RED FLAG: MINNOWS, DON'T BEG WHALES FOR UPVOTES!

When I came onboard steemit, I heard about the various terms used to distinguish the classes of Steemians- newbies, minnows, dolphins, sharks and whales. These are categorized according to the level of influence you have on steemit. Amongst these classes, the whales are the highest. They’re the big shots. Their influence is determined by how much growth they’ve experienced on steemit, either through financial investment or climbing their way up the ladder.

Whales And Upvotes

Because of the power whales possess, a single upvote from a generous whale on your blog can cause your wallet to smile with lots of SBDs. I once heard the testimony of a guy who said he got the upvote of 2 whales in one of his blog which gave him about $100sbd, and that enabled him to purchase a new laptop for better steemit activities. And I know that many minnows are eagerly waiting for the day a whale will upvote them generously. You see, it’s not just about a whale upvoting your blog, it’s about the amount he is willing to reward your content with. When you possess Steem power of 500 and above, you then have a regulator on your upvotes. For people with Steem power<500, your upvote is automatically set at 100%. You have no control over it. That’s why if you’re using Ginabot notifications, you’d see all your upvotes is 100% which amounts to only some cents. But when you get Steem power from 500 upward, you have authority over how much you choose to reward other people’s blogs.
A whale has between 1-100% to use and upvote others, and they decide if it’s 0.05%, 1%, 5% upvote they want to give. And one thing you have to know is that with each upvote we give out, our voting power reduces. That applies to whales too. So whales like to maintain their VP as much as close to 100% as possible, so they’re very careful with upvoting every post they come across because it will reduce their voting power, which affects their curation rewards. So don’t be angry anymore that you have not enjoyed the generosity of any whale. Well, as for me, I have enjoyed a whale's upvote of $8sbd, and I knew how grateful I was. I have also had other whales visited my blog and given me upvote of 0.05%, 1% which amounts to a few cents. I was still grateful to them. The important thing here is the connection I have made with them.

RED FLAG: DO NOT BEG FOR A WHALE’S UPVOTE

As a rule of thumb on steemit guys, you are not supposed to beg a whale to upvote your blog, but many minnows still do this. I repeat, NEVER BEG FOR A WHALE TO UPVOTE YOU. You know why? It’s a serious turn off to them. Begging for upvotes is seen as spamming, and you know that spamming is frowned upon on steemit. I have come across some whales blogs and seen minnows commenting on the whale’s post saying, “I want your upvote on my blog”. Wrong! Totally wrong.

So now that you’re not supposed to beg for their attention, how do you get a whale to notice you and probably upvote you? Absolutely nothing. Oh yea, you heard me right. Just connect with them, and I’ll tell you how.

Ways to Connect With Whales

There are very simple and basic ways to get a whale to notice you.
Drop quality comments on their blogs. Don’t drop spammy comments. When you read a whale’s posts, really understand what the post is about. Find something that is striking in the post. It might just be a line, and then pick that line and comment on it elaborately. If you don’t understand the post well and feel you can’t drop a quality comment, just upvote and leave rather than dropping spammy comments.

Examples of spammy comments are: nice post, cool, lovely, good post, I like this, follow me, upvote my blog etc. Avoid these kinds of comments as much as possible if you want to befriend a whale. Your quality comments on their blog can open the door to their blessing.
For instance, I personally don’t follow many whale. For now, I’m the disciple of only one of them-@dobartim. That’s so because I’m in his Steem School. So I made it a duty to be commenting on his blogs with quality comments. If I don’t understand the post, I just upvote and walk past. But if I connect with any of his blog, I always drop a comment. And he always replies my comments with ,”this is excellent comment”. And I was so surprised when one day Ginabot gave me notification that @dobartim has started following me. Wow! Notice I never begged him to upvote or follow me. He did it willingly. And I’m sure that’s what you want too.

To wrap up this post, I want to encourage you to keep on working on yourself. Being a minnow is challenging, especially when you put up quality blogs and get only few cents upvotes. Don’t give up. Keep improving your work. Work on becoming a whale too because there’s one in you. Take the little steps you need to get there.

Don’t forget, you started as a newbie, then a minnow but there’s a whale in you.

Join the Steem School discord channel here. https://discord.gg/eTZqQvk. We’ll teach you to succeed on steemit and other areas of your life.

Together we win.
See you at the top.

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