When The Dust Settles

Greetings Steemian's

I think we need to have a talk about dust. This is important. I hope I have your full, undivided attention.

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School image created by Freepik

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I'm not talking about chalkboard dust, or the dust that settles onto your furniture. I hope this doesn't come as a disappointment to anyone, but I really don't have any tips for keeping your possessions free from dust. Dust just sucks.

Today we're going to be talking about the dust vote rule on Steemit. "A penny for your thoughts" does not apply here. In fact, if your thought (comment/post) isn't voted to at least 0.03 cents, you aren't going to receive anything.

If you're new to Steemit, or you did not know this already, it may come as a bitter pill for you to swallow. You may be thinking about a few comments you posted, received a 0.01, or 0.02 cent upvote on, and felt some excitement to know you would be paid for your thought. If you weren't paying close attention to your payouts, you probably missed the fact that you were never paid for these upvotes, and your sense of excitement was an imaginary, unfulfilled farce.

Yup, this happened to me for the longest time. When I was a ultra n00b , I had no clue, and of course most don't when their new. By nature, most of us take things at face value. It's only my opinion that it's a bit misleading to show a post payout in 7 days with a 0.02 cent value. The face value here, is that you will be paid 0.02 cents in 7 days, but instead you get nothing. Perhaps a notation could be added to the payout that reads: "Threshold not met"? Or something to that effect, so that people understand.

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People image created by Ijeab - Freepik.com (modified by futuremind)

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You may be wondering why this is important to understand. It is important, because Steem Power (SP) is what gives your vote value, and that value is influenced by your Voting Power (VP). Simply put, the higher your VP is at any given time, the higher your vote value (based off of SP) will be.

If you are confused, it's ok. We will get through this learning curve. I promise you, once you get a fundamental understanding of SP and VP, and how they influence one another, it will come as second nature in your Steemit experience.

I recommend using https://steemworld.org/@yourusername because it has the works going on. The most important of your stats can be viewed through steemworld. Many steemians depend on this tool as a means to keep an eye on their account, on a daily basis (including myself).

A nice feature of steemworld, is that it has a sliding VP simulator, that tells you what the value of your vote is at any given time, based off your current voting power. This indeed is a valuable tool to have. For so many reasons. I am not going to break down all the reasons here, because I want to stay on track with what we are talking about. If you are ultra new, and don't have very much value in your vote, then you will be upvoting at 100 percent on Steemit, and I would not recommend using outside services to lower your vote, because at the new stage, your vote value is going to be so low, that lowering your vote below 100 percent, will not be practical in any given scenario.

So let's say you have a vote of 0.02 cents. I'm sure you are proud of this, and you should be. It takes work to gain Steem Power if you are not investing your own money. You have a nice little 0.02 cent vote, and every time you get a nice, thoughtful comment on your blog, you go ahead and upvote the comment showing your appreciation, and think to yourself "this is great, I get to pay someone 0.02 cents for their comment, and I am now, helping others on Steemit." Well the stark reality of this, is your not helping this person unless someone else upvotes the comment past the threshold, and furthermore, you are taking a hit on your VP for nothing.

I know that really sucks and all, but it's true.

So you really need to think about some different aspects here. Aspects like:

• Should I vote to show my appreciation even though I am wasting my VP, and the receiving party gets nothing?
• Should I vote comments on other blogs that have not received upvotes, knowing the odds are likely they will receive nothing?
• Should I upvote my own comments, or posts if my 0.02 cents will bring the value past the threshold?

These three questions, I find to be of the highest importance when it comes to utilizing your vote.

I think they are all taxing questions, with many implications and variables to consider.

For the first question, I would say, if you don't have a 0.03 cent vote or better, then maybe you should not upvote any comments that have not received prior upvotes, if you cannot bump into, or contribute to the threshold amount. I know this thought may make you cringe a bit, but remember, you are actually doing yourself, and the receiving person a disservice by voting below threshold.

The second question is somewhat covered by what I just said. I know it sounds asinine, but if you have a 0.02 cent vote, and you read an amazing comment that has not received any votes, then maybe, you should really think about it..If the comment is that amazing, and you are absolutely sure that it will receive votes, maybe you should bookmark the page, and check back later. Now if you have a goal to rank the comment higher for visibility, and don't care that you're going to potentially waste your VP, then by all means, blast that comment up. I don't blame you!

The third question to consider, is a bit of a controversial topic. Many people frown on the self upvote. I personally am not a big fan of it myself. At the time of writing this, my stats reflect as 0.00 % self upvotes. I'm not bragging, or saying that it isn't okay to self upvote, but there are other ways to essentially self upvote, and that is also another topic of controversy, but lets stay on track here. I will share my personal thoughts on the topic of self upvotes. It has been something that I don't do very often, but I have altered my way of thinking ever so slightly, and have come to make a decision, that I will stick to. And the decision is this: If someone upvotes one of my comments to 0.01 or 0.02, and am going to self vote that comment past the threshold, because if I don't, I will likely not get paid for the persons upvote, and they, in turn, will have completely wasted their VP by giving me the vote.
(UPDATE) @wizardave was kind enough to share the link to an awesome new service, a service that makes it possible to not have to worry about your dust votes disappearing. Also utilizing the service makes it possible to save your VP for others. Awesome! Thanks for sharing @wizardave!!!

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https://steemit.com/community/@dustsweeper/ann-introducing-dustsweeper-a-new-service-to-turn-dust-into-profit

Thank you for this service @dustsweeper!!!

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If you want to get some more technical details from users that have a very respectable amount of knowledge on the topic, I would recommend starting with this post by @thedarkhorse

https://steemit.com/steemit/@thedarkhorse/your-2-cent-vote-is-worthless-the-real-deal-on-dust-votes

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This post is quite amazing. @thedarkhorse really did a great job in explaining the dust rule, and also linked some other articles that tackle this topic.

This concludes my thoughts on dust votes. I really hope my efforts to explain things in a n00bish sense have helped. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments section, if I know the answer, I will be happy to help.

As always, Thank you for reading.

Much love,
@futuremind

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