Dolpin-Hood, Votes, Self-Votes, My Rules and Daily Dividend's
I firstly want to announce that today I did a rather large power-up which has just about elevated me into Dolphin status. I am now officially middle-class, I’m sure @tarazkp would approve.
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Do you know what the first thing I did after powering up? I gave myself a 100% vote on my latest post. Is this greed? I don’t consider it so, I feel it’s my daily divided.
You see I up-vote ALL my own posts, usually after around 60 minutes or so. That way anyone who is going to vote early gets the greater curation rewards. Today I got a whole $0.15 more than I usually get; whoopee doo!
To add £2000 to my Steemit account is a risk. I extracted the money by selling a holding from my regular FTSE portfolio to do this. This particular Aerospace Company was up 30% and I figured I would get out and realise the profits.
The share price may continue to go up or it may go down, but being Aerospace, it’s considered a defensive company and is not liable to big swings if the economy goes to shit.
The investment paid me a divided twice a year. I won’t get the now, or will I?
I feel I will by giving myself a self-vote every day. The difference of $0.15 before and after is my ‘daily dividend’ now and may offset the loss I have incurred by selling my FTSE holding.
The rest of my self-vote value is due to the other THOUSANDS that I have invested into STEEM and Steemit. I feel I deserve to have this once or twice a day.
Investing in STEEM is a much bigger risk than my Aerospace company, but it sure is more exciting. The majority of my investments are still in the FTSE and will remain there. I won’t be doing this again.
To reach the status of ‘Dolphin’ has been one of my ambitions, and it’s now fulfilled. I now need to expand my audience and find more worthy people that produce great content that I can bond with and reciprocate with.
Part of this post was inspired by @tobixen’s recent post about his own rules regarding votes and self-votes.
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@tobixen mentions that he never self-vote’s personal blog posts. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to self-vote your own articles and I will continue to do so. I NEVER self-vote my own comments, and I am very liberal about giving votes to others.
I'm sure some others will agree with me on this policy.
On my travels I did notice this guy, @davidding and more pointedly what his blog says.
‘My reputation is because I upvote myself and was punished'
@davidding is an Orca and has a reputation of -10. I haven’t looked into what he has done to piss some people off but he now appears to be another @hr1 and lives off curation rewards. Maybe it’s in fear of further flags.
David obviously has done some things in the past to merit this reputation, and I should point out that if you don’t behave on Steemit, others will punish you regardless of your size.
I'm sure it was NOT just self-voting of his own articles ALONE.
However I am digressing on what my main topic is regarding which are my rules and how I behave. I guess I am doing something right as I have yet to earn a single flag from anyone.
Several days ago I mentioned to @steevc that I was struggling to use my VP as I couldn’t find anything worthy to vote up. In the end I found a couple of things to stop my VP getting to 100% over night. The post level has dropped dramatically over the last few weeks.
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I spotted some posts made by people I follow, but I just can’t bring myself to vote up something that has literally taken 5 minutes to create. I’m not talking about Steepshot or Esteem mobile posts, but desktop ones.
A picture of a fried egg with words, 'delicious' is not really going to cut the mustard.
It’s not that I’m a tight ass voter. I nearly always vote comments up as well as posts, something many don’t do. As well as this I try to ensure my comment up-votes have a value of at last $0.03 to avoid dust issues.
I don’t expect the 99% crew to up-vote my comments, though it is appreciated, but.., and I need to emphasize this, if you comment on my POST and don’t up-vote the POST then don’t expect your comment to be up-voted.
You may get a response from me, but the vote will not happen. I am not talking about COMMENTS, but POSTS.
It’s a rather large bug bear of mine. My article, my rules!
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.
There, have some extra love.
That's Big Big Love, thanks @drakos
Celebrate success! Nice job on buying in and I agree with self upvoting your own posts! I do it too. We need to encourage minnows to build their accounts.
Thank you! I hope some others will read this and get some inspiration to power up and not use the platform as a money machine.
Good people WILL get noticed but only if they persevere. Steemit is only for tigers or the tenacious.
First, congrats for making the move to a riskier venture. As long as you can afford to lose, you can afford to gamble, as the saying goes. It's likely that if you use Steemit as a long-term growth strategy, you'll wind up winning since that investment not only increases your net worth here, but also the value of the net worth you bring in every time you curate.
I agonized over self-voting when I first started here, but I don't worry about it so much right now. The value of a full 100% upvote from myself swings between 10-14 cents...hardly enough to break the bank or abuse the reward pool, and I don't post frequently enough for it to make that large of a difference. Checking SteemWorld shows a 5.66% self-upvote ratio...I'm REALLY not worried about being flagged if 94% of my curative efforts currently go to other users. :)
(Amusingly, just as I wrote that, some random 25-rep user flagged a post of mine...I'd love to know what they have against Virtua Racing on the Sega Genesis, but sadly there was no comment, only a -100% flag LOL!)
Bottom line: keep doing what you're doing, ya Video Nasty-avatared maniac. ;)
Those 25rep accounts downvoting anyone may be a part of steemit defence league. Check if that account is in that list.
Thanks for the heads-up, @lovenfreedom. The account didn't appear on the list for the SDL, but they have not gone unnoticed. Pulling them up in Steem World led me to see they (and several others of their ilk) were mentioned in this thread here as being part of a different flagging ring:
https://steemit.com/flag/@swelker101/re-guiltyparties-the-flag-ring-20180712t232727743z
Further reading in one of the French threads confirmed this is some kind of auto-flagging bot. I'm not exactly worried...at 25 rep, 15 delegated steem, and 8% voting power, there's literally no one this plankton-bot can hurt except itself. :)
I’ve always found keeping an eye on self vote percentage to be the key, both for monitoring myself and shaping opinion of others. I don’t think anyone can complain about a single digit self vote percent. My teeth won’t even start grinding in earnest until it goes past 50%!
I got two random “dust” flags in the past couple hours. Looks like just some bots, nothing to do with your content!
Thanks! I will take a look at your account regarding the flaggers, I wonder who it is? Your the first one to pick up on my avatar... he's from Maniac... not a bad movie if I remember. A lot of them were terrible.
Is seems there are a few small accounts giving out tiny flags randomly. I don't know why. Maybe they think it is fun.
In the case of @modernzorker, its @icebergbitos and this person just does flags..?
Either the author is a little dense or simply has too much time. The account is July 2018 and is a 15SP delegated one.
There are a few others as well. Haven't got a clue what their intention is. Maybe it is a Flag Desensitising Initiative 8-).
There are a few lists of them in the comments on this post:
https://steemit.com/flag/@guiltyparties/the-flag-ring
The person in question is on the list you mentioned...
https://steemit.com/flag/@guiltyparties/the-flag-ring
Dude! I personally think you did well powering up.
For an active steemian this is the best you can do. Additionally I think now is the proper moment to do so since STEEM price is at the level of October last year, just before the big grow...
Regarding the self voting...I used upvote myself as well, but as you said, always after allowing your followers to upvote and so give more chances for curation...
I don’t think this is bad at all since you are also contributing to support your followers so.
...and now, let me wait a little more and I will give you a full upvote...the time also is important
Again, well done and Steem on!!!
The time is indeed important :) Thanks @toofasteddie for your support and keep running, my next one is tomorrow, crack of dawn, 5k.
Congratulations on the investment and the resultant dolphin fins.
Investing takes some courage but it certainly can make life here more fulfilling in many ways.
It has allowed me to effectively support my A Dollar A Day charity project and my two radio show participation programs - not viable without the SP I have bought.
Steem is a challenge on so many levels at the moment, but I still look ahead at the massive potential it holds.
Alas didn't get to meet you at the Birmingham meetup - it was just far out of our range from west Wales. Meetups certainly add an extra dimension to life on steem. I am trying to organise the second Wales meetup at the moment but it is proving a struggle to find enough active steemians here now.
Host of The Alternative Lifestyle Show on MSP Waves Radio.
Editor of the Weekly Schedule of Steem Radio Shows.
Founder of the A Dollar A Day charitable giving project.
I may be up for a Wales meetup, depending on which quadrant of your county it is. There's really nothing in the North where I live.
Hahaha very reasonable and quite agree with you
You should upvote your posts because it is a quality post. I upvote mine because I worked my butt off to write it, edit pictures, edit videos and make sure it's not too short or not too long.
Upvoting the post and commenting is an acknowledgment of our efforts and that's a motivation for me.
Just like you, I do have a hard time looking for posts to read and upvote. How do you find them?
Oh and congratulations! We need more people like you staying in Steemit.
Thanks! I'm right with you on all these points you make.
For some reason in the past i was against upvoting my own post but not now - i kinda feel i earned it if i spend an hour writing something!
I don't upvote my own comments and never will! I really disagree with this! I see it all the time - and its much worse if someone comments a bs comment and upvotes it but doesn't upvote your post - just says they are interested in themselves and not the community
Lol you do make me chuckle with your rules xD I agree with you, good posts are getting harder and harder to find. I'm not sure why this is though but hopefully it gives us a better chance at our posts being noticed by the big players and they may feel sorry for us and throw us a bone lol. £2k wow! That is a huge investment but timing wise I would say sensible with steem prices being so low. I personally think they may even drop a little lower yet. I wonder if I can convince my husband it is a good idea too... haha
Edit: I forgot to say, congratulations on becoming a dolphin!
I hope they don't drop lower, but you can never get the bottom. I learnt this with my investing experience in the the last year. I really wish I had discovered THIS earlier than I did, always late me.
It is a big investment, but if nobody does it then that middle class will never be achieved. I hope this inspires some others to invest.
I would love to invest more into steem. I hope one day that it will be a way to earn a basic wage as well as provide an outlet for my (very basic) creativity. I have just pulled my investments from some ico's that were doing literally nothing except for dying a death, exchanged them into steem and powered up. I am hoping this will be a good way to increase the steem earned in the future. I watched a vlog by @exyle earlier and he inspired me to do that; you have also now inspired me to go remortgage the house too ;) hehe (If the hubster asks, it was all your idea!)
LOL, don't do it! And to think you were inspiring me at the Steemfest. I remember our conversation quite well.
I remember it well too! I think meetups really help to inspire and encourage and we can learn from each others experiences. I am so happy you stuck with it and you will do well on here I am certain of it! We all need to build our accounts up to dolphin status so that we can keep steemit alive and help to encourage others to continue to use the platform in a positive way. I am just over halfway there.lol
I approve but, don't blame me if you make lots of money. ;)
Fair play to ya mate. I hope your investment pays off. Good on ya.