Conserving Voting Power : Why Bother?

When I started on STEEM my Voting Power was precious. I guarded it and managed it like my life depended on it because I thought it was important. I didn’t really know anyone so it was actually a bit of a struggle spending just 10+ votes a day and I still didn’t really know what I was looking at…or even looking for. But as I learnt more about the system and started making connections with other users that all changed…

Now I don’t really care about my Voting Power. If I like a post, I will vote for it. If I like someones comment, I will vote for it. It doesn’t matter if I am making 10 votes a day or 100 votes a day, I just let the system spread my Voting Power around and I trust that it will take care of itself. When people are new though they think that having a low Voting Power is a bad thing. Trust me, it isn’t and I think it is actually a good thing. I’ve done the math and the system is brilliantly designed to manage your Voting Power dynamically so that no matter how you want to use it you can vote as much as you want and you aren’t losing a single cent of value. If you are making 10 votes a day at 100% Voting Power or 100 votes a day at 10% Voting Power the sum of all your vote values is the SAME.

There is only 1 legitimate reason for maintaining a high Voting Power and that is to maintain a high value for an individual 100% Upvote. This is maybe important if you are self-voting or vote trading, but if you are just trying to reward undervalued content (like we all should be) then it just doesn’t make sense to manage our Voting Power like it is some kind of precious resource. Free yourself from this mental burden of rationing your votes!

There are other benefits to having a low Voting Power too. You can actually take a few days off and not have to worry that your Voting Power is going to hit 100% and have you committing that cardinal sin – Wasting Voting Power. Whereas if you were trying to keep your Voting Power in the 80%+ range you simply must log on every single day to use enough to keep it from hitting 100%. Talk about taking something that should be fun and turning it into a chore!

So stop worrying about your Voting Power. Just spread your vote far and wide on content and people you like and let the system do its job in managing your Voting Power for you. Just try it and you might find it is quite liberating and fun!

IMPORTANT EDIT : If you are a minnow please read my follow up post Spread Your Vote – But Don’t Let it Turn to DUST!