Prelude

You may have seen me share the Hive account@phctop3 contest posts around the place over the last few months since we began this endeavour but there have been a lot of questions on what it's all about so I wanted to make this Beginner's Guide to the contest to help shed some light on why it's not just another contest but rather a place where EVERYONE wins, even if you don't finish in the prize positions.

What Is The PHC Top 3 Contest?

Myself, Hive account@plantstoplanks, Hive account@cheese4ead and Hive account@foxyspirit (aka the Panel) clashed heads back in March 2019 and wanted to bring something fun to the fray by asking the STEEM community, what are your top 3 picks for a specific subject?

You then write a post about it, set your post payout to 50/50 and send in the 50% (that isn't STEEM Power) once the post has paid out for your entry fee to Hive account@phctop3. We then put together a dpoll of all eligible entries, the steem community votes on their favourite and we determine the results based on that. It really is that simple!

Why Don't The Contest Organisers Pick The Winners?

Well, we had this discussion before we ran with the contest and the answer is pretty simple. We don't want to have any influence over the results and we want to make this a truly community driven contest. We do have some metrics in place that will make the results from the dpoll as reasonably fair as possible but our role as the Panel is to check entries, decide the topics and to calculate the prizes.

How Can Everyone Be A Winner?

I believe there are many answers to this question. The first is that if you're struggling for thinking of topics to write about at the beginning of the month (up until the 9th) then pop on over to Hive account@phctop3 and see what topic we've chosen, it might spark some creativity.

Secondly, we don't just want you to list your top 3 things in a bullet point in a comment and be done with it. We actually encourage and want you to tell us WHY you like these top 3 things, tell us your story behind them, what was it about them made you tick? How are you connected to these choices? By doing this, we believe it will help improve your reasoning skills when it comes to other non-phctop3 related activities :)

Thirdly, you will get to earn some steem and extra comments because all 4 of the Panel will come along to comment, upvote and resteem your post to get you more exposure, along with the phctop3 curation trail. You'll also get interaction from other people who entered. As mentioned above, you will get to keep half of your post's SP earnings and you'll have a chance of scooping up the prize pool. Even if you don't finish in the top 3, you'll have earned some steem regardless! What other contest does that?

How Big Can the Prize Pool Get?

In our first 4 months of going live, we've given out over $82 SBD from prize pools and, thanks to some amazing sponsorship from Hive account@curie, we were able to give an additional 140 STEEM across that time frame. Furthermore, Hive account@bluemist has given us some awesome help for September's contest too with some generous support with Hive account@appreciator - so a big thanks to him for that. So yea, that's a lot of STEEM!

Of course the prize pool can get bigger the more people enter and if you want to add more than the minimum requirement of 50% of your post payout then that will grow the prizes more, which is absolutely awesome (but not compulsory). The panel have also made posts but please not that these are NOT ELIGIBLE for the contest but the post payouts go towards growing the prize pool, or they donate along with sponsors if they didn't make a post (like for me this month).

What If I Get My Friends Involved?

Then you get legendary status my friend!! Oh and an SBI unit for your troubles, as long as the friend you referred hasn't entered the contest already and gives us an eligible entry - max of 1 referral per month :)

I'm Not In The Power House Creatives Community, I Can't Get Involved

Errrr yes you can! This isn't an exclusive contest and we want EVERYONE with a STEEM account to enter. The reason we have the Hive account@phctop3 account is because Hive account@jaynie and the Power House Creatives community is where the Panel met and we needed some guidance from the wisdom within to make this contest fly and it's taken off more than we could have imagined thanks to everyone, inside and outside of PHC who has gotten involved and supported in one way or another!

So You See...

For telling us what your favourite top 3 things are about a specific topic, you get an awful lot for it! We don't just want those of you who come across our contest to grow your steem account but also to develop your reasoning skills, meet new friends and discuss a fun topic to help with your engagement on the platform.

So why not start following the Hive account@phctop3 profile and get involved in this fun contest? We look forward to seeing you in the next round in October where we will have a new, exciting topic to get involved with and we will have a special announcement. Watch this space!

If you have any questions about it, let us know in the comments below and we'd be happy to help!

Nicky & The Panel