My New Way Forward On Steemit

My evolution away from pay to play upvote services is now complete and this post marks the beginning of a 30 day posting journey for you to see how well I do, or don't, with both my new content and post promotion strategies. I'll be sharing with you all the hard numbers I can give you, complete with screen captures, so you can decide for yourself if the things I'm doing are for you or not.

My Content

For the most part the last few weeks I've just been participating in the various photo related challenges and contests. Big shout out to Hive account@brumest for the Monomad contest and Hive account@daveks for the B&W Photo contest. Going forward when I post photography it will be multiple photograph blogs.

I've been looking for my niche and what I've notice is missing in the photography community is the technical guru. I've had extensive formal training at two different colleges and feel that I'm qualified(enough) to fill this role. What I'm not going to be is a rumor blog. My goal will be to give out solid advice to help you pick the right gear for your budget and interests. In addition, I'll cover real photography news such as product announcements and other items of importance. I've done some photography and post processing how to articles and will continue to write those as well.

A new photography contest is in the development stage and will have a much different format than any of the current contests. There would be an entry fee(100% of which would go to the prize pool) and it would be a two stage contest. I'm having a former mentor who has experience with photo contests look over my outline to see if there are holes with the concept. If you have interest or suggestions let me know in the comments.

So if No Pay to Play then what?

As I said in my opener I've stopped using pay to play upvoting services altogether. So how do I post promote then? I have gone to a multifaceted system that I'm going to share here. I will make small daily updates to show how it's going and about once a week I'll give a more comprehensive update.

Minnow Support Network

The Hive account@minnowsupport Network is one of the single greatest places to get help becoming all you can be on Steemit. You could write a book about all the way's you could get assistance through their PAL discord channel. What I'm going to go into here is the way I get frequent little boosts to my posts from their bots.

First is the Hive account@minnowsupport bot and the Hive account@banjo bot. Just stop by the upvote room on discord and drop the $upvote command followed by the link to your post to get upvoted by both. You have to wait at least 12 hours between upvote requests. Bonus round: there is often a trail of 20-30 votes that come with these bots. This is worth about 0.50 SBD a day right now if you get two votes a day.

I've also delegated 100SP to the Hive account@msp-creativebot . This gives me upvotes from both the creative bot and Hive account@msp-lovebot. This is worth about 0.30 SBD a day right now.

Qurator

Hive account@qurator is another community here on Steemit. It costs 2SBD to join and you have to have high quality content to get in. After that you level up depending on how much you participate. I'm currently level 2 because I upvote the daily newsletter everyday. I plain on donating to the leasing pool to get to level 5. As a member of Qurator you receive an upvote from the Qurator bot once a day. The higher your level the bigger your upvote. Right now my level 2 upvote gets me about 0.25SBD a day. Bonus round: This comes with a 12 vote trail worth another 0. 20SBD.

Leasing Steem Power

I've starting leasing steem power. Right now I've got 750 leased and I plan on leasing more as I get more liquid funds. I've done a lot of math crunching and leasing steem by itself is at best a break even propitiation if you plan is a mix of self voting and curation. Steem Power leasing combined with my next strategy however is a real winner though(at least in theory, the next 30 days will tell). You can lease steem power at either Hive account@minnowbooster or Hive account@blocktrades . Blocktrades' 90 day lease prices seem to have the best prices right now.

Steem Follower

Steem Follower is a website by Hive account@mahdiyari where you upvote other users posts just like you would directly on steem. The difference is that every upvote you make on Steem follower earns you steem followers points. These points put your posts in front of other Steem follower users who will upvote your post because they want those points. The site even gives a boost in points for smaller SP users to help them get more steem faster – 45% for under 500SP, 20% for under 5000SP, 10% for under 10,000SP.

Let me try and explain why combining Leased Steem Power and Steem follower is such a winner. Right now I have 863 SP. If I use that to upvote myself as soon as I post at 100% I can make 0.07SBD. If I make a perfect curation vote of someone else I can earn 0.0175SBD. Now lets say I upvote someone on Steem follower. I can get 0.084SBD in return votes and 0.0175 in curation rewards for a total of 0.1015SBD. Over the course of thirty days that is a difference of 9.45SBD. If you aren't already signed up, here's the link to Steem Follower: https://steemfollower.com/?r=4476

So there it is, my new content and promotion path laid out. Starting tomorrow I'll be uploading the new content and posting my first mini update to this post. Until then keep steeming.