are removed, I was probably losing money - not gaining anything.
That's what tends to happen to all these services, especially post HF19. To some degree they become outright arbitrage for those who feel it's worth it to pay X for the chance at approximately Y. Pre HF19, the more "vote power" you received, the more "valuable" those votes became, which was a unique value proposition in itself. Sadly, that aspect has mostly, if not entirely, diminished at this point. As always, buyer beware, and do your due diligence.
For example, I noticed very quickly with booster that a few of the first people early on got HUGE payouts. Within a day, the arbitrage was also mostly gone, with 1 SBD returning approximately 1.5 SBD give or take. Still not bad, but that's perhaps an average, and with all the various price fluctuations, still tricky to quantify with all the complexity and "moving parts" involved.
However, if you get lucky some morning at 3am when people have "given up" on booster, who knows, you may get lucky with a near empty pot, just like catching a great low bid in a wide spread market! Just gotta keep on top of it, easier said than done of course! :)
I've written so much here now, I think I owe it to myself to turn this all into its own post! lol
That was my experience w booster as well. Only tried twice, but I don't want to wait hours for the vote. I want the vote immediately, so I like rando better.
Sure, the waiting also guarantees that you will lose the curation payout. :/
thanks for posting , quite a clear explanation I think should be more correct to extend the time for upvoting up to 4 h and to allow newbies like me to have at least a small % for each upvote. I fully support the work of curators, but in this way the community will still be open to new members, otherwise will become just a close circle.....
Gonna have to read this one twice! Great info!
good work
you received a 3.00 upvote from @worldclassplayer
Good points here for people to understand how the curation process works.
Do you have a better alternative to randowhale?
The only one I know of that might possibly produce significant earnings is @booster - but that one works as a kind of auction and a bit unreliable in terms of earnings.
I saw that one the other day as well, but was confused with the rules.
they divide the full power of their vote between all the people who 'bid' on the vote according to the percentage that each 'bidder' puts into the overall amount of money paid - so you need to pay attention to how much other bidders have already paid and that is a little bit time consuming and inaccurate. :/
oh that's a bummer.
Thats crazy
I feel for the innocent Steemians.
I have been messing around with @randowhale, although it seems to generate some USD earned (I thought I got lucky with several > 4% votes), over time this seems to disappear.
When checking payout with Steemvp.com (great tool btw) I saw that 8 votes which cost me 16 SBD paid me 10 SBD so OVERALL I LOST money with Randowhale even with "lucky" high votes.
There are 2 situations where I see it being worth something:
A) to "seed the pot" so directly after posting you give it a bit of a visible boost
B) 12 hours before payout (I think) because you will still retain most of the upvote (has not gone down that much before payout yet) Why 12 hrs? The posts stop earning from upvotes 12 hrs before payout I believe.
In my experience, the extra vote might count for something to get some extra eyes on your post, but not much. A few weeks ago the randowhale votes were worth significantly more, so it was well worth the use - but now, not so much.
If I upvote a post as I am writing and publishing that post, then I will get all of the curative points for that same post I wrote or a lot more points or money and the other upvotes from others will be none or a lower percentage? I thought I was supposed to not upvote my own post in the first 30 minutes of posting something. Maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe, people lied to me.
I am not too sure what I think about the whale thing. I think that the whale thing is a service that costs money or whatever you want to call it. Maybe the program can help you spread your articles more to get more followers at the cost of money.
You will only get 100% of the curation payout for your own vote if you vote for your own post. Voting for your own post will not change the amount of curation payouts you receive for other votes made by other voters for your post. The Steemit interface includes an option to automatically upvote your own post, so I don't think there is any reason to wait for 30 minutes if you intend to do that - I think someone got their wires crossed when explaining the details to you.
Why is there an option to not automatically upvote our own posted posts on Steemit? Why would somebody not want to upvote automatically? We can get more money if we upvote our own posts? Then upvote your posts, right? Why would anybody want less money? I love money and I think more money is always better. I thought it was bad. I thought somebody said that. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe, I will begin to automatically upvote my posts if that is more profitable. But how could anybody not want profit?
One example of not voting would be where 'whales' have taken a vow of 'not voting' and so they need a way to not vote for their own posts.
Intresting post , people long time in steem know all this but for the new once is more worth to be seen , not this much the size ( money ) or the gain from one upvote :) And about how much the people earn in steem ...... no one cannot say its to much or to less . If its upvoted must be fair , if you disagree just flag .