Minnow #541,753—Monthly Report: June

in #steemit6 years ago (edited)

Six Months Have Come And Went...

It hardly seems possible, but it's true. My account was set up in late December, but I didn't do any posting, commenting or curating until January 1. So, in addition to the monthly report I normally do, I will be adding in a six month summary, just for fun.

I started this as a way for me to keep track of what I'm doing. For anyone else who sees it, and gets anything positive out of it, welcome.


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Quick Summary

Curie came calling twice. Accumulation of SP dropped, due mainly to lower STEEM prices, but overall, the monthly average went up. Numbers across the board were lower. Much lower. What can I say? I spent a lot of June in a funk that I don't know how to describe. It only seemed to get better after my birthday. Correlation? Your guess is as good as mine.

Post (no comments)—44

Post numbers were down three from May's numbers. I feel lucky to even say that, considering I struggled at times to come up with topics to write about, along with the motivation to write them. I may have to resort to making lists. Unfortunately, that feels like work, and while I do like to keep track of what I'm doing, that's the fun part. Making a to do list feels restrictive.

Total number of days posting were 22, putting the average number of posts at 2.

Comments—818

This represents over a 38% drop in the number of comments from May, which was a personal record. In really numbers, it's a decline of 504 comments. The month was down throughout, but it got worse as it progressed. The highest amount of comments for a week was 263, while the lowest was 125. Total number of days for comments were 25. This meant the average of comments per day also fell to under 33.

Upvotes given—167/1232

These were way off from May. Total number of accounts voted for declined by 84, while total number of upvotes went down by 630. This can totally be blamed on lower STEEM value, and thus lower voting power. I did not try to adjust my upvoting strategy, but instead kept to rewarding most comments I received with at least $0.03, to avoid the dust threshold.

Upvotes received—930/2218

This was the bright spot for the month. Thanks to the two Curie upvotes, along with some others piling on, the amount of accounts upvoting my posts went up 126 while total number of upvotes went up 51. I'm not sure why the difference in the number of upvotes from May to June is so low, considering the double curie, only that overall, upvotes were down for other users.

Highest number of votes from a single user was 94, a drop of 36.5% from 148 in May.

SP increase—88.219

All things considered, I'm fairly happy with this. Curie is definitely responsible for minimizing the drop in SP from May's number to only 3.353. The ratio of SBD to STEEM prices changed somewhat too, so may have contributed, but not enough to warrant much more than a mention.

Highest single payout—10.717 SBD/3.684 STEEM/9.878 SP

This is what was paid out from A Tale Of Two Hares/Do Not Cross The Farmer's Wife, one of the two curie trail curations. Later in the month, 7.730 SBD/3.951/STEEM/8.718 SP came from The Gnome And The Old Woman, again in large part thanks to curie. Interestingly enough, these two posts are part of a mulit-part series I've been writing to assign some kind of a backstory to the garden decorations we have. Thanks goes to @willymac for the inspiration behind the series.

Self-upvotes—0

I managed to avoid the accidental self-upvote this time, so no asterisk.

Contests—4

I continue to compete in @abh12345's Curation and Engagement Leagues. I opted out of the prizes for all of June, though my placings were fairly inconsistent. Had I still been receiving prize money I would have been No. 1, 2, 4, and 5. That gives me a total of six first place wins with an asterisk.

I have debating whether or not to opt back into the prize money but have not yet decided completely. There is at least one person now, maybe more, who has as much time to dedicate to the engagement league as I do, and so maybe it's time to get back in it. I will try to make my mind up soon.

Flags given/received—0

Instead of getting rid of the stats as I threatened to in last month's report, I decided to combine the two into one. As it is, flags stand at 0.

Followers—586

Yet another drop in month over month gains, but because a goodly portion of May's new followers were probably some form of a bot, duplicate or auto-following account, I'm not complaining too loudly. As it is, I continue to get the same kind of interaction I've been getting for some weeks now, so even with the increase of 66 followers, there's not been a substantial impact on upvotes or engagement.

Reputation Rating

Once again, thanks to the two curie upvotes, my reputation rating went up from 54 to 56. The two point jump is uncommon anymore. If it weren't for curie, I'd be lucky to see a total point increase.

Investment—0

Unlike April and May, the lack of an investment did not come because of rising STEEM prices, but because Coinbase changed their rules. They no longer take credit cards, and even bank or debit cards have been rejected by the system. I do not like waiting seven days for money from a bank account to be ready for use, but as it is, I started this process over four weeks ago and still don't have any more invested, so I might just go ahead and start the process anyway. This last uptick in STEEM prices back into the $1.50 USD range, along with some snafus regarding a new account I opened for the purpose of investing has kept me from proceeding.

Miscellaneous

Currently, it takes 492.821 STEEM per MVests to become a minnow, which means that I passed the triple minnow mark sometime toward the end of June. The triple minnow term is mine. As far as I know, it's not official, it just helps me to feel like I'm progressing.

My serialized work-in-progress dubbed They Maya ran throughout June, but will actually come to an end today unless I decide to finish it, which I haven't had much inkling to do at this point. If there was a regularly engaged following, I would go for it, but even though installments have received upvotes from curie, there is no one who has been regularly following the story to my knowledge.

Conclusion

I feel fortunate to have earned the amount of SP for June that I did, realizing that it probably won't happen again in July, as long as the summer slump continues. I hope to pull myself out of my own funk and reestablish some momentum that I feel evaporated sometime around the end of May. The wind just left the sails. We'll see what the future brings.

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Six months and several days ago...

I don't want to write an entire summary report of the last six months, but will try to highlight a few things.

Total earned SP—420.015

Over the last six months, this represents the amount I have made off of posting, commenting and curating. I have not self-upvoted (intentionally, and I removed them all when I did so accidentally), I have not paid bidbots for any post boosting, although I was on the receiving end of one bidbot upvote thanks to someone else, and I did receive various upvotes from bots such as gentlebot, transparencybot and trufflepig. I did seek any of them out, I did not submit my posts into any Discord curation server, and I did very little, if any self-promotion.

I did receive multiple curie upvotes and two from OCD, plus one or two smaller curation trail votes.

At the end of April, I was around 240 SP for four months for an average monthly total of 60 SP. Over the last two months, the SP has jumped up enough to make the new average 70 SP per month. To put that in it's proper perspective, with today's STEEM prices, I have been earning roughly $105 USD a month.

I have not powered down. All but 25 STEEM has been powered up (that STEEM is sitting there from my prize winnings in the engagement league until I decide if I'm going to use it as a prize for something I've been thinking about for a while but am not ready to divulge yet—or maybe I won't do it at all—stay tuned).

Total posts—251

Three of those posts I declined payment on, so the total paid posts stands at 248. Regardless of how I slice it, I'm between 41 and 42 posts a month. That's not an average I'm likely to exceed by any great amount, since I don't see me keeping up with the level of engagement I have and produce more posts. Unless engagement on my posts go up and I spend most of my time there, which really hasn't happened yet, but would seem to be a natural outcome at some point.

Total comments—4,193

Despite a pretty underwhelming start for the first three months, and a major let down in June, I'm okay with that total. I have just under 700 comments a month with an average of just over 160 a week. In June, I exceeded those numbers even in the funk, so I'm hoping the back half of 2018 will show some improvement.

The Immeasurable

I don't know how to quantify connections or building friendships or the value of networking or making your presence known, but I do know one thing. It's the people here who are trying to make a go of things—despite what's going on in their personal lives, any STEEM price headwinds, any shortcomings the platform might have, any pitfalls created by actions that some people take, or any events that tend to undermine confidence, like a total blockchain seizing—that helps me come back day after day after day.

I have not been this enthused to do any kind of work in a very long time. Probably not since I wrote and self-published my two Kindle novels. Those, however, I'm still waiting to make money on. Here, I've been doing that, even in small, incremental fashion, since day one. And my $105 USD represents more than I've made through Google ads, affiliate links, YouTube videos, ebook sales and whatever other web ventures I've done over the last 20 years, combined and multiplied by at least four.

That's with STEEM at $1.50 USD. That's the perspective I hope to keep in mind for the next six months and beyond.

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Hey, @pjau. Here's the report. 😁

Sort:  

Thanks for the report. It puts a lot of things in perspective for others who are still growing their accounts. That means I need to post and comment more. I just passed my first 3 months, but since I was away for 2.5 months out of those 3 months, I'm still starting out.

I'm glad this report was of some use to you. In my case, joining @abh12345's Curation and Engagement Leagues became my eye opening experience, because that's where I finally had something to compare to what I was doing. And I wasn't doing anywhere enough.

It does take more than what most of us think it will starting out, because we generally don't have anything else to compare it with. Once we do, though, we can get going.

The big enemy then becomes the time we have to dedicate to STEEM and how efficiently we can use that time. I'm constantly being interrupted by one thing or another and it's hard to get in a flow that way. Being creative isn't something, for me at least, that I can turn on and off on demand. It comes and goes seemingly as it pleases.

I do hope, though, that you find your footing and then go for it. Being a part of the freewrite contests and having a goal to post every day are definitely two steps in the right direction. In the early stages, and since you're basically starting anew, make sure you've got plenty of comments going on other people's posts while replying to those on your own. That's really the true way you're going to get eyes on your writing, by interacting with people on theirs. I wouldn't spend more than an hour or two at most on your posts at this point either, and I wouldn't try to do more than one or two a day. Less may be better. If there aren't any eyes on it, all the work won't be rewarded, but you still need something out there. It's a balance, and finding it can be hard. So can keeping it, which is what I'm finding out. :)

We all need to figure out what works best for us. While I'm giving some advice, you're obviously not obligated to take it. Whatever ends up working for you best will be your own approach, and it will probably take some trial and error and then dedication to get there.

Thanks so much for replying. I appreciate the advice.

You're right, finding the time to dedicate to steem is really where the challenge is. That's why I'm focusing on the freewrites at the moment. It's easier to find a few minutes of my day to complete the freewrite, than writing longer articles. At least this way I have no excuse to not post. I'll also try to be more active commenting on other's blogs.

I agree with you, the key is really to find a balance between the posting and commenting. I didn't realize this before, but now I get how they build on each other. When I was here the first time, I wrote 1 blog post and 86 comments. It wasn't a good ratio because the people I interact with had nothing to read on my blog. I'm trying to balance them this time around.

Thanks again.

This post is really awesome. We should oblige every Steemonian to write such a post on a monthly basis 😁

Commenting is still so undervalued 😥

Further you earned about 20% of your monthly income just with one post.

To bad you didn't got any flags in June. Do I need to help you and solve that 0 for July?
😋

Well, thank you for the kind words, @crypto-econom1st. It seems rather boring as posts go, but it is helpful to see what I've done. I agree it would be great if everyone kept stats, but I think there would be a lot of people turned off by building such a report. It's not why they're here. I'm not even sure how we could get the word out to even 10% of the people, anyway, let alone everyone.

Commenting is undervalued, and probably will continue to be so as long as people look at it strictly from an upvote standpoint. For me, it's the way I get to express myself, show my ability to write, let someone know about me, and have all of that come back at me, too. The vast majority of my comments get nothing, so if I were just going at it based on what I earn, well, I wouldn't do as many as I do, either.

Yeah, the curie trail upvotes helped out tremendously. They're unpredictable, obviously. You never know when they're going to hit, so you can't count on them at all. As it is, though, I'd rather have a 100 upvotes on every post averaging $0.05 an upvote than try to figure out when curie will come calling next. They are awesome, but when they're trying to cover as much of STEEM as they can while doing some filtering for quality, it's just not meant to be a reliable source of rewards.

Hey, do what you got to do. :) I think I'd really rather earn the flag. Maybe wait until I'm on some rant that you totally disagree with or something. I'm bound to have one in a week or two, given how things work around here. :)

I think I have a better idea them flagging you. Let's go bounty hunting!

I figured you could be a very good bounty hunter. Since you write very good comments. So did you consider to react on all bounty posts?
I mean since you do write quote a number of comments you could as well react on the bounty posts of your interest.

Okay, now that's an interesting idea. I take it the bounty hunter has its own account and then posts about which other posts there's a bounty on? I know Asher has been doing it, and I run into them here and there, but I haven't necessarily connected them with a place where I could go to collect bounties. I like it though. Much better than getting flagged, too, by the way. :)

You can find the bounty posts yourself by visiting the @steem-bounty account and look at their comments. Half of the comments is for new bounties and the other half contains the results.

I'm also thinking about creating a post myself to inform my followers in which bounties I participated. Both my followers as well as myself could benefit from such a post.

So, I went to the steem-bounty account, and it appears they have within the last month moved things to their own website? Because there doesn't appear to be posts of what you have described for about four weeks to a month now. I went to the website but my browser warned me that it's not set up right and that my data might not be secure. I've blown through those warnings in the past because I knew the website and nothing has happened, but in this case, I'm not quite ready to chance it. Apparently, people are doing it, but it would be nice if steem-bounty would also comply with what I believe are standard practices and secure their website. In the meantime, I'm going to try to keep track of the bounties on Steemit another way and see what happens.

I did not say look at their posts. I said look at the comments from the Steem-bounty account.
https://steemit.com/@steem-bounty/comments

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That was a pretty good overall summary report. I think you should rethink about Asher's rewards, but yeah, I know it's hard to accept something for something you would do anyway. Me I just have a tendency to pass it on, generally to F.O.G. I do like how he makes it easy for me to keep track of myself.

In a couple of weeks I will hit my 1 year on steemit. I have had a lot of fun. I really do not see myself moving to another platform yet, and will stay with steemit for the near seeable future. It is different enough for me to find it enjoyable, whereas Facebook, and YT, and Google hangouts, just did not cut it.

Thanks to a few people my REP is finally beginning to grow a little bit, I think that is the hardest thing to do on steemit. I know i could buy votes and raise it, but like you I prefer the community recognition of growth. So big congrats on the two point Rep Growth.

Well, thank you. It could always be better, but it could always be worse, too. Need to keep the perspective.

Yeah, I have been thinking about getting back in. The stipulation was there needed to be people with the time, and I think that's starting to happen. The problem is, I've not been on my game the last four or five weeks, so I need to get back into shape or something. :) I haven't really been able to pinpoint the problem per se, but whatever it is seems to be fading, so hopefully I can find plenty to work with and just get going again.

Anyway, I'm seeing that it might come sooner than later.

Yeah, I like the idea of the pass it on, which is why I haven't powered up most of my prize winnings yet, but have been holding them for some kind of league enticement. I've just not decided to do it yet. Maybe I'll do that soon, too.

Well, congratulations on being here for a year! That's awesome. Lots of changes, lots of ups and downs, and yet, here you are. I have a friend coming up on two years, so always something to be shooting for, I guess.

Until there's something up and running and we can tell where it's going, I have nowhere else to go myself, and I'm generally having enough of a good time that it would take more of a mass migration than just me to leave at this point. Family financial pressures would have me leave or curtailing my work here before moving to another platform would.

Reputation is widely disregarded because it's easy to game, just like everything else, but it means something to those of us who are building it as organically as can be done, given all that there is going on and who all is involved with it. So, maybe we can get a group of us community minded folks together with higher reputations at some point and flip the perception of rep back around.

Woo got a mention. Haha

88 sp. Is that the highest month yet?

I like to think of minnows as the teenagers of steem. You're basically 14.5 years old on steem. 500sp (13) - 5000sp (20). About 650 sp a year between there. Lol

Anyway, I'd say a pretty good month all things considered.

I figured I'd better tag you, since you're on Discord quite a bit. It doesn't seem to work for everyone, though. I can tag some other people all I like and nothing happens. You, however, respond, which I greatly appreciate. :)

No, last month's 91-plus was the highest. I came close to matching or exceeding it, though. A few more posts, or a lot more comments, and who knows, maybe I would have reached 100. I wish I could count on the curie trail votes, but I don't see how that's possible.

I wish I felt like I was 14.5 years old energy wise. That would be awesome. I'd want to keep my current emotional state, knowledge and experience, though. And memory. Just up the energy please. :) Oh, I wouldn't mind being rid of the aches and pains, too, if I'm ruthering here.

I'd say it was okay month, too. It's all relative, though. You've been doing much better than me, all things considered. I know, it's comparing apples and oranges when you look at what we're doing, but if we're talking sheer results, you're outpacing many people here. I think that's worth a congratulations to you. :)

I can tag some other people all I like and nothing happens.

Gotta respond, I mean how annoying is it when people don't :D

I wish I felt like I was 14.5 years old energy wise.

Don't we all :)

You've been doing much better than me, all things considered.

If all I did was make daily posts, I doubt I would make as much as you. So I think you got me there by a long shot.

I think that's worth a congratulations to you.

Thanks!

Well, as I think I've told you before, we all need to find our niche, and you've found one at least for the time being. Not all of us are going to be that interested or good at writing just as some of us aren't going to be that great or wanting to find spam, plagiarism or scams. So, we find where we fit in best on the blockchain until something else comes along and we go from there.

I appreciate the response. And yes, it is totally annoying, but I know the universe doesn't revolve around me—I'd be lying on a warm beach somewhere if it did—but I do make a conscience effort to track down every mention I get, even the random ones. But I also don't try to get myself so caught up and involved with so many other things that I don't even see them.

I believe that's what's happening more than just the flat out ignoring. Why have mentions and GINAbot just to ignore it? Get rid of it!

Hey, pjau! On an entirely different note. Not sure if this is braking some protocol or not, but I received a $0.00 downvote from stb138, which I guess is a steemcleaner bot? At least, that's what it's calling itself and it's profile has a link back to steemcleaners.

It's not doing anything, but it's just kind of weird, since I've never been flagged before, that it would happen on a post that is actually the last of a 64 installment series I posted and got curied for a couple of times. :)

No rush, but if it's okay and you get the time, is there a way to find out why this happened, if it is an official steemcleaner bot? Could it also be an accident of some kind?

I also just got another flag for the same amount on the same post from gladiatorwork. Both accounts appear to be new.

The post is here in case you need a reference.

It's currently earning all of $0.74. The only other thing I can think of is that they meant to flag a phisher comment that both guard and arcange marked.

Hey. There's tonnes of accounts pretending to be us at the moment. I've been flagged twice in the past 2 days as well.

Bizarre. What's the point of a $0.00 flag, though? What are they accomplishing, other than making people wonder what's going on and or getting upset? It would seem to me that would be the best way to draw attention to yourself when you might not want attention drawn. So, what are they up to?

I'm not happy this is happening to anyone, but at the same time, I'm glad to find that I'm not the sole target of whatever this is. I've had three flags now in two days. Again, nothing's coming off, but you can't really do anything about it because they're not posting or commenting so there's nothing to flag.

I guess a comment with a mention to see if you can get a response? Any plans in the works to do anything as far as steemcleaners is concerned? Or are they basically on a watchlist as minor annoyances?

It's a group/person (not entirely sure) called The Steemit Defense League. They just have it out for anyone that downvotes people. So their way to deal with it is to make a bunch of fake accounts and pretend to be the people they hate and downvote anyone at random. It's completely pointless and retarded. But nothing anyone can do about it. Best to just ignore it.

We have a list of 70 ish accounts. But feel free to tag me on anything that get flagged. We are trying to get the delegation removed as they are STEEMit created accounts.

Okay. That's all good to know. Steemit Defense League. I wonder why I got hit. I've flagged once, and that was a phisher scam, months ago. It's the only one, and in reality, I'm pretty slow to do it. So, kind of odd all the way around. If it keeps up, I will let you know. I suppose others have already written posts about them, but I might take a crack at it, too, if you don't mind me using the information you've given me. I don't need to use you as the source unless you're perfectly okay with that. :)

Okay, well, I'm glad it's not just me going crazy or being totally out of it that I can't figure out why they would go around downvoting for absolutely no reason with $0.00 flag votes. It's kind of like that Chihuahua or other small dog that likes to nip at your ankles. Not going to do any real damage, but boy, if you could get away with it, you'd boot it across the room. :) Gently, of course.

Hey, nicely done. I know a small percentage of your drop off was my absence, and possibly others also had a reason they were away. Then with the lower valuation of Steem and SP for voting, I notice that I can only vote half what I was with my rented delegation. Not sure how those below 500 and no rented are even functioning at more than a bare minimum.

Your approach is sound, and I duplicate part of it as the foundations today will be invaluable in time if the site continues to function and grow.

Congrats on a nice first 6 months, and hoping when you give the annual report we can see a faster growth from the foundation you built in the first half.

I'm sure all kinds of things have been happening out there, so no worries from my end for any part you did or didn't play. It is, as they like to say, what it is. Summer, STEEM, lower VP all aren't helping, in addition to the visibility issue and whatever else might be thrown into the mix.

All I know is it was driving me crazy trying to uvpote anything when I was lower than 500, especially with STEEM going down, which is why I went ahead and bought some. If I'd been patient and smarter, I would have waited, but I had intended to buy anyway, and it seemed beneficial at the time. And it was, until the prices kept going lower and I had to buy more just to keep up my upvoting amounts.

Well, I don't know how sound my approach is. It's the bare basics. No frills. I'm hoping it will payoff down the road, but it's getting harder and harder to operate around here without dabbling in bidbots or delegation or something. I've been pretty good at sticking to the stubborn route, so maybe I can keep it up.

It would be nice to see faster growth. I would hope to be able to build faster with more SP and more people knowing about and liking my work. That's the way it should be.

You have by far achieved so much more than most within six months. It just shows how much you have invested in here be it time, money and energy which is admirable. Maybe opt in for this week in the league and then see what happens? :)

My guess is, I'm probably somewhere in the middle of what people have achieved, and maybe on the low side of middle, but I have nothing other than my instincts on that. The reason why I think that is, there are ways to earn beyond strictly posting, commenting and curating.

For instance, someone leasing a large delegation for several months, with the right deal, could be ahead of me by double or triple. My guess is, it would have to be a 10,000 SP delegation or more, but anyway. I appreciate the thought. I just know I've been doing what I can to just work the platform to see if it actually produces, and this is the result so far.

I have spent a lot of time, but it's nothing more than what I've done before with a business or with school. If you want results, you need to put in the time, right?

Yeah, maybe I should get back into the prize money. I've been leaning that way heavily. I need to make sure I can get back to my previous commenting pace, though. So far, I haven't been able to power through like I was doing. Maybe I'm done slacking? We'll see. :)

Even if you are slacking, you are still doing great to be able to land 1-5 spots. I encourage you to get back on it. You would have enough SPs to delegate if you want :D

I'm not sold completely on delegations yet, but I'm trying to be observant and continue to watch what's going on. As it is, I know there are many who are delegating something even with less than what I currently have, but I'm not there yet. We'll see.

I think I figured out what I want to do. It won't be this week, but starting next week, I will jump in, and whatever prize money I might get will go toward another prize that will be available to anyone who can meet a high level of engagement. If no one makes it, each week the pot will get larger. I'll talk to Asher about it and announce it maybe next Monday. You're the first besides Asher to know anything about this, and while I didn't tell you much, you now know more than what Asher does. :)

That sounds promising and exciting! I don't know how I can improve my engagement here but I hope I can figure something out. That's really generous.

Well, how generous it is will depend on how often people meet the engagement criteria. If no one does it, then it won't be generous at all. If it's met every week, then there will be one larger payout and a bunch of small ones. We'll see. Might need to brainstorm it a little more. :)

I don't know if the generosity is mine as much as it would be curie's at this point. I'm just choosing to redirect it a little. That of course, assuming I continue to make it into the money each week. Still need to do that. :)

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