Don’t have faith in anyone unless proven otherwise. And frankly all the complaining about bid bots on here is ironic considering that literally 100% of the people who use this site do it because contributors are rewarded financially.
Furthermore, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Anyone who skimmed homeboy’s post about his udemy course (an overt advertisement) might read this one because the tone is completely different. Yet the thumbnail is a screenshot of the post. And now there are literally hundreds of comments discussing him, his business and his udemy course. Is this better than his post disappearing into obscurity in a few days? Absolutely.
I doubt old Bernie is a paid shill, but this is a common and extremely effective way to market a company. Happens all the time on Reddit. A company will post a funny picture and there will be a can of Pepsi in the background, for example. Has nothing to do with the content, but just the fact that it’s there reminds people that it exists.
That said, why is everyone jumping down this guy’s throat for advertising his course? I agree that he probably could have put a little more effort into his post. Maybe given a better explanation of how he made the money, or what specifically we would learn in the course.
But the guy is offering to teach you how to make money which is literally the reason everyone uses this fucking stupid website in the first place. $250k in two years is pretty amazing if true. Why is the reaction so negative?
Why is this automatically considered a scam just because he guy is out here trying to promote his business? Do you know how hard it is to create a course for udemy, let alone get thousands of people to purchase it and leave a review? Do you think that shit just magically happens overnight?
I think what Steemit really suffers from is a lack of hustle. People are so lazy and entitled over here and feel they deserve to be rewarded for their subpar content that no publisher would even pay $20 for. Aside from a few developers and authors, few people on here think big enough to use the steemit system to their advantage. Say what you want about 
That in and of itself is admirable because it is not an easy thing to do. It takes massive amounts of time and work to get to that level. And yes I understand that most of the content on here is not 
No. It’s ultimate all of your fault. The trending page is just one page on this entire website. There are thousands to choose from. The best content does not go there, the most heavily promoted does. I find it ironic that Bernie even used vote bots to promote this post as well, but honestly I’m not surprised by anything on steemit anymore.
Instead of looking at what others have and saying it’s not fair, why not learn from them and copy what they do? There is a reason why you see the same people over and over on Trending: because they understand how the system works and are using it to their advantage. Nothing is stopping you or anyone else from doing the same.
If it’s an issue of money, then you need to think of other ways to solve your problem. Promote off steemit. Reach out to whales/personalities and work out a deal where they promote one of your posts in exchange for something you do for them. Create an engagement group where everyone upvotes each other’s posts for better visibility. Start a fund that curates the best content. Something.
This culture of entitlement and anti-entrepreneurship in here is just downright pathetic. People expect things to be easy for them, they want to be handed everything. The second someone establishes an advantage it’s all of a sudden “abusing the system.” No it’s not.
Commercials on tv are not abusing the system. Ads in a newspaper are not abuse. Sponsorships for sports teams are not abuse. This is how business is done. This is how you have a computer to read my stupid comment and electricity to power your house.
RE: The following bot owners support promoting scammy trash on Steemit.