In a recent blog post it was brought to my attention that some people define "quality content" as being the content which is more serious in nature. The sort of content which was ruled out as being serious was content which the reader thought did not require as much effort, such as listed below:
- Irrelevant things about life (such as pictures of food)
- Paraphrasing articles appearing in high quality magazines or regurgitating info with a reference link
As a person who is guilty of sometimes posting short relevant articles with a reference link, I decided to determine if the market really does prefer "serious content" and to find out if the market actually rewards effort (labor theory of value).
The A/B test
Below are two example articles which I'll label article A and article B
Article A:
Article B:
Analysis of Article A
Now for an analysis with my perspective as the writer of both. Article A took months if not years of contemplation to reach that conclusion. Article A took a lot of specialized knowledge in AI, in cryptography, in computer science, the sort of knowledge which very few people in the community have. Article A required reading not just the references which are from academic journals, but also understanding and digesting many of the top whitepapers in the cryptospace. Projects like Iota, Golem, Enigma, Tauchain, Ethereum, Tezos, SingularityNET, and some that most probably have not heard of (or that I cannot discuss in public), had to be studied just to arrive at that conclusion that trends are leading there.
Yet because the article required a lot of prerequisite knowledge, because it was on the topic of AI, it received $34 (I'll only see maybe $15-17 or so realistically). It did achieve 92 votes which I was happy with but for the effort it definitely did not achieve anywhere near the amount of reward to signal that serious posts are the most valued.
Analysis of Article B
Article B did not take months of research, did not require much pre-requisite knowledge, only required at a maximum of 45 minutes to post and 20 minutes of research, so really not more than an hour of effort. It was not a lot of sentences but the sentences were concise, to the point, and easy for readers to read. It included a picture to illustrate so readers can see proper form of movement.
Overall this post achieved $29 in rewards and 79 votes. I'll probably see between $12 and $14 give or take. So in that example we can see that as a blogger I'm not rewarded based on the time and effort of individual blog posts.
How about another A/B example?
Article A:
- https://steemit.com/health/@dana-edwards/autophagy-the-health-benefit-behind-fasting-not-weight-loss
Article B:
Analysis of Article A:
The goal of my writing the result from Article A was to provide value to the reader by showing them the anti-aging value of fasting is not from "weight loss" but from the effects of autophagy. The background knowledge to write this article did take some time to study autophagy, watch a few videos, study what I could grasp of the Nobel prize winning research, and then relay the results. All around it took maybe 30-35 minutes to write and maybe an hour of research time. The quality of the post if judged by explanatory power in my opinion is high, but there are not many sentences that I had to write.
Overall this article achieved $30 in rewards and 80 upvotes. Overall I will see maybe $15 from that article. For the amount of effort, that is maybe $15 for the 30 minutes writing it and whatever time it took to digest what autophagy is. Because my best estimate is that it took no more than an hour to an hour and thirty minutes max, I would say it wasn't a huge time investment.
Analysis of Article B
Article B was one of the most intense and deep articles I wrote for the week. Total research time to reach these conclusions were measured in months (exact amount of months unknown). The prerequisite knowledge I had to draw from included deep philosophical understanding of ethics, understanding of individualist anarchism, and digestion of some of the concepts put forth by Max Stirner. This article achieved only $28 in rewards (less than the Autophagy article), and only 75 votes.
Conclusion
Based on the result of these A/B test examples it would at least appear that the market does not favor "hard work" or "effort" and rewards entirely subjectively. The articles I worked hard on, researched the longest, wrote the most words in, applied the most thinking toward, did not do much better than the brief yet very useful articles. It appears the reader just wants useful information no matter how many words it takes and if anything having more words to read might discourage a lot of readers from being able to digest the post.
For the record this article took over 30 minutes to write..