Dolphin 541,753—Monthly Report: March (2019)
Come Back, March! Come Back!
Okay. Not really. I'm not one for dwelling too long on the past, let alone being stuck in it. I'm just really happy with the way March turned out, especially following February's not so great numbers.
But before I give too much away, I'll just say there was one major benchmark—total earned SP–that I was primarily gunning for (I mentioned it a time or two), and ended up with two related benchmarks and one other by the time it was all said and done.
How did I ultimately do? Let's find out.
Bring on the summary!
Quick Summary
I posted a few weeks back now that I was approaching 2,000 in total earned STEEM Power (SP), and that I felt I could reach it by the end of March or April. With that as the primary focus, some other things started to fall into place, too.
Especially since Musing was back online with its upvoting (smaller $ amounts, but still way better than nothing), and because curie and ocd both came calling. Throw in some contest winnings, a sprinkle of orca/whale votes, and an overall more productive month than I've had in a while, and the resulting concoction was a satisfying and flavorful beverage that went down smooth.
Or something like that.
Let's dive into the numbers, shall we?
Posts (no comments)—30
I'm particularly happy to see that amount of posts, considering I was down to just 10 in February. Not a very good thing to do when you're looking, as I am, for something to replace prior reward earnings. I've decided I want to pump out around seven or eight posts a week, so we'll see if I can stick to it in April.
Three posts ended up with double-digit rewards on them. I'll go into more depth about that later.
I said in last report I need to find some subject matter I'm passionate about that I can regularly post on. I'm not sure if I've totally found those subjects yet, but I've got the makings of topical bookends, what with a MISSES character reveal on Monday, and Food Fight Friday entries on, well, Friday. At some point I run out of character reveal material, but we'll see what I can do about that.
Total posts all time as of March end stood at 393.
Comments—733
Again, a decent improvement, especially considering February's count waned to 237, meaning an improvement of over 300%. I don't know if I was totally out of my commenting funkiness by the end of March, but I was pretty close.
I didn't make it to 10,000 comments all time as I posted here before March was over, but I did manage to cover enough distance to bring it into range.
Upvotes given—362/1,179
Not sure how this happened, but my upvote spread went down almost 200 users, while my total upvotes went up 127. I just doublechecked the numbers for last month and they came out the same as previously reported, so I guess I didn't upvote as many different people. Sorry, everyone.
It is a goal of mine to continue to widen the net, so I'll keep that in mind as April unfolds. I know I wasn't trying to spread my uvpotes too thin, but that should have affected overall upvotes, too.
Upovtes received—1,591/2,946
Believe it or not, those numbers constitute an increase of 350 users upvoting my work, and over a 1,000 more in total upvotes from February. I don't remember ever seeing the upvotes that high, but without looking I can't say for sure if it's a record.
Still, I'm thankful for everyone who decided to upvote anything I put out there, be it as part of an autovote, a curation trail, or good old fashioned manual upvoting. All of it is greatly appreciated.
SP increase—242.735
Just as quickly as the triple digit SP earnings ended last month, they came roaring back in March. I know there are many who are earning much more than I am each month, but considering how long I've been here and how I've been going about accumulating SP, I think it's something to shout to the rooftops.
Yes, it can be done!
So, where did this put me as far as overall earned SP, and the 2,000 mark?
Well, I had 1,874.088 total earned SP coming in, meaning I needed just under 126 SP. I almost doubled that instead, so earned income now stands at 2,116.823, which means I'm well into the next 1,000 SP.
All SP, including powered up investments sit at 6,633.349 with all March reward payouts and other earnings accounted for.
At 242.735 SP, I outdid March year-over-year by 196.587 (last March was the worst of 2018). Total earned SP for 2019 stands at 520.300.
I mentioned two other earned SP related benchmarks that became possible due to March's numbers. One was earning over 200 SP in a month, and the other was reaching 6,600 total SP.
I've talked about this in other posts, but I thought I'd go ahead and mention it here, too. With the earned SP, I've been slowly decreasing the cost of my bought STEEM/SP. Total average cost with the earned SP included is now down to $0.885. I've also mentioned this elsewhere—with the total SP I now have staked, I am just $150.753 STEEM value away from being a millionaire (in USD).
Highest single payout—5.245 SBD/11.289 SP
Gone are the days of liquid STEEM payouts (for now, and probably many would be happy if they never came back), so all of March's payouts were split between SBD and SP.
The amount above was paid out on the first MISSES character reveal, titled, quite simply, MISS Inform—MISSES Character Reveal. This was thanks to a rather full curie curation trail vote, with roughly 890 participants.
As hinted at above, two others exceeded double digit earnings, one at 4.585 SBD/10.355 SP (Grandpa Gotta Eat—Oatmeal and Fried Egg), and 4.559 SBD/10.669 SP (coincidentally, or maybe not, Fortune Cookie Fortunes—Four Pack, another food related post). Both were part of the @ocd curation trail.
Self-upvotes—2
Fumble fingers came back with a vengeance, I guess, in March. Both self-upvotes came on my own comments when attempting to upvote someone else's comments. Both were summarily deleted.
Contests—3
This time around I kept a little bit better track of earnings. STEEM winnings from two @abh12345's Curation and Engagement Leagues and one @curie's comment contest down the stretch helped out with earnings, along with some @steem-bounty rewards.
Flags given/received—1
Just another anklebiter making the rounds. Nothing to see here.
Reputation Ranking
The last benchmark I referred to earlier came in this category. Finally, after the major part of three months, my reputation ranking reached 64. I'm happy to be off 63 after being stuck on it so long. I know this number doesn't mean much to most people, but it does to me, and I guess that's what counts as far as rep is concerned.
Investment—0
STEEM spent most of March moving mostly sideways with a few ups and downs leading to a net increase of roughly $0.07 USD. Because of that, I did not attempt to invest any more, since my new trigger points are well below that at $0.10 USD. I'm rooting against it, though, which I guess means I'm betting against myself.
Miscellaneous
While not my best month in terms of SP, posts, comments, or virtually any other category, I feel like it was one of the more complete months from beginning to end. For one of the few times I can think of, I actually pushed pretty hard to end the month on a good note. I think that pushing more than anything else ended in the results I was able to report. And 242.735 earned SP is second best all time only behind November's 494.552.
What will April bring? I'd like to say more of the same, but I'm already behind earned SP-wise, though comments are up, along with outgoing upvotes, while posts are maintaining more or less the same pace. So, I can't count anything yet, including my ability to stay on task, but I'm feeling good about my level of activity and the rest is pretty much out of my hands.
Which means I probably should end this and get back to commenting and curating.
Onward and upward!
Image source—Pixabay. Text added by Glen Anthony Albrethsen.
Looks like it was good solid month for you. No march Madness, no patty cake melt down, no green eggs and ham. No busted flat in Baton rouge, just a good solid month. Nice to see.
Hey, @bashadow.
I'm happy with it. I know there's plenty of people outdoing what I am, and I know that there's plenty more I can attempt to do, but little by little.
And yes, very solid and none of those things happened, in particular the busted flat in Baton Rouge. I do have a backup refrigerator that's now refusing to work. Does that count? Speaking of which, I was supposed to do something about it. :)
Better get on it.
I think it was the tone of the post, "Feeling Good" about the month March, that is always good enough for me, doesn't matter how others would see it, and yes non working back-up is a no back-up system. They need to be checked, but I understand, my back-up generator needs work in order to work.
I love that you track all of this and report it, great self accountability
One of my favourite monthly posts, I wish everyone would do one :D
Hey, @whatsup.
Well thank you. It's mostly a leftover, I think, from when I was in business for myself and keeping track of the numbers was something you did. Now, numbers aren't quite as necessary, but the reports do give me something to focus on to improve for the next month, even though a lot of it is out of my control. Yet, it's good to work on what I can control.
So, yeah. Most of the information is available through one of the major stat dApps floating around, like steemworld and helloacm, a page I guess justyyy put up. Comments are about the only thing I need to pay attention to, at least at the beginning and end of the month. The rest, as long as I show up on Asher's Engagement list, is tracked that way. :)
I personally think it would be great if more people would keep track, but it's amazing how many people say they don't care. They just want to have fun. For me, this is fun. Well, once a month it's okay. :)
I hope people can look at this and say, it is possible to progress on STEEM. Since I started this after the first month I was here, there's plenty of data and advancement for people to look at, if people have been reading it from month to month.
Like you, I am not one who likes to dwell on the past. I prefer to enjoy the moment before it became the past that I dwell on.
You have worked hard on here, and you deserve all the fruits of your labour. I am very happy for you. Well done!
Hey, @quotes-haven.
That's very kind of you. I suppose I immediately think of how much more I could have worked and done, but then, that would be dwelling on the past, wouldn't it. :)
I'm happy to be able to make more than what I did the first three months of last year. That feels like an accomplishment.
We could always do more, but at what sacrifice, at what costs? Nah, just do the best you can and be happy with your accomplishment. :-)
I will really be hoping for the day i will reach the level of your sp one day man
Hey, @adenijiadeshina.
Well, I think pretty much anyone who wants to can do it. It takes time and patience and diligence, but it can be done. It's helped that I was able to invest, because then I was able to upvote more and earn more off the SP I have. Powering up is pretty important to accumulating more. I know not everyone can afford to invest, but getting delegation is kind of similar to it (especially if one is leasing delegation, because they are paying for it anyway), and it can be used to upvote and earn curation rewards. Then, it's a matter of posting things that people want to see. Easy to say, not so easy to do, but that's more or less it. Engage a lot. Curate a lot. Post once a day, maybe more depending on what it is. Come back and do it again the next day. :)
Very nice, good for you !
Hey, @farm-mom.
Thank you. :) As I've told others, I started posting this report the month after I started to keep track of my progress, and then see if I couldn't get better from month to month. The report itself hasn't been enough to keep me on track, but it has motivated me to at least try again the next month. :)
So, if anyone else is getting anything positive out of it, that's a bonus.
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 8 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 8 SBD worth and should receive 186 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigExcellent stuff coming out of March by all accounts Glen :D
Your 2nd best month of earnings so far, that's certainly something to write home about and I guess Musing has has an impact, even though the vote is smaller?
I know you leave 'onwards and upwards' as a comment each week for me, but I'm hijacking it this time and placing it here.
Roll on April!
So, Musing is handing out 50% or 100% upvotes now, however they determine that, so it ends up being between 90 cents and $2 depending on where their voting power is at the time of the upvote. So, ten or so of those a week adds up.
So, it's not as dominant as it was before, but musing was a part of the mix. I pretty much need to take it from wherever I can find it at this point. :)
They are quite nice votes - a $2 vote would be the equivalent of a full vote from an account with 65-70k SP.
This is the way to think and act, many more have the same in mind :)
I'm impressed that you can win the EL and still have the time to track all of this data! Nicely done!
Hey, @melinda010100.
The good part of all of this is, except for comments at the beginning or end of a month (because they tend to overlap into other months and weeks), the data is available through places like steemworld and steemdb. All I really do is go and collect it, which takes probably 30 minutes.
And for the most part, total number of comments are on the EL (as long as I make the EL, which I haven't a few times), but there are, as I said days at the beginning and days at the end that might be combined with another month's comments that needed to be tracked by me.
I used to track all kinds of things, but it's time consuming, and leaves less time, as you're noting here, to do other things, like make it to the top of the EL. :)
You really have turned this into a science. Glad to see it working for you. Good luck on hitting those 7-8 posts per week. I am so exhausted after work I kick ass if I somehow get 4 out in a week, usually I get 2 or 3.
One thing that you do that you don't mention is you upvote the engagement you have. I see so many who don't, and really believe it stifles their growth here. Sometimes I will still upvote those who comment to me without voting my posts, but if I have a lot of comments and/or time to read those I follow they don't get the vote from me. If they are chronic no voters who comment they stop receiving them from me period. I would rather help accounts who enjoy giving as well as receiving, lol.
Looking forward already to your next months update. They give me ideas. I update a spreadsheet daily now to reflect how much Steem would need to be valued at to hit various dollar figures from a post you did some time back.
Hey, @practicalthought.
It makes me feel good that these mean something to someone else other than me, to whatever extent that is. I am hoping that people can look at these and go, "If he can do it, I can do it." Or at least take some kind of positive motivation from it.
re: upvoting engagement
Yeah, I probably could stand to be pickier about that. I mainly answer through the replies page, so I don't even really know who's upvoted the post per se. I'm just happy to get some engagement. Especially if they've read the post. :)
re: spreadsheet
I like it. :)
Thats a great idea tracking your numbers like this, it is probably something I should also do to see how I do month by month, I must add it to the list of things I should do and try to actually get to it :)
I think it's helpful for me, anyway. I actually look forward to each month, but it seems like a lot of people would just think of it as work. So, anyway, if you decide to do it and need some ideas for number gathering, let me know. You might want to track other things entirely as far as that goes. :)
I liked the numbers you are tracking, so would start with something similar if I ever get around
I am a great one for keeping tables and when I started on here I did have a table I was manually calculating my numbers, but now with all the tools available I am sure there are easier ways to track many of them, I saw some on the Steemitboard site recently that did a lot of the numbers i used to track