Steem School Episode 66 - How to Gather Votes as a Witness and Why Your Vote Matters!
The great majority of Steemit does not vote for witnesses. And a small amount of the people voting do not even know who they are voting for and why they should vote for these people.
The Witness system is based on votes. That means the more and higher votes a witness gets, the higher he climbs in the ranks. And the higher he is on the ranking list the more blocks he will process.
1 block = 1 Steem Power, that means your vote plays a part in how much a witness earns depending on your Steem Power (without delegation).
You have 30 votes for witnesses and not more, however, you can remove a vote and give it to another witness.
So who should you vote for? In my opinion, a good Steemit witness must be skilled in Linux (technical knowledge), he must have the resources to upgrade and maintain his servers (money), and he must be social (posting, commenting, communicating with people on Discord, etc).
There are a couple of witnesses that do not do that. Check out the top 20 witnesses blogs and see how often they post. Do they answer all comments? Do they talk with the community on Discord? Are they greedy with upvotes? Are they inactive?
Depending on how you answer these questions you will see who deserves your vote and who not.
As an example: I will never give my vote to an inactive witness.
So now you know some basics about the witness system and why your vote matters.
If nobody voted this system would not work, you guys directly support the supporters of this blockchain with your vote!
How to Gather Votes as a Witness
Gathering votes as a witness is no easy task, it is like running a campaign to become the president.
You have to talk with people, you have to show up, you have to say what you are doing, why people should vote for and more.
So I thought about a little system. And logically I started asking my best friends here on Steemit if they give me their votes before I started to ask people from my friend list.
I recommend that you write something like this into your witness folder and adjust it depending who you write to:
"I am looking for people that vote for my witness efforts. And since you follow me I had to ask you. Would you vote for me or not? If you would not vote for me then I won't be butthurt, but then I would like to hear what I can improve as a witness (if you have time)."
That question gives them the possibility to dodge giving you a vote without worrying that you are gonna be "offended". So they really decide with logic if they want to vote for you or not which is good.
Then you go down your follower list, and I recommend that you install Steem Plus (created by @Stoodkev, that is a witness, give him your vote) sort your followers after Steem Power.
After you have done that you add everyone from that follower list to the file till you have reached 1000SP Minnows.
Then you write down how many votes they have left check here to see how many each person has -> (https://steemdb.com/@valorforfreedom/witness and replace @valorforfreedom in that link with the person whose vote count you want to check out.) and write down when you asked them, where you asked them and how they replied.
Yes means they gave you their vote & no means they didn't give me their vote. "No Vote Yet" means they said they will vote for me but haven't done that yet.
You will ask these people again after 24hours, maybe they are busy right now or had some difficulties.
Ask them something like "I saw that I didn't receive your vote, I guess you were busy. If you had technical difficulties then please let me know if I can help you."
To find out who voted for you go to: https://steemdb.com/@valorforfreedom/witness and replace @valorforfreedom in that link with the person whose vote count you want to check out.
To see a great witness ranking list by @Drakos click here: https://steemian.info/witnesses
Vote to Increase my Witness Rank: Witness Vote
Get More & Higher Upvotes: Steemfollower
SteemSchool Website: Website
SteemSchool Discord Community: Discord
I met most of your requirements. What I recently lack however is time. My wife is having two surgeries and we have no insurance. So I have taken on 2 jobs in addition to running a small web hosting company. Right now it sucks being me as my biggest witness vote @haejin removed his vote and actually voted for witnesses that have not stood with him in the flag wars and @libertyteeth is leaving, powering down his steem. He is leaving steemit after the unending attack on his account by Bernie Sanders. Losing these votes has moved me from 80 to the bottom of the list. My campaign similar to what you described in this proved to be without favorable results. Unfortunately for myself my steemit ROKU app will be on hold until I have funded the doctors healing my wife. I have found for myself the current realm of hi value SP holders tend to only focus on their own elite circle of Whales. The true reward pool rape can be found in their circle of incestuous self voting.
Best of luck.
That is tough news Libertyranger, I actually heard similar stories in the "Pimp Your Post Thursday" podcast on the Steemit Ramble Discord.
Thank you for sharing your experience and good luck to you and your wife.
I can however not quit even tho it seems impossible because of this fucked up whale+witness circle-jerk.
I have to do this and see for myself, I wouldn't even mind making 0 profits as I support the blockchain with this, I just don't want to be stuck in the loss zone.
Well I am not going anywhere. Fortunately for me I can run my witness and seed nodes with no additional cost to me, as long as I don't resell the hardware to a new hosting client. After things get paid off with the Dr's I plan on getting back to my @Dtube ROKU portal programming.
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Damn you got your own servers.
You seem to know your stuff and you seem like an honest guy to me.
Gave you my vote.
You got my vote buddy for the witness :)
There were some questions regarding to it and got the answers from the post :)
Like I previously said you are indeed doing a great job :)
Keep on steeming buddy !
Thank you very much Rehan!
Am joining the Scool buddy hoping to get more knowledge as well :)
You are welcome!
I have learned so much from you, I was wondering if I could give back to you by putting something like this at the bottom of all my posts. I could include links to the appropriate Steem School and to where they would vote.
Let me know what you think of the idea.
Proposed blurb:
I fully support @valorforfreedom, who is a witness for the Steem blockchain. He is dedicated to the community and helping others achieve success on Steemit as evidenced by his creation of Steem School. If you want to support him, he would appreciate your vote.
I welcome any suggestions or links to be added.
I think it is great!
I would be very happy if you add that.
Tell me when you have done that and I give you an 100% upvote to thank you.
Thanks, I appreciate it. Here is the link, https://steemit.com/todayis/@emergehealthier/today-is-national-spinach-day
Thank you very much EH!
So is SP value of voters what determines which witnesses rank the highest? It surprises me now knowing that it is the whales who get to nominate advocates who will potentially protect their ability to dominate their competitors. Some of those whales I would never serve, even if it meant their steady stream of votes and wealth.
Same here & that is correct.
There is a lot of fucked up shit going on in the top 20 witness circle and on the accounts of many whales.
I know that some whales sell their votes to witnesses and like that they control who stays where to a certain extend.
That's so correct, the big guys never respond, they only respond to those who are at their level, I wonder they even read your comments on their blogs. Going after them is utter waste of time. It's good to build your network with people who are at your same level or those who reciprocate, in that bargain you should not miss out on supporting the new minnows.
You speak like you have experience in the witness game Nainaz.
To get the votes of the big guys you usually first have to talk with them, they are very picky with whom they give their votes to because many witnesses ask them.
Gotta build an army of Minnow, Dolphin and Orcas, losing their vote doesn't hurt as much compared to losing a whale vote so it is better to get as much of their votes as possible.
Like i said before on discord, i only vote for witnesses that have
You fit on both of those criteria.
It's a shame that new people don't know who to vote for, i was on steemit for weeks before i even knew what a witness was or what they did...
You keep grinding your way to top20, it might be hard but with a little hard work sooner or later you will get there!
100% agree with you Teuto.
I think I adapted the depressive mindset of many Witnesses.
Time to fall back into my hustle confidence.
Most people on Steemit are not aware about witnesses and what they do. I myself wasn't aware of this around the time I joined.
Proper education have to be provided to the newbies for better Steemit 🤘
That is my goal, providing new Steemians with that information.
many are registered in steemit and as they do not know anything .. about function witnesses they tend to always vote for the first 20 ... they always go for the easiest because of the laziness of not investigating
Thats the sad truth, that is a problem for a long time but Steemit.inc doesn't give a fuck.
All the money to the top 20.
a question how much does a witness charge for being in the top 20 .. I see that the majority is given a "feed price of $ 1,996" every 2 hours.
because they give you that amount every 2 hours??
I always ask myself that question without answer .. without putting the 0.194 sp they take every 1 minute without doing anything.
You get into the top 20 witnesses by getting high votes and many votes.
We run the Steem Network on our servers, for that we all get 1 SP for each block.
Some more and some less depending on the rank.
Feed price is something completely different.
I suggest you read the whitepaper (I am currently doing that): https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf
I suggest you get some anti-headache medicine too, understanding all this economics and technical shit ain't easy.
lol....
Creating content on Steemit and understanding Steem are 2 completely different things.
create content in steemit anyone can do .. but understand steem I do not understand .. I read the white paper to understand .. sometimes when they write the terms of a page they do it in a technical way that I sometimes do not understand ..
Same here.
This is really educative, it was well analysed on steps to take. Thanks for giving more insight about witness
Glad you like it YC.
Great teacher @valorforfreedom
All respect ✊
From @josteem