Thank you so much for this write-up @shanibeer. You have created an awareness on the importance of keeping tab of our stats in order to understand what helps with the earnings/rewards. Thanks to you and @phoenixwren and @mrscwin, I am slowly (very slowly) beginning to understand the numbers. I need to put all this numbers together to fully appreciate how things work. In the meantime, I will post what I enjoy as well as comment and upvote posts that I enjoy reading and participate in contests. I am earning slowly but I feel happy. I am curious most times on how some posts can earn so much! Some posts have 100 over votes but less than $0.50 cents earnings whereas some have less than 50 votes but already earning more than $10! I guess some of these is where the bots service comes in, like what @metzli talked about. But I do notice I have received a downvote each from these 2 accounts, @zartyo and @topfongo1. Not sure why. I think they are bots. Do you get these? (oh I just noticed your comment to @steemcleaners about @zartyo).