I recently signed up for byteball and verified (attested) my Steem account with them. This gave me about $40 of byteball tokens. 50% liquid and 50% stashed in a smart contract for 1 year. I sold my liquid byteball for 14.3 Steem.

• Here's my post about how to do that
  • I hoped to get more people sponsored, which would give me more byteball tokens, so I did that post.
    • It worked. I got 2 more signups. I also traded the liquid for more Steem.
• This was turning out to be profitable, so I decided to promote the post a bit.
  • When I originally did the post, I said I planned on using the 14.3 Steem to purchase upvotes through https://smartsteem.com/ created and ran by @therealwolf. This in hopes of garnering organic votes, since I said I would do it at day 3 from posting. (If you vote before upvotes are purchased, you should receive additional curation rewards, right?)
    • Since, I earned more Steem from the additional signups, I thought it would be interesting to have a bit of competition. The results of which I could use to do this post... I would purchase an upvote from @appreciator. They only accept SBD, so I had to convert.

I kept track of exact figures in a text file. However, OOPS I did not save the file and while I was at work, we had a power outage and my computer rebooted.

Results
WizNOTE: This is in no way a scientific study. You should do your own research before deciding to try to duplicate these results or developing your own investment strategy.

Appreciator slightly beat out SmartSteem. It was close enough to call it a tie. Errors could have been introduced through exchanging Steem for SBD.

• The main difference was getting 1 vote from appreciator and getting hundreds of votes from SmartSteem.

Was it profitable?
Probably a breakeven.

• Pending author payout is 56.71 $.
  • 43.462$
  • 76.65%
  • 15.175SP
  • 9.392STEEM
  • 8.281SBD
  • ~ 40.78USD
    • I spent about $40 for the upvotes.
      14.3 Steem
      16.0 SBD

Just Another Experiment

If you vote before upvotes are purchased, you should receive additional curation rewards, right?

Let's find out how that compares to a self-vote...

I really knew very little about appreciator, so I did a bit of research.
According to https://steemworld.org/@appreciator

• STEEM Power 2,859,550.45 SP ( 60,096.45 + 2,846,105.52 - 46,651.53 )
• They earn about $300/day curation rewards.

While I was researching I noticed some very large upvotes being purchased. That's when I thought of doing this second experiment. If I could upvote a post that had purchased a large upvote, I wonder what the curation rewards would be?

I watched for a large purchase to come through the feed on SteemWorld. I clicked on one, but they had already purchased votes, probably through SmartSteem.... I finally saw this post purchase $99 and $49 upvotes. I checked the page. It was interesting enough, not objectionable and it only had $10 of votes. So I upvoted it. (My vote is worth about 4 cents.)

• According to SteemWorld, my cut of the curation reward is 0.017 SP.
  • Most of my curation rewards seem to be in the 0.002 to 0.008 range.

To compare, I found a comment of mine that had not been upvoted and upvoted it.

• According to SteemWorld, my pending payout from that upvote is
  • 0.013 SP
  • 0.008 STEEM
  • 0.007 SBD
  • 0.05 $

Results

1. Watching for large upvote purchases can increase your curation reward about double.
2. Selfvoting is more profitable than going for that larger curation reward.

My thoughts about the selfvote controversy...

I decided to see if I could sell a domain name I own. infowars.wiki
So, I setup a SteemBay auction.

This comment was made by @sadkitten

@sadkitten is countering 85% of @steembay self-votes for 1 week starting Thursday, July 26th 2018 because it is part of last weeks top self-voters. For more details see this post.

This made me think about selfvotes. Are they really that bad? Is it really reward pool rape? Who died and made them Sheriff? All ideas I've tossed around in previous posts.

• This particular case, I side with SteemBay and against sadkitten.
  • SteemBay is a business, providing a service available to all Steemians. They do not charge for this service. They do ask you to upvote one of their comments for them providing you the service, but it is voluntary. Is it bad or reward pool rape for them to selfvote? Their SP is about what mine is(thanks to a nice delegation I've received), so I assume we're talking about a 4 cent vote. I don't think it's bad to let them selfvote their posts.

I see sadkitten's reputation is only 9. Does that mean some fairly powerful people have disagreed with sadkitten's stated goal and downvoted them? Apparently so. If you know, otherwise, please tell us in a comment.

I've seen a lot of recent talk about being able to powerup once you reach minnow stage.

• There are ton's of schemes to help newbies get started on this platform. The best ideas I've seen are for newbies to enter all the contests they can find. Another good idea is to purchase enough shares of @steembasicincome so their posts will always be rewarded above dust level (0.03$). I commend all the great efforts to help the newbies get a foothold here!
  • However, with all our great ideas we have a terrible attrition rate. We've made Steemit a place where 95% of the people who try it drop out.
    Perhaps the problem was not them.
    Perhaps the problem was us!!!
    • That's why I believe @surpassinggoogle's ulog idea is an idea who's time has come.

But once you get to 500SP, how do you keep growing? There's not a lot of programs to help in that department. That's what the recent discussions have been about....

• A lot of the same people I see helping newbies and discussing how to keep growing your account are pretty vocal about "upvoting is bad" and "purchasing upvotes is bad."
  • But it's "OK" to purchase upvotes by
    buying shares of SBI
    or becoming a Quirite
    or any of the other not-directly-purchasing-upvotes, but still purchasing-upvotes ideas.
    • It's bad for a small group to circle jerk upvote each other, but it's "OK" if a community is setup that upvotes each other.

We've made Steemit a place where 95% of the people who try it drop out.

• Perhaps the problem was not them.
  Perhaps the problem was us!!!
• Perhaps the problem was not them.
  Perhaps the problem was us!!!
• Perhaps the problem was not them.
  Perhaps the problem was us!!!

I've seen investors come on here and try to make a ROI (Return on Investment) by selfvoting or purchasing upvotes. And get slapped on the wrist or worse for doing so.

• I've seen a LOT of discussions for weeks and months about the low price of Steem and SBD.
  • Perhaps the problem is we've not allowed the system to work to provide a decent ROI. That leaves only the speculators willing to purchase hoping the price will go up.
    • Perhaps the problem is not Steem or SBD.
      Perhaps the problem is us creating a poor environment for investors by not allowing them to do whatever it takes to get a decent ROI!!!

Perhaps we need to rethink about what we have created / are creating here on the Steemit platform.

• Perhaps we should be promoting @therealwolf's SmartSteem as a GREAT way for investors to create a passive income from their investment.
  • Perhaps we need to promote the fact that investors can create passive income by delegating to other upvote services.
    • Perhaps we need to create a better environment for investors,
      resulting in more investors
      resulting in increasing value of Steem and SBDs.

I'm on the fence about should there be a line drawn in the sand where on one side it's OK to get a ROI, and on the other side it's just a bit too much ROI. And if there should be a line in the sand, where should it be?

• I do think anyone who is honestly working on the Steemit platform should be allowed to upvote and purchase upvotes to their heart's content.
  • I do think it's wrong for scammers (people who post nothing but junk) to profit from their efforts.
    • That brings up another point of discussion which I've talked about in previous posts.
      What is quality content?
      and how much is it worth?

That's enough jabis to start continue the discussion.

So let's discuss them
Comment below...

What is jabi?

jabi = Just Another Bright Idea
pronounce jab eye

Check out the easiest 14.3 Steem I ever made!

My post about it...

	Meaning you can't waste your vote

Who I am @WizarDave		The KEY to Life!