Hi Everyone,
As I have mentioned in several posts, Steem is typically marketed as a place for content creators to earn money from their posts. This is indeed a great reason to join Steem but one of only many. In my post 'Steem explained by an economist', I explain that Steem can attract content creators, investors, casual readers, developers, readers and viewers, entrepreneurs and eventually advertisers. In this post, I am going to focus on one particular group of people. I will call this group the casual user and potential investor.
Not everybody has the interest or the time to create posts on a regular basis. Steem still has plenty to offer this type of user. There are currently many applications built on the Steem blockchain. Steemit is the most commonly used interface for Steem. There are also SteemPeak and busy.org. Steemit also has the Google Chrome extension steem-plus that adds great new features to enhance a users’ experience on Steem. There many other applications built on Steem that feed into these user interfaces. Such applications include but not limited to the following:
- DTube (Video sharing)
- DSound (music)
- Dmania (memes)
- Steemhunt (product hunt)
- Utopian-io (open source projects)
- SteepShot (sharing photographs)
- Zappl (messages – something like Twitter)
- Partiko (mobile phone Steem interface)
Readers and/or viewers can enjoy most of these applications. If you like videos, visit DTube. If you want to listen to music, visit DSound. If you are on your mobile phone and want to see some interesting photographs, visit SteepShot. If you want access to everything, visit Steemit, SteemPeak, or busy.org. If you are on your mobile phone, Partiko could be more convenient. There is plenty to enjoy on Steem even if you are not creating content yourself.
If you want to get more involved, I suggest setting up a Steem account. This will allow you to comment, upvote, and earn through curation rewards. If you do not invest in Steem, the curation rewards will be very small (less than 1 cent). The interactivity with the content creators through comments and upvotes still makes creating an account worthwhile.
Becoming an investor in Steem
Investing in Steem is taking the next step from just setting up an account. It is very easy to buy Steem. Steemit has a link under the ‘wallet’ tab that will take you to the Blocktrades webpage. Simply follow the instructions and your money (held in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum) will be converted to Steem/Steem Power.
Two factors affect the value of your investment in Steem. The first factor is the quantity of Steem that you hold. There are many ways to accumulate Steem. The most common methods of accumulating Steem are:
- Buying more Steem
- earning from content
- earning from curation
- earning from vote selling
- receiving payments from delegating to another account
- earning from building applications on the blockchain.
The second factor is the price of Steem. There are several methods an investor can add value to Steem, which will eventually positively affect the price of Steem. The most common methods are:
- promoting Steem off-the-platform,
- creating content that will add value to the community
- supporting content that will add value to the community
- developing applications that will improve user experience on the platform
- supporting the development of applications that will improve user experience on the platform
The second factor is very difficult to assess, as it requires a combined effort from the whole community. The short-run positive correlation of the price to other cryptocurrencies adds to the difficulty of assessing the true value of Steem.
If the majority of the community focuses on supporting the growth of Steem, the rewards will be far greater than attempting to accumulate Steem in such a manner that adds little value to the Steem ecosystem.
Making the most of your investment
If you invest in Steem, curation rewards can be a good incentive to upvote content on Steem. I have 21,426 Steem Power, at the time of writing this post; this gives me a maximum upvote value of $0.98 (at current price) or approximately 1.15 Steem. The value of your upvote is constantly fluctuating depending on the price of Steem and the level of activity on the platform.
Curation rewards vary depending on when you upvote a post. If you upvote a post immediately after it is posted, you receive 0 curation rewards. If you upvote after 30 minutes (15 minutes after HardFork 20), you receive approximately 25% of your upvote. This could be higher or lower depending on the value of upvotes that follow your upvote. If your upvote is followed by many large upvotes, you will receive more than 25% of your upvote.
I received around 18.5 Steem Power from curation over the previous seven days. On a good week, I can get over 20 Steem Power. To maximise curation rewards, a user should use approximately 10 full upvotes a day. A user can make 10 full upvotes (100% upvotes), 1,000 partial percentage upvotes (1% upvotes) or anything in-between. I generally would not expect anyone to make more than 50 upvotes a day. For my level of Steem Power, probably about 20 upvotes (average of 50% upvote).
This level of involvement in curation can be time consuming. Steem offers several features to make curating a little less time consuming. Here are some of the options available to save a little time.
- Follow or add to favourites
- Auto-upvotes
- Delegate to other accounts
- Delegate to bots
- Follow curation trails
- Vote selling
- Combinations of the above
Follow or add to favourites
Following accounts that produce content you like is a very simple strategy to getting to the content that you like a lot faster. Posts from accounts that you follow will appear on your ‘feed’. It is important to follow only accounts that you have at least some expectation of viewing content. I made the mistake of following too many accounts, which cluttered my feed. I am currently in the process of reducing the number of people I am following to reduce this clutter.
SteemPeak and Steem-plus have the option of adding favourites. ‘Following’ allows for easy access to posts from followed accounts and ‘favourites’ allows easy access to the accounts themselves. I would recommend only selecting very few accounts as favourites. SteemPeak has an interesting feature that allows users to save topics. I have a few topics/tags that appeal more to me. Rather than wasting time searching for these topics/tags, I can access them with ease. See the screenshot below.
Assessment of approach: Positives
Following accounts will save time, and enable an investor to upvote more accounts and therefore increase earnings from curation. Reaching preferred content faster is also good for Steem as this content will gain more exposure.
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Focusing on your feed too much could result in other good posts being missed. This is bad if those new to Steem are unable to find traction.
Auto-upvotes
Auto-upvotes can save time upvoting content of your favourite content creators. Several websites enable users to auto-upvote posts. I am aware of two such websites. They are SteemVoter and SteemAuto; I use SteemAuto. These websites allow users to set the value, timings and Voting Power conditions for the upvote. Auto-upvoting can save time as well as be a good method of not missing the window to upvote content (we only have 7 days to get an upvote in before payout).
I would recommend only using auto-upvote for content creators that you have absolutely the most confidence in their work. I would also recommend reading/watching/listening to their content as regular as possible to ensure that they maintain their standard and the content they present is still to your liking.
Auto-upvoting can be a little too easy. To just auto-upvote content rather than manually curate is risky for two main reasons. Firstly, content produced by those you are upvoting could fall or become inconsistent if not monitored. Secondly, other, possibly better, content creators could escape your notice if you are not looking for new content anymore.
Assessment of approach: Positives
Auto-upvoting saves time and earns curation rewards very easily with minimal effort. Ensuring that your favourite content always gets an upvote is good for Steem as this provides the content creator with a more reliable source of income; they are less likely to leave.
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Auto-upvotes removes the manual element of curation. This will likely result in good content being missed. This could also cause those that receive auto-upvotes to become complacent as they receive less scrutiny.
Delegate to other accounts
Delegating to other accounts moves the task of curating to someone else. This could be a very effective method of growing the platform if this delegation is done responsibly. Responsible delegation involves delegating to accounts that will help the community grow. These accounts could be involved in the development of applications or part of an initiative that will attract more users to the platform. I have delegated a small amount of Steem Power to 
Another option is delegate to a responsible curator of content. There are people on Steem that dedicate many hours to finding content. Additional Steem Power can help these curators reward good content that could have gone unnoticed otherwise. There are many quality curators that have helped propel accounts that produce good content to success on Steem. Posts from these accounts create a good impression of Steem. This will attract other high quality content creators as well as investors.
Assessment of approach: Positives
In most cases, delegators of Steem Power receive payments from those that they delegate Steem to. These payments normally require very little effort and time. Delegating to an account can help Steem grow as projects get more financial support and curators can give high valued upvotes to support great new content.
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Delegating Steem Power may provide a lower return in Steem than curating manually. This is likely if delegating to curators. Curators may require a cut of the curation rewards as reward for the work they are doing. However, some curators may return all the curation rewards to the delegator if they reward themselves with large upvotes of their own content.
Following curation trails
Following a curation trail is a great way to spread your votes around in accordance with a particular trail. A curation trail operates when an account obtains permission to vote on your behalf for content that meets the criteria outlined by the trail. Websites such as SteemAuto allow users to create their own trail or follow another trail. There are many trails available to follow. SteemAuto provides a brief description of the objectives of each trail. If you are short on time, following a trail of your interest can be a good idea. Trails also provide equivalent rewards to curating content yourself. It is still important to check what content that trail is upvoting to ensure that you agree with how your Steem Power is being used.
Assessment of approach: Positives
Curation trials allow you to earn full curation rewards with minimal effort. Curation trails can add value to the platform by supporting quality content that falls within the scope of the trail.
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Curation trails place considerable pressure on the trail to represent all those following it. There is also a high chance that good content could escape detection as there are less people searching for content. Curation trails could also facilitate circle voting of the same accounts (the accounts following the trail).
Delegating to bots
Delegating to bots (bid-bots) is possibly the easiest way to accumulate Steem. Delegating to bid-bots can return up to 75% of an upvote. This is three times higher than curation rewards and involves almost no effort on behalf of the delegator. Bid-bots sell votes to content creators. Content creators normally get a very small return on investment (the upvote they receive is worth slightly more than the payment). The upvotes push the vote buyers content higher up on the trending lists and therefore gives the post more exposure. You can read more about bid-bots using the links at the end of this post.
Delating to bid-bots is very popular on Steem at the moment. This is mostly because of the high rewards. This popularity has made the use of bid-bots harmful to Steem. I believe there are three key reasons that the current level of delegation of Steem to bid-bots is harmful to Steem.
- Firstly, bid-bots are able to push content onto the trending page without support from the community. Content not supported by the community reaching the trending page is very bad for the image of Steem. New and potential users will see content not deserving of the front page of Steem as well the rewards received. This will lower the value of Steem. It is difficult to determine the extent of this impact.
- Secondly, if Steem Power is tied up in bid-bots there is far less Steem Power available to curate content; content curators will suffer. This might cause many content creators to leave Steem. Lack of Steem Power will also make it difficult for the community to remove low quality posts from the trending page.
- Thirdly, content creators that do not use bid-bots will be greatly disadvantaged. Content from good content creators will not get as much exposure as content heavily upvoted by bid-bots. These content creators are likely to leave. If these content creators stay and decide to use bid-bots, the reasons given in one and two are further perpetuated.
Assessment of approach: Positives
Delegating to bot offers the highest rewards in regards to accumulating Steem.
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Delegating to bots is harmful to Steem based on the three reasons provided above. It is difficult to measure the extent of this harm but the loss in value of Steem will almost definitely offset any gains from accumulating Steem.
Vote selling
If you do not want to surrender your Steem Power to a bid-bot. You can sell votes through services such as MinnowBooster or Smartsteem (Smartmarket). These services offer options such as the minimum Voting Power required before vote selling can occur as well as the types of users you can sell votes to (option for selling only to whitelisted accounts). If you become too busy to curate content, these services will sell votes on your behalf adhering to the requirements set out for vote selling.
Vote selling provides more flexibility than delegating to a bot as well as higher Steem rewards than the other options mentioned so far.
In regards to the impact on Steem. Voting selling can still contribute to the negative effects as explained under delegating to bid-bots but these effects are less harmful. This is fundamentally because a user can revert to manual curation at any time. If Steem Power is delegated to a bot, manual curation will be greatly limited.
Assessment of approach: Positives
Vote selling is the second most effective method of accumulating Steem. Vote selling services offer options as to when vote selling can occur as well as the users or user groups that can receive upvotes (smartmarket allows users define their own whitelists and blacklists).
Assessment of approach: Negatives
Vote selling can reduce manual curation, which hinders the growth of community-supported content. Vote selling also reduces rewards of content creators as votes are paid for rather than earned. Vote selling also creates a transparency problem in regards to the source of votes. Bid-bots are listed on post SteemBot Tracker. Users can easily identify posts that have been upvoted by bid-bots. Vote selling services upvote with the vote seller’s account. This makes it difficult for observers to identify which votes are obtained through natural/manual curation and which votes are bought.
Combinations of the above
In most cases, the most effective approach to investment is to apply a combination of approaches. This combination is going to depend mostly on the amount of time that you can set aside to engage with the platform. If you have very little time to spare, delegating most of your Steem Power to a cause of your choosing would probably be the most effective approach. If you have some time but not a lot, you could make use of vote selling services and auto-upvoting services to complement and aid your curation. If you have plenty of time to spend on the platform, you can curate manually with the assistance of your feed and favourites. I would recommend using your feed regardless of how much time you have available.
I consider myself both a content creator and investor. I spend most of my time on my content creation with sometime on content curation. I use auto-upvotes but sparingly. I also use vote selling services to earn a little extra when my Steem Power reaches above 85%.
Promoting Steem off-the-platform
As an investor, you can help increase the value of Steem by promoting Steem on other platforms. I promote Steem on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Minds, and Reddit. Most people have not heard of Steem. Many that have heard of it often do not have an accurate impression of Steem. One of the biggest misunderstanding floating around is that Steem has an inflation rate of 100%. SteemPeak wallet has the accurate rate of inflation for this year, which is only 8.66%.
Steem is also not just for those only interested in cryptocurrencies. Steem is for everyone and anyone. Once Steem receives more mainstream exposure it should rapidly increase in value. This will become possible much faster by promoting it wherever you can.
Below is my link to my business website where I promote Steem
Below are links to my other social media webpages where I also promote Steem
Spectrumecons YouTube Channel
Spectrumecons LinkedIn
Spectrumecons Facebook Page
Spectrumecons Best of Steem Facebook Page
Spectrumecons Instagram Page
Spectrumecons Minds.com webpage
Spectrumecons Reddit
Spectrumecons Twitter Account
The best thing you can do for Steem and your investment in Steem is to spread the word as far as possible.
Quick Summary of Positives and Negatives of each method
| Method | Positives | Negatives |
|---|---|---|
| Follow or add to favourites | Saves time | Could miss content from new users |
| Auto-upvotes | Saves time | Reduces manual curation |
| Delegate to curators | Increases manual curation and saves time | Lower Steem rewards |
| Delegate to initiatives | Increase support for good initiatives | Lower Steem rewards |
| Delegate to bots | Very high Steem rewards and saves time | Lowers manual curation, allows posts to trend without community consent and reduces rewards to content creators |
| Follow curation trails | Saves time | Creates dependence on the trail to find new content and could facilitate circle voting |
| Vote selling | High Steem rewards and offers selling options | Lowers manual curation and reduces rewards to content creators |
| Promoting Steem off-the-platform | Creates greater awareness and encourages new users | No Steem rewards unless the community volunteers to reward you |
I believe the price of Steem is currently undervalued and buying now is a good time. I am not a financial adviser but I am an experienced economist. Nothing in this world is guaranteed but if you make good decisions, you can certainly increase your chances of success.
Thank you taking the time to read my post.
Below are links to my other posts explaining various aspects of Steem.
Here is the link to the post ‘The economics implications of the existence of the rewards pool’
Here is the link to the post ‘How do we prevent market failure caused by over delegation of Steem Power to bid-bots’
Here is the link to the post ‘Bid bots and the possible economic implications’
Here is the link to the post ‘The trending page aka the front page of Steemit’
Here is the link to the post ‘Changing the way voting works to improve fairness and rewards – My little fantasy’
Here is the link to the post ‘Steem explained by an economist’
Post Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries of this post based on the top three upvotes of the previous post are:
In addition to these three, 
To learn more about my beneficiary rewards read my 3,000 follower post using the link below.
