How does the top author on Steem earn more than twice as much as I do? I was curious to find out after looking at https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30 and seeing the @mindhunter is receiving 2.23 times more rewards than I am. I opened Evernote and started taking notes.

Here is what I learned in two sentences: the top author is currently earning $10,000 to $20,000 a month from discrete upvotes directly on comments that are then upvoted at the very last minute! To be more specific, @mindhunter earns about $20,000 a month mostly with comments such as "Me too" which get upvoted for $60 several times every day! See the picture below!

https://steemitimages.com/DQmSe5KJgutH16QNp496HfCp68iTDqxSzBwoimg8auUWwBN/S62-20.jpg

How The #1 Steem Author Earns $10,000+ A Month!

After looking at steemwhales.com we may notice that @jerrybanfield is currently in the top 5 somewhere. I am very grateful to be one of the top authors on Steemit and I am always seeking ways to improve because I already know what I am doing. I have millions of followers that consistently see the posts and videos I make about Steem. 2 or 3 times a day I make a new post with nearly all of my creative energy funneled into Steem. In other words, being a witness and author on Steem is what I do full time.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmbTkZPRkY2gZGSyZWrxxJ4AKAjfN14yNBW2KZrZk2L9q2/S62-01.jpg

Now, I looked on the Steem Whales trending over here, 30 days authors, which anyone can go find here: https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30

https://steemitimages.com/DQmesd8PnDrsjXMNE6h9uyNquwYvoNWfGJsayyMrCikpsQw/S62-02.jpg

I looked to see where I am at in the top author rankings today.

I'm very grateful that I'm at number four right now.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmWLm4JyMgXtWtmVzeU5e5Tm2iVL4B65cEZKuXdk6ZiBzC/S62-03.jpg

I was amazed to see that the person earning number one is making about two and a half times what I'm making. Therefore the top author may even be making as much as $20,000+ a month doing this. I went with $10,000+ to be conservative.

Now, I went to look at @mindhunter's profile to discover what exactly does he do? What can I learn from them?

#1 author on Steemit

Here is the current number one author on Steem: @mindhunter

https://steemitimages.com/DQmXuE6ZN76FiRD6qkmwLDf9geBbfNYhefBLG9wEPTSembd/S62-04.jpg

A 72 reputation is very high. He is a philosopher with 29,000 posts, thousands of followers, and not following anyone.

Very interesting!

So, I go look at some of the posts to see how the posts are made. Here's a quick video in one post. Is this made by the author?

https://steemitimages.com/DQmdrBdBa9BXvM1g95VKLUYX5TeG7pREp3pQmSueUx5bRVp/S62-05.jpg

I am not sure, it might be, I have not actually read any @mindhunter's posts or ever seen them before, which is why I was shocked that he was the number one author because I'd never seen or heard of him.

Then I started scrolling back and saying, "Okay the numbers don't add up."

How is it @mindhunter can make photo posts like this, earning four dollars and getting 25 views, and becoming the top author?

https://steemitimages.com/DQmWK1pFMTHj9H6gb8ZWMne22ZoHnUs6ALf9PC1y3BAZaQZ/S62-06.jpg

This just doesn't make any sense.

So I kept scrolling and scrolling because I thought I must just be missing something.

Then I started to find some posts all made 12 days ago. This is one of the posts with a picture and $65, top-up voters, you can see exactly who voted it here.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmP7HS9CDmzopJW2xGUKs9PL57Y6AkqqZhiELbSGR9cPm9/S62-07.jpg

$66 on a post seen by 21 people with 9 comments.

If you want a little comparison let's see a post of mine here. Here's a post I made that was seen by 685 people on Steem, and that I sent out to all my social media networks, to tens if not hundreds of thousands of more people, 679 votes.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmP4EG1HL8jNxvJWDWqa25eiWfSrLC2ATq6EjiFwo43gZe/S62-08.jpg

Very generous upvotes for $215 in 16 hours, that's outstanding.

So the amount of views roughly correlates to my other votes.

I was curious to learn how it is possible to get posts where you just post a picture, and maybe this is the author in this one, and you get $79 with 26 views.

https://steemitimages.com/DQma4XgDXbWu2PU3LgD3VU6hmnTLMu8qiaycqWiJRWhsFPr/S62-09.jpg

Well, interestingly enough, it seems that if the same people with a lot of Steem keep voting, you can just consistently do short posts like this and earn very well.

So the majority of the earnings are really short posts like this, over and over again, that are earning a lot of money.

Here's $84 for a quick video, 62 votes and 85 views.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmadoShYEhnQ3szZkZfPhZGBB7TbaC5YkcR9iy9ikhYcwX/S62-10.jpg

I've continued to just look through and learn more.

Here's a picture of a cat.

$80 for this picture of a cat posted 17 days ago with 29 views on it.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmUFPQ2rxEjNjkKc2avpjfg9Wkxya6rdXuboZ84kmN9GQz/S62-11.jpg

Therefore, if you just roughly correlate views to earnings, or if you looked at that last post I did over here, it got 600 and something upvotes for $215, which is about 30 cents an upvote.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmW4zTbsbJX9cgqc8cNyQwxgP6HpkPnm9DgWN3FSszz3hV/S62-12.jpg

By comparison, if you look over on this cat post, 29 votes, that's about 10 times as much per view as I'm earning.

This still doesn't add up though because the total amount earned is two-and-a-half times what I'm earning. Now it can make sense here, but what about these recent posts, what's going on these recent posts?

Now it looks like more recent posts like this one got hit with a big down-vote, which removed almost all of the rewards on it by newsflash.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmSdVciNaaucer3Ee3UptUR7zqy5xj44K9jJtMYDfcFJP5/S62-13.jpg

There are then several other posts, which have this massive down-vote on them.

So then with these huge down-votes wiping out the author rewards, I started to wonder, “Okay, how is it possible this author still earning?”

So I dug a little deeper and I went into SteemD, and then I noticed immediately upon just looking on the first page that these 100% upvotes come in all at once from these three different or four different accounts.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmUgcuAomp6TuaQCiBMssHGe2qhPHtKBiD56JS4DVS7Fhw/S62-14.jpg

So I discovered these are all on comments.

This is a post from eight days ago, and then the upvotes are coming in right here on the comments.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmS1HFQD85pMAkippQdQ25E7fS145YzJ7ToEmgsyA2fnnH/S62-15.jpg

Now, these upvotes are extremely well done, because the upvotes were put in at the very last minute, only giving people that want to flag these upvotes 12 hours to down-vote them before the rewards are paid out, very smart system here.

What's happening is the author is now making comments that you could easily find if you went through the comments. You should be able to see these upvotes in, if you can see the newest ones and scroll up the comments, upvotes have to be made when they're 6 days old.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmRnpBcMCZd72gtu5sA5zi2BtuXmTAD7VgR6ZBFJay1vLK/S62-16.jpg

So today's comments just came in right here. I could down flag these comments which would remove some of the rewards, but the author would still get the majority of the rewards. Meanwhile, I would have to use all of my voting power, which then I would not be able to give back to any of my existing followers.

In other words, it doesn't even make sense for me to even try and do anything about this, other than simply sharing it and making sure this is shown in the light. I'm not saying this is right or wrong. I'm saying we should be aware of how @mindhunter is earning receiving $20,000+ a month in rewards out of the same pool all of us are paid out of. Right now the top author is currently earning $20,000+ a month from discrete upvotes directly on comments that are then upvoted at the very last minute.

Some of these accounts have upvoted me in the past as well and I'm grateful for their upvote.

So there are several accounts voting up comments at the very last minute, and then sneaking under the radar with every day, hundreds of dollars of rewards from Steem.

This is done on a bunch of different posts, on some of the author's own posts, imagine that you get to make a comment with a few words and you earn $60 off of that comment.

"Jerry, you're just jealous because this system is even better than yours."

That's reasonable, you could also say that I'm impressed when someone's worked out a system to discreetly slide comments in.

You can see that not every single comment is upvoted up, but then there's one that slides in out of lots of other comments, which don't earn anything.

Then this last comment slides in and gets $65 on this post.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmPee6ZeD3NtcYJ1SHWec8hEiYt3HCi2yretrgu5ZtLmtf/S62-17.jpg

Extremely clever, you would have to essentially intentionally go to war on this one. If for example a person who is flagging them down before would have to sit there and watch comments exactly at the six day mark, and then hit them with the down-vote. Even then there is always all kinds of different strategies that could be done to get around that as well, which is why this is so interesting to look at.

You can just see comments after comments all over the place on different posts. This one is not a post by the author themselves, but a post by another author.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmZ8o9AVhjpepXojRBMyrM6cWAQgq18qCEsmhvdXvuPxwS/S62-18.jpg

Now, this strategy might be even better if these comments were posted on trending posts, because they'd look legit then, and you could even get more uploads by other people on them and get more exposure, although I'm not sure if more exposure is the goal in this scenario.

There are lots of these comments hiding all over the place, and these are the newest ones. These could be then flagged down like this. I could put the flag up and remove it, but that would use my voting power.

https://steemitimages.com/DQma4FKeNXvBS1wuGdxg3nEb4gVLGbARDpCh26KdqZtsS1h/S62-19.jpg

I'd rather vote someone following me up than essentially try and take rewards away from someone else.

I've looked and found just over and over a bunch of these different comments like "Me too!"

Imagine saying, "Me too!" and you can earn $60 for it. I'd probably be saying, "Me too!" all day.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmSe5KJgutH16QNp496HfCp68iTDqxSzBwoimg8auUWwBN/S62-20.jpg

Look, I'm not showing you this as some angel who does everything right.

I posted a picture in my boxers and got $344 on it, so I'm not coming to you as some saint here who is just perfect.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmfCnALTCTAkSe6uGR3mLP5whoCuQoUyqmnGtFJfEzuSQ9/S62-21.jpg

I thought this would be interesting to show you. For further reading, see this post shared in the comments by @celsius100 at https://steemit.com/steemabuse/@mindhunter/a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale

#2 author on Steemit

Here is the number two author on Steem: @tamim

Now, the number two author has eluded me a bit, I still can't quite crack their system on it. I've taken a look over at their profile on Steemit and I still don't quite understand it.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmVTyrXJ1dsmgXFv4nrNRq5rY6gi2nYungp58msFWeVdg6/S62-22.jpg

Looks like this other author is just doing a brute-force approach, just doing a bunch of posts every single day, and then voting them up at the last minute to avoid being flagged.

If you look down at these posts then you can see this is an amazing strategy, because the author is just straight upvoting their own posts.

This author has 540,000 Steem and is literally single-handedly voting up almost completely their own posts.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmRoBJ3enEgon34CduvA7VbBbaXA16CFjpPGciWTPcob5A/S62-23.jpg

This author can just literally vote their own posts up and there seems to be a clever strategy that's being used here as well, instead of trying to vote their own posts up and risking getting them in the trending category, whereas if the author voted their own posts up immediately they could guarantee landing on the trending page.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmfRNxtk56yKn5bcerYLTWbrhn1b8PYL1qxeBfMmQFJSUb/S62-24.jpg

If they voted all these new posts up right away, every single one of them would go on the trending page. I imagine the author is looking at this and figuring if they did that they'd probably risk getting a lot more down-votes.

What the author does is very smart. The author is upvoting these posts after they've been around for a few days, then they don't go on the trending page because they are five days old.

You can see that at about five days old, the author then drops their full upvote on the post, and their full upvote is worth so much. Then they are earning the second highest amount on the entire website just by voting their own posts up and a few other people are voting them up as well, incredibly clever system.

You can always use steamd.com/@username to see whatever is happening in the backend of a user's account, it's an incredibly helpful tool.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmesUhzunohfUCAZDqwjzHVEAUHMXFWYWDr9XktMq8WFEw/S62-25.jpg

I'm impressed to see this system, which is just incredible.

I hope in sharing this system with you that this is useful to see what is going on with the very top authors on Steem and some of the incredible things that are possible that you can do on Steem.

I've just simply looked at the results on SteemWhales.com, I've presented them and this is part of the downside. If you use systems that work too well you may get a lot of attention with them. I'm very grateful to be the number four author.

#3 author on Steemit

Here is the number three author on Steem: @papa-pepper

https://steemitimages.com/DQmbGfwF9TYxXxC6cv2siwkCCDH1wNoJGpE8HWNju5nXxpa/S62-26.jpg

Papa-pepper has very much a similar posting strategy to me. Papa-pepper writes for Steem all day every day, has a big following and consistently is trying to contribute as much value as possible to Steem.

As it seems, the other top authors are consistently doing the same thing, therefore I hope looking at this has been useful for you today.

Thank you very much for reading this post and learning with me here today how the top authors are earning $10,000+ and as much as $20,000 in the case of the number one author, using some incredibly smart systems that are getting them hundreds of dollars of rewards every single day, in some cases without even needing to do more than say, "Me too!"

I love you, you're awesome. I hope to see you again soon.

Thank you very much for reading this post, which was originally filmed as the video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhRNyXoOUdg

The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.

If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?

Love,

Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk

Shared on:

PS: Witness votes are the most powerful votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together?

Or