Dolphin 541,753—Monthly Report: August (2019)

Another month has gone by, and I find myself yet again getting to this late. Between work and basically trying to keep the peace by doing some of the household chores, this report will probably not arrive until the 9 PM hour, my time. That didn't help it very much to be seen last time. I don't think it's going to get any better this time around.

I guess instead of dwelling on that so much (believe me, I've been dwelling on much more than that, and it's not helping a whole lot), without further ado, let's move on to the summary.

Quick Summary

No OCD bailout this time. No curie curation trail upvote (well, okay, there was a very small one—certainly not their usual fare). Even so, I managed to get into three digit SP again. Two large upvotes by a whale, and then mostly dribs and drabs, grind, grind, grind made it happen.

The last week of August felt pretty much like a bust, thanks to the hardforks. I'm not sure what else to say about that, other than even though the rewards weren't mine yet, the last week's worth of reward values ended up being halved. I can only be grateful that the largest payout of August came the day before the hardfork, or that would have been an even greater pill to swallow.

Okay. Time to break it down.

Posts (no comments)—28

I was able to up the number of posts published in August by five over July. While I find that to be an accomplishment, I'm not sure it really helped me or not as far as payouts go. More posts, in other words, did not equate to more SP.

I think part of that can be attributed to the fact, as I mentioned last month, that I'm not publishing in my usual timeframes between 11 AM and 4 PM Pacific time. All those folks who got used to seeing my posts show up during that time are probably wondering what the heck happened.

At any rate, I wasn't able to write ahead or start some kind of scheduling block. So far in September, I haven't either, so who knows if and when that might happen.

Comments—299

Again, my output in a month resembles what I used to do in a week. Even so, this is an increase of 94 comments over last month, so woohoo for the improvement.

As an indirect side note, I've basically stopped rewarding comments with upvotes since the hardfork. I tried using ENGAGE tokens, but they've not been working lately either. I haven't found an adequate solution yet. Yet another thing I'm not happy about.

Upvotes given—118/436

Increases here over July, too. Still not what I was used to doing, nor do I believe it's going to get much better.

I would say at least half of my upvotes were given to comments, if not more, and with that no longer the case, September is going to drop like a lead balloon.

For all the talk about manual curation that goes on around here, I can't see that as being a viable option for anyone who doesn't do this full-time. Especially since the hardforks. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of auto-curation or following a curation trail, either. So, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I don't like the fact that I'm being compromised, or being put into compromising positions.

Upvotes received—643/1586

These numbers represent a drop of over 1,000 unique voters and about 1,650 less votes from the previous month. That's what happens when curation trails don't land on a post after hitting two or three in one 31-day period. This then, is more representative what the upvote counts actually would look like on my posts in any given month, which I am grateful for, nevertheless.

Earned SP increase—169.322

The halving of post rewards I mentioned early would not have put me over 200 SP, so that wasn't really in the cards, no matter what. Still, it represents an increase of 98 SP over last August's totals, so I'm happy about that.

Through eight months, I'm only 120 SP off of last year's total of earned SP of 1,596, and because of the increase, I went over 3,000 earned SP since January, 2018. Just 2,000 more to go to reach dolphin status without investments. At my current rate, I'll get there by the end of July next year. Wouldn't that be cool? Yes, but I'm not going to hold my breath, or count my chickens.

All told, all staked STEEM equals 7,620.674. I actually earned about 9 STEEM more than this, but chose to use it to help buy SNAX with it.

Highest single payout—0.056 SBD/26.179 STEEM/26.456 SP

I know this looks like a curie or OCD amount, but it's not. It benefited from one whale upvote, theycallmedan, and a few resteems (4). The name of the post was Why STEEM Is A Better Buy Than You Might Think.

Second place post wasn't too far behind, so I will also mention it here. Payout was 0.044 SBD/20.251 STEEM/20.481 SP. Topic was the hardfork, After HF21, We Will Need A Reason Other Than Rewards To Stay On STEEM. This also benefitted from theycallmedan.

This marks the first month, maybe ever, but certainly in a while, where a post on the topic of STEEM was the highest payout, and probably the absolute first time that that the top two were this way. I'm not sure if that has any significance for what lies ahead. I rather it not be, but as a blogger, it's more often about what the audience wants, rather than what the blogger wants. Even an audience of one to 100.

Self-Upvotes—0

No mistakes this time. It happens.

Contests

I won SBI at least once during August. I didn't really try to keep track of that. I know I didn't earn any STEEM prizes.

Flags given/received—0/2

Once again, some anklebiting took place. One actually took $0.01 off a post, so that streak continues. I, however, did not engage in any downvoting, even after the freebies were handed out. I'm sure I will now be the downfall of STEEM for it, especially since I have no immediate plans to downvote going forward.

Reputation Ranking—65

For a while, I thought I might actually reach 66, but the last week or so did not continue as the rest of the month did, so the rep number stalled. That keeps it consistent to the pattern of about three months which has more or less been established lately.

Investment—0

So far, $0.16-$0.17 USD STEEM values hasn't been enough to entice me to buy. I did think about it, though. I'm concerned that when I do go to try again, there will be new rules thwarting my ability to do it with fiat. Coinbase changes their rules periodically, and blocktrades has already done it. Certainly not making it easy on me.

Token Trading

As I mentioned last month, I started some token trading on STEEM-Engine. I did some more in August, converting from various coins to STEEMP. I used some of that to buy some SNAXP, 33,939.3992, to be precise. At the time, I think a SNAXP was worth $0.00004 STEEM. I was going to get more, but didn't realize how things worked until much later, and it only gave me the stated amount. The value of the SNAXP available has since gone up, which is good for my holdings, but not so good for my plans to buy more.

There will be more about that, both token trading and SNAXP buying, for next month's report. I hope to be able to continue to do both through this month.

SNAX

Total SNAX count as of August 27 when reward rounds for STEEM froze (thank you Hardfork 21), was 176,418.1214. SNAX went to payouts every other day instead of once a day, so things slowed down even before the rewards were halted. They've yet to come back on line, and may still be several days out, depending on how the replaying is going since the last hardfork fiasco (HF 22).

Miscellaneous

I think I've pretty much covered it above, other than to say that September isn't looking so good so far. I basically have one post (aside from this one), and along with the time factor, it's due to a diminishing desire to spend the time on posts. It's been a long time since I felt this way, way back to around this time last year. In this case, I don't think it's seasonal, and the events of last year (my wife's surgery among them) are not repeating.

I put it squarely on HF21. There's nothing else to pin it on.

On that lovely note...

Onward and upward.

P.S.—Just like last month and some before that, @bashadow has another progress post out. If you care to peruse it, you can find it here.

As far as I'm concerned, there can't be too many progress reports.

Also, @abh12345 has an automated progress report, where you can request your own. I'm not sure if he's still taking requests or not (or has the time), but if you're interested in seeing how others have done, by all means, follow the link.