I yesterday's post I shared why personal relationships on Steemit are so much more relevant than the number of followers we have.
Today I want to share my view on auto-upvotes.
Of course, personal conversations in the comments are way more meaningful than an auto-upvote, but as stated yesterday, we can't all keep up with everything, always.
But why should we stop supporting each other just because we didn't get around to read each other's content? Especially the content of our most loyal supporters, who may be auto-upvoting us?
Auto-upvote your auto-upvoters!
This week I reviewed the auto-upvotes I had set up, and updated them for both my accounts 
So if you’re one of my fantastic unconditionally loving auto-upvoters, you will be receiving my consistent upvotes too now, from either one of those accounts.
I’m pretty disappointed with myself that it never occurred to me earlier to “auto-upvote back". I mean, seriously - it’s the least we can do, as a way of saying Thank you, right? I can’t even express how grateful I am for the unconditional support!
Loyalty trumps Steempower
Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that there is nothing more important than loyalty on this platform.
- Your number of followers is completely irrelevant if most of them never view, upvote or comment on your content.
- A random upvote from a whale is a wonderful surprise, but it’s unpredictable and doesn’t help you grow consistently.
- Bots? Well, let’s not even go there…
Loyal upvoters make all the difference because they provide continuous motivation for you to post. So they are not only supporting you, but the whole Steemit platform.
Whether they manually upvote or auto-upvote you makes no difference - both result in loyalty and consistency. Of course manual upvotes are often accompanied by a comment, which is a lot more personal than just an upvote, but due to time differences and individual busy-ness, time for commenting is often a luxury. I often see an upvote from someone I know and think, “Hey, why didn’t you say Hi?” But maybe they think the same about me sometimes?
Loyal upvoters even provide you sort of a guaranteed income.
You can actually begin to plan and rely a bit on your Steemit income, no matter how little it is. Since I began to have loyal auto-upvoters I could rely on the fact that I will make about $5 per post. Sometimes more. But $5 SBD does not equal 5 USD. For most of the past six months the SBD price was consistently above $2 USD and often even higher.
So with daily posts of $5 SBD you can accumulate a nice extra income on the side. I am very aware that every day I don’t post, I basically give away a substantial amount of money. Especially in times when the Steem/SBD price is low.
Don’t be fooled by the “low" amounts you see under your posts. When prices are low, we should all post even more, in order to accumulate more Steem. It’s the same as “buying the dip” when you invest with your own money. Everything you accumulate now, will be worth a lot more when prices rise again.
I really got a strong, renewed sense of that this week and decided to make more effort to post regularly again. After all, if I don’t post anymore, I might also lose the trust and good will of my auto-upvoters.
This is very different from “upvote for upvote”
I have been contemplating this for a while. It took me a long time before I started using auto-upvotes, because I wanted to engage with people in person and only reward “good” content.
But as mentioned above - that is not always possible time wise. Plus, once you have met someone in person and you know a little about their background, their life story, their struggles, visions and ambitions, you often simply want to support them unconditionally - even if there might be some posts in between that aren’t of super high quality. Who cares? I realized I want to support “good people” more than “good content”.
After all, what each of us considers “good content” is very subjective. I have one loyal supporter who’s had me on auto-upvote ever since Steemfest 2. Sadly, I happen to have no connection to the topics he writes about, until it dawned on me - so what?? I can still upvote him, even though I’m not the right target group for his content! He’s supporting me (and many others) unconditionally, so I can do the same, right?
And the word “unconditional” is exactly what makes the tiny but important difference to the “upvote for upvote” bartering that many people ask for here on Steemit.
- None of my auto-upvoters ever asked me for anything in return
- None of them even told me they were auto-upvoting me
- They just silently started giving
The “upvote for upvote” people won’t give you anything unless you give them something first. They probably think they’re doing something positive, but it’s very conditional, which makes me cringe. “I don’t care who you are or what you post - if you upvote me, I’ll upvote you back.” Where is the connection in that?
When I “auto-upvote back for an auto-upvote”, all I care about is who you are. I care about this a lot more than what you post. I will even upvote content that you posted by mistake! Because you’re a human that I like and have a connection with.
How to find out who’s auto-upvoting you?
Go to http://steem.supply/ (by 
How to auto-upvote
There are several options. Personally I use steemdunk.xyz, which allows you to add 20 people for free. Steemvoter.com is another option, I’m not sure what the conditions are there. It’s a very popular one, so hopefully someone can comment here and fill us in on the details.
If you’re afraid you might use up all your voting power this way, don’t be. You can set it up in a way so that you don’t upvote more than 1 post per author per day (in case they post more than once), and you can also adjust your voting percentage, so you don’t give away lots of 100% upvotes.
Additional benefit: passive income!
Why don’t you test an auto-upvoter, if you haven’t already? Especially if you can’t be on Steemit every single day. I always consider it a waste NOT being here. We all have ten 100% upvotes per day. If we don’t use them, we waste them.
It doesn’t cost us anything to support one another. Plus, remember that you earn as well, when you upvote someone. So why miss this passive income source, just because you don’t have time to log in once a day?
In order to decide who to auto-upvote, ask yourself this:
- Who are the Steemians you want to support unconditionally, whether you have seen their content or not?
- Who are the Steemians that post valuable content, are actively engaged here and support this platform and other Steemians?
- Who are the ones that have been supporting you for a long time?
- Who do you want to see succeed on this platform, whether or not they will give back to you or not?
I believe the best way to make this platform a source of wellbeing for all instead of just a source of profit for a few is to reward loyalty and remember to give unconditionally.
And receiving a small financial return for supporting others unconditionally... Hm... is there a better way to live the universal law of giving and receiving?
I encourage you to set up your auto-upvotes now!