Details of how spreading the "bot love" is more rewarding (both financial and other) than self-hoarding.
Last week I started an experiment of spreading the "bot love". Here are the first week’s results of that experiment.
As an early author on steemit I managed to gain a small automated bot following before the 4th July first payout.
A week after this a slightly larger but slightly more erratic set of bots started following me.
From the week 10th to the 17th July I put up my usual 3 or 4 posts for the week which combined earned over $10 000, which in my book is excessive.
Knowing that that amount comes at the expense of other authors on the platform got me thinking on how to spread things around a bit more evenly.
@gavvet/how-to-catch-a-monkey-let-s-not-be-monkeys-on-steemit
This week I featured 4 other authors, @dragonslayer109, @pixiepeach, @jacor, @crazymumzysa .
Posting with my @gavvet account was able to generate a combined value of over $4 100 in STEEM dollars for these 4 featured authors this week.
My own posts continued to do reasonably well and combined I was able to earn more while helping promote other authors than last week. even after subtracting the $4 100 earned by them.
It just goes to show that helping others is not only good for the platform and rewarding personally but also results in a net gain in STEEM Power.
I also ran a couple of experiments on my bot following.
They vote in roughly 2 waves the first wave takes my post values to around $10 and this occurs pretty much with anything I post… even a useless question.
If the second wave does not vote this is still enough to move the post to the top of the pile and be noticed by other voters… the post then fares according to its merits and may reach a couple of hundred or even a thousand dollars.
The second wave of bots is erratic and does not always fire but when it does the post values rocket to $500 or $600. This puts it on the trending pages where it is very likely to be seen and get a lot of votes. The post then fares according to its merits from there and may go viral.
I experimented with duplicating 3 @Jacor posts on the @gavvet account. When he posted the exact same content under his own name the post value was a couple of cents.
When basically the exact same content was posted using the @gavvet account and the two waves of bots voted it up to the trending pages… two of the posts values were $750 and $1160 respectively.
The final one was picked up by the community (naughty community :) interfering with my experiment) as duplicate content and downvoted to oblivion by @smooth.
Prior to the downvote the post was at around $40 as the second wave of automated bots had not fired on this article. So even with a small head start of 10 dollars to move it to the top of the pile it had climbed to 3 times that value in a couple of hours based on its own merits.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
If you are a consistently earning author and potentially have an automated voter following. I would highly suggest you spread the "bot love" by promoting other authors and spreading the love and rewards.
It’s great for diversifying the platform. More diverse content has been able to obtain visibility and more authors are able to gain confidence, earnings and motivation to do what it takes to develop their own following.
I have been able to get visibility for posts and discussions on diverse topics like bubbleologists, daily picks, health controversies, euthanasia and people with disabilities.