When I joined like everybody else i had a vague idea how things worked but so many questions on how to do better in order to earn steemit faster. After digging around through old guides, testing theories and trying to figure out all the nuts and bolts of steemit. It's what I do i made a living out of breaking things apart to analyse the hidden math and figuring out how they work and how i can use that knowledge to my advantage.
I don't want this to be a long guide so i will try to be as concise as I can and i will link other bits and pieces at the end if you want to read from more experienced sources with more detailed explinations.
What surprised me most about the culture of steemit that i uncovered and tried to emulate is that I realised it's inefficient for amassing steem wealth. Basically everywhere you go on steemit its hard not to notice a culture of trash posts being powered solely by the original posters steem power and then all their minnows(small followers) and others that are lurking around upvoting it and attempting to feed off some of the 25% curator profits, potentially upvoting content that may not deserve the praise in the process.
If you're unfamiliar with the terms there are Minnows, Dolphins and Whales these titles are effectively determined by the steempower an account has. You're either at the bottom of the food chain, somewhere in the middle or up at the top eating all the krill in your path like a whale and growing even bigger.
There are 2 ways to make money on steemit you can make posts and comments, making you a content creator. Or you can upvote the posts and comments of others making you a curator. It's also possible to do both at the same time, so go crazy.
Many new users reading this guide will find themselves in the same position that I am in, they can post content but unless that content is seen by others with steampower who want to upvote it, it will quickly fade from the 'new' list and never receive anymore traffic, meaning you're lucky if you make 3 steem cents.
So many users see this and follow the other path assuming the role of a 'minnow' a tiny fish that follow the whales around trying to feed on some of their profits.
The way posting works is a content creator makes a post and 75% of the income a post receives goes to the content creator and the remaining 25% is divided up among all the users who upvote the content(the curators). So often we will see a whale with say $1,000,000 usd value in their wallet make a post and they have the power to upvote it adding a sizable chunk of income to the post sometimes as high as 100 steem or more of which they take 75% of then the smaller users fight over the remaining 25%. New users must compete with their free starting 0.5 steem power to try and secure some income from the meal thus growing stronger from the power of the whales wallet.
The % share that the curators earn from the remaining 25% is based on how much power they have, what time they upvoted after the post was made between 0-30mins (0 mins being 100% of your power goes to the content creator, 15 mins being 50/50 and 30 mins and after means 100% of your power goes to you and everything else is scaled relatively inbetween) also how many other people they beat to the upvote. (as in did they set a trend or follow others?)
In theory this sounded good and all i could see was everybody else doing it so i thought sure this is how it works. I later learned that my upvotes degenerate in power the more i use in a 24 hour window. Meaning each upvote is weaker then the last until my power regenerates every 24 hours.
You can check your remaining power at steemstats.com
This means that you can only upvote around 40 times a day and the more you perform the weaker they become giving you less income for your curating, this was confirmed by our results. After testing with some friends we found that on posts with healthy ratios of $2-4 per 1 upvoter and considering we all only have the starting 0.5 steem power that everybody gets. We calculated that we would earn around $0.001 steem per upvote meaning if we did 40 upvotes everyday we would earn around 4 cents at best and could expect to double our starting steem power to 1.0 in around 12 days or more.
Also because this income was pure curation this means it can not fluctuate very much and is fairly consistent. On the other hand as a content creator every time you post or make a comment you have a chance to interact with a dolphin or a whale who has the power to give you $1, $5 Steem or even $100 Steem in one upvote as you take 75% of the contents income without fighting anybody for it. Which is good because if new steemit users were seagulls they'd be lucky to win a grain of salt in a fight over a container of hot chips.
We also found out that if you have 1 other friend and you each create 1 post and upvote it and then upvote each others post, even if nobody else upvotes the content you would make about 0.0045 per post which was around 4x what we were making for our best curator upvotes. However don't get me wrong i'm not saying upvote each other its a way to get ahead because it's not it'll still take you a very long time and it not good for the system.
What we uncovered and what i'm hoping to prove true with this post is that the best way to get ahead is to create content but not so you can try to game the system instead just attempt to create actual meaningful content and don't worry about what it earns just keep doing it and improving your blog sooner or later a dolphin or whale will cross your path and you will earn 2 weeks or 2 months of steem income in 1 upvote meanwhile everyday you're out there building your profile and establishing a real audience who likes what you make. It's no good just making steem you're also going to need to grow those followers for the future.
To everybody out there who's trying to grind their way up the system I put it to you that you're actually working harder then you need to, stop chasing whales around to fight over their scraps. Instead create your own content that they might enjoy or find enlightening. This way you can interact with those whales from a position of power while contributing meaningful content to the community and helping steemit in a more positive way. You're also far more likely to get ahead faster.
Obviously the fastest way to get ahead is to invest some money into steemit but before you rush into that it wouldn't hurt to make sure its something that you want to stick with and enjoy doing.
Alright readers who made it this far be sure to give me an upvote/resteemit to help me prove this theory of better content, better money, if you feel so inclined. If not for me, do it for a better steemit :)
About Myself
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@mugsy7/creative-game-designer-former-leaguecraft-co-founder-david-logan
Helpful Links
https://steemit.com/steemit/@crypt0/steemit-whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-importance-of-steem-power-on-steemit