I use voting services from time to time, primarily minnowbooster. From my perspective, it serves three purposes:
- It can, theoretically, increase the overall visibility of a post - although I am dubious;
- It provides me with a purely psychological boost which keeps me posting new types of content.
- It can achieve the first two benefits while usually breaking even, or even slightly increasing, the eventual amount of SP banked.
So, for instance, I post mycology posts twice a week. I work really hard on those, and many people, early on acidyo, and especially the steemstem community, today further supported by curie, have been super supportive. (For which I am immensely grateful).
My plan now is to take one of those once in awhile, go 50/50 on it, and then use the SBD payout to buy large upvotes for OC fiction content I want to get more consistent about writing, and regarding which I currently have zero street cred. I work hard on these posts as well, but nonetheless, my writing is simply not that great. Still, this use of a vote buy, on a purely selfish level, results in a near risk-free, delayed SBD transfer that keeps me posting when all I really want to do is play 7 hours of League of Legends.
For me, being able to visibly boost my content on demand is, and always has been, a major psychological assistance in continuing to post, especially before my posts got as consistently large support as they have been getting.
Steemit has kept me from playing a video game for 158 days. That is the most effective "sobriety" mechanism I have ever encountered. But even now, when things have been going very smoothly, having the ability to simply tack on some post value, even artificially, helps to keep me motivated and simply gives me a dopamine boost.
Now, I haven't cashed out any steem, and have no plans to, because this experiment has nothing to do with profit for me. It is gamifying my mycological exploration and creative writing. To the extent the visual booster shot of a bought vote keeps me - and other people - here, so long as we make a good faith effort to create quality content and engage in the community, I guess I support those services.
Having said that, I'm sure these services are used, much of the time, somewhat unscrupulously - in a broad sense of the word. Indeed, I imagine some would criticize me for using them as well. If a macro-analysis shows that it is a net drain on the reward pool, or on the overall well-being and health of the steemit community, then I would also support the elimination of those vote buy services, assuming there is no way to regulate there use in a net-positive way, especially when communities come into play.
I understand, and there will always be a demand for wanting votes. However, I don't think vote buying services should extort money from the vulnerable. (Yes, dramatic effect) Instead, they should do what the system was designed to - curation.
Personally I love what @treeplanter is doing. They banned self-voting and lost 80% of the donations they were getting. (https://steemit.com/nature/@treeplanter/i-lost-more-than-80-of-donations-because-i-banned-self-voting-i-will-give-you-200-upvote-of-your-donation-till-my-vp-get-80)
The bot is there to help fund the planting of trees in a Forrest in Cameron.(http://kedjom-keku.com/en/) I think it's a great social initiative and a perfect example of what upvote bots really should be. No self-voting means you are doing it for somebody. A @treeplanter vote is better than a straight donation to the content creator as the vote is worth more than the SBD invested. Additionally, half of the money spent goes to plant trees. $1 is 1 tree planted on our planet to create a greener and better future.
O-kay, this is kind of what I was mentioning in my response to @techslut only in reverse. @dber, I like to read, and I will take a look at your story. This is the sort of thing I have tried to point out to new people, (yes I am still new myself) is if you want visibility you need to put yourself out there and promote yourself. If you go to a dance and spend all your time in the janitor's closest, you are never going to get asked by the pretty girl/guy to dance, because they don't have a clue you are even around.
Oh absolutely - the success i've had here is the result of socializing, promoting and sheer persistance combined with luck.
But despite all that, I still use the boost as an on command "point increase" - and it helps me when I feel like walking away - which, because of the diminishing returns inherent in any addictive behavior, still happens - even though there's no rational reason for me to feel that way!
So much of this process is just posting and watching to see what it stirs up - and when it doesn't stir much, it can really help to force that number up and just look at it.
@dber's post has been the best answer I've read here, it's great that it has come from a vote buyer, as it is important to see things from that perspective. It's all very well and good saying that these services are bad for Steemit etc. But the fact remains you can get rewarded for your posts and you see others getting rewarded, why not try and join the club?
At the end of the day everyone deserves a crack of the whip, and what you would hope is that people get a bit of exposure and then the quality of their content keeps them up there and growing.
I'm glad Steemit has been your methadone, keeping you from those heroin-video games :-)
Cg
Plz upvote me also
You are really going about "getting seen" on Steemit the WRONG way... I would suggest reading people's content and actually engaging them in dialogue... and then let them decide for themselves that you might be interesting enough to have a look at.