I often wonder what the point of writing this opening line truly is. Yet, I do it anyway.

^{A Piece of the Puzzle You Didn't Know You Were Building}

I've had far too much on my mind lately.

^{Is it time to spill the beans or will I just ramble on about nothing in particular? Maybe I'll do a business version of me post.}

So today I found out I'm ranked #344 on this thing:

^{Image linked to source.  Change my name to yours in the address to find your rank.}

Fantastic!

^{Every account is on that list.  #344 out of hundreds of thousands.  Not too shabby!}

I'd probably be ranked higher had I not taken so much time off to recuperate or deal with a — life I didn't necessarily sign up for.  We all have bad days (I'll just keep telling myself that).

So I suppose now I could delegate away 250SP to that group and be entitled to seven votes per week.  Easy money, right?

That means one more vote.  No added eyes on my work.  No added comments aside from maybe some spam every now and again.

I'm a writer/artist/entertainer/humorist/stakeholder/entrepreneur/this is a long list and it just keeps growing.  What good am I without a viewership?  Why write the words, why produce the art, why try to get laughs, why even bother being creative — if nobody wants to look.  I'm an entrepreneur, I treat my blog like a business; why risk my money here when I can use that to easily advance my future, elsewhere?

Every single day, I struggle with that stuff while it burns a hole in my head.

Now I just sit and think, with such a high ranking, why won't people simply vote because they actually enjoy what I do here?  How did I get here if they did not enjoy it in the first place?  It seems as if many don't even want to look now, so they can't just assume it's bad and not worthy.  What's happening here?

Why must there always be strings attached?  I'm not complaining, I'm confused.  Are we voting for content or are we voting because someone is calling you over to vote?

OCD is a popular curation group.  Must I place a tag in my post pointing them here or fail to qualify for a vote by default if I do not (just using OCD as an example)?  It's often encouraged to use these group specific tags.  I'm positive there are many groups who require some kind of tag or they will not curate.  I've seen many posts; all five tags mention curation groups and nothing about the actual content.

As a content creator, I feel it's a bad business move to limit my potential viewership to the current following I have now and a handful of curation groups.  Rewards are nice but I didn't come here to farm rewards.  I'm a content creator, I'm here to provide my unique form of entertainment to as many potential eyes as possible and the rewards stem from those eyes.

Comedyopenmic crowd; I've been funny more times than I can count but if I don't enter their contest, chances are good I won't see a vote from many in that group.  I don't like entering contests.  I don't produce content to be a winner or loser every week.  Plus I donated to their prize pool so I felt like it would be silly to try to win that money back.

I tried the 'artzone' tag awhile back.  I'd get an automated vote and automated comment.  I haven't seen many from that group visit my space and vote all on their own or include my work as something worthy of their time if I do not use the tag.  They know who I am, but if I don't use that tag they're not allowed to look?  If the work is good enough when I use the tag, wouldn't it be good when I don't?

Curie.  They helped me get my start here.  My first rewards came from their efforts.  I think they only look out for new members though.  Or maybe I have too much SP?  I don't know.  I'll never see a vote from them now and I'm not going to sell my STEEM or start a new account just so I can qualify to be rewarded after I've worked so hard to build what I have here with this blog; and I kind of stand out like a sore thumb. I'm pretty sure people would be able to figure out who this "new guy" is.

Just know, I'm not knocking these groups down.

^{I support their efforts.  They do good work, all of them.  I'm simply confused.  Where does someone like me fit in?}

I'll see names on the voter lists of trending posts.

Some of these people at one point would visit my blog, encourage me to carry on, pass votes my way.  Now they want me to pay, as they support advertisements or posts produced by people who only want to squeak out a few measly dollars profit after pulling $10-$500+ meaningless rewards out of the reward pool.

That's been a tough pill to swallow.  Some of those people don't even care how well their blogs do; don't care if anyone looks.  It's just a numbers game to them, yet they hoard much of the reward pool to themselves, and often earn less than everyone else.  That's a tremendous waste of resources and there aren't even enough available downvotes/flags to put those resources back into the reward pool so others who actually care, can earn.

Let's say the reward pool is worth one million dollars (it's very close to that in reality today), these wannabe content producer reward farmers are to be content with anywhere from a loss, to not much higher than 10% gains after purchasing those 'rewards'.  They are converting a reward pool worth one million dollars into a reward pool worth one hundred thousand dollars or less, if everyone took that road.

I can't wrap my head around that.  I don't see how one hundred thousand dollars spread among all content producers can seem more appealing than one million dollars.  I don't know where these folks went to school to learn business but wherever that was, the building should be condemned.

Content producers were in a panic over a potential 50/50 split with curators when they publish a post, but they're okay with only a 10% cut of the entire reward pool? I don't get it.

The well is drying up.

^{So many are paid to look away.}

I hear talk of Alexa rankings.  They monitor web traffic.  This platform is on a steady decline.  Not as many are looking at this platform anymore.  Of course that's going to hurt every content producer here.

People try to blame Steemit Inc.  Pointing fingers, making up excuses, "Lame UI, slow progress, yadda-yadda-yadda, and fill in the blank _________."

When you point your finger at someone,

^{you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.}

All of us here, we're given ten full power votes per day.  Many of us will hand out lower percentages so we can spread the wealth around to more people in one day.  If one individual is being paid to look away by selling their vote or delegating away their Steem Power, that's 10 less page views per day.  If they typically vote at 25%, that's 40 less page views per day.  If 1000 people are paid to look away, that's 10000-40000+ less potential page views — per day.

Currently, there are about 60000 posts published per day, and that includes comments.

So?  Who's fault is it again?

The platform's fault?  My fault?  You're here reading, consuming this content; is it your fault?  No.  None of the aforementioned.  It's the fault of those getting paid to look away combined with those providing the incentives to get paid to look away.

"It's just the bear market," they'll say.  Yeah, okay then.  Just like how people stop watching Netflix when their share value drops.  Just like how people stop using Facebook when their share value drops.  Just like how people stop driving Ford when their share value drops.  That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.

A combination of people paid to look away (the only members we have) and the fact low quality content that typically receives low ratings (not trending status!) hits the actual few remaining eyes does and will continue to lead to less traffic on the platform.  This is not rocket science.  And again, the only people at fault for that are the ones being paid to look away and those providing the incentives to look away.  It's their SP behind the entire mess.  Nobody else here plays a role in it.

What can be done?

^{Provide incentives for people to look, curate, and power up STEEM.}

If you voted for this post and I said, "Congratulations everyone!  I've doubled your curation rewards!"  Would you be impressed?  Would you be happier with this world if you got paid more per click?  How many times have you said, "My SP is low, I don't get much of a curation reward anyway, so I don't care."  Would increasing your curation reward lead to you having the ability to grow your pile of SP faster?

Straight up:  Would you feel more inclined to be entertained, vote, hold sp, vote more, earn more SP simply because you have more SP than you did the day before, let it build, and carry on like that, having fun, until you can earn enough to cover the costs of a cell phone each month?

That's exactly what a content consumer would be able to achieve here if we get our shit together.  Just imagine a world where watching Netflix is what paid for your Netflix subscription.  This is not impossible.

I'm a content producer as well as a curator.

When I heard people talking about a change involving a 50/50 split between content creators and curators instead of the 75/25 split we have today, I got excited.

The selfish content producer only sees a pay cut in that scenario.  The business side of me sees potential, as a content creator.

It's not unusual in business to take a lower percentage profit per unit (published post) with the hopes of earning more in bulk (more incoming votes).  If there's an incentive to vote (higher curation rewards), I assume more people with low SP all the way up to those with higher levels of SP will want to vote more often.  When those with low SP realize they earn even more per click if they have more SP, they might want to find ways to earn or buy more SP.  More accounts with higher SP means more accounts with higher valued votes.  More accounts with higher valued votes means content producers stand a chance of earning more, even though they take in a lower percentage per post.

It's easy to write that off and say it only looks good on paper but I'll just direct your attention back to the other piece of paper that tells people to look away.  You want it to look good on paper.  That other piece of paper, no matter how you write it, isn't going to look good, and we can actually see the results in real time.  There's nothing wrong with trying something but there's plenty wrong with not trying something out of fear of failure.  Don't be afraid to live a little.

Perfect timing.

^{Netcoins, remember?}

Everyone got together and worked hard to have STEEM listed on Netcoins.  Soon people will be able to buy STEEM with cash, easily.

Now let's ask ourselves this question:

What do we want to see people doing with the STEEM they purchase?  Do we want to see them power up and contribute to the platform, or do we want to see them contribute to this mess of advertisements nobody wants to look at and people being paid to look away?  What's best for business?

Do we want them to have a reason to power up?  Do we want to see our content supported by potentially tens of thousands of new members who simply went to an ATM to purchase 100 STEEM, or do we just want to see them hand the money over to robots, grow their accounts at a much slower pace, and gain nothing but the headache I'm getting every time I look at this mess and wonder why nobody does a damn thing about it?

Something to think about, I guess.

Have a nice day.

Credits:All art and images seen here were produced digitally, by me.
^{"That's the chopped version. I'll save the rest of my thoughts for another day."}

^{© 2018 @NoNamesLeftToUse.}