Pissing Away Hard Earned Steem Power...WHY???????

in #steem7 years ago

Is everyone feeling a little better about the steem ecosystem?

It is amazing how the sentiment about the prospect of this blockchain changes when the price goes from $.85 to $3.70. By the way, the truth is the outlook has not changed one bit since last month. Price action in no way reflects what is taking place on the blockchain. All the development that is in the works today was going last month. Try to remember this through each dip and pullback.

Steem Power is difficult to acquire. There is no doubt about it. It requires time, effort, and consistency. One has to comment (a ton), upvote, post, and interact. Even trying to short-cut by buying Steem Power is tough since we all know how difficult it is to earn some extra money in the bankster controlled, fiat based world.

If you are new, do not worry about what I am going to explain at this time. Everyone does what you are doing. However, keep this in mind as your SP increases.

When I first started, I not only zapped all my voting power, I also spent my bandwidth twice in the first week (if anyone else used up their bandwidth, please write it in the comments...so far I am the only one I found). Twice I was put in time out because I got a bandwidth error.

Before going any further, for some of the newer people, I will explain the voting system.

Each of us is allocated ten 100% votes a day. What I mean by that is it takes 2.4 hours for a vote to "recharge" the voting power. Hence, we basically have 10 in a 24 hour period.

If you go to steemnow.com, enter your username in the upper right, you will see what your voting power is at. Using the ten votes will move you down to 80%. This is because each 100% voting weight is worth 2% of your total voting power. So, for sake of an example, if I am at 100% voting power and I vote 10 times in the next minute, my VP will be 80%. If I come back at this time tomorrow, I will be back to 100%.

Now for those who have at least 500 SP on Steemit or those who use busy.org, you have the vote slider bar which allows you to alter the voting weight and vote at less than 100%. Therefore, keeping it linear, if we vote at 10% per vote, we now have 100 votes in a 24 hour period instead of 10. Obviously, each vote is worth less but we get more of them.

Yesterday I wrote that Steem Power is Voting Power. In fact, if you have, I will be conservative, at least 5,000 SP, in a couple years you will not have to worry about finances. STEEM is going to provide very well for you. Hence, I simply take the approach we all should look to increase our SP so that our VP is more powerful. This is at the heart of sharing is caring.

So why do people insist on pissing away their Steem Power?

Perhaps I should explain what I mean using myself as an example.

At present my vote is worth roughly $4.11 at 90% voting power. That means, fully loaded, my votes are worth around $4.50 (I love the appreciation in STEEM price...sending the dollar amount through the roof).

As most of you are aware, @fulltimegeek delegated me 10K SP a while back to increase my voting power to help others. His one rule is that he does not want to see the VP at 100%. His view is simply if one is not going to use it, he or she will lose it.

However, one thing that is not talked about is going to the other end of the spectrum. I do not think it is @fulltimegeek's intention for me to have my VP at 10% either. If I did this, I would be pissing away his SP.

Let's see what that would look like:

Notice what happened to the payout when I took my voting power down to 10%. My vote is no longer worth $4.11 but, rather, 45 cents. Wow, that is a big difference.

At present, @fulltimegeek's delegation makes up tad bit more than half of my voting power (51%). If I run my account down to the 10% level, I waste 9,000 SP that he delegated to me. 51% of my 45 cent vote is roughly 23 cents.

Now watch this:

If I am going to do this, he simply could have me take a couple days to get my VP up, take back the 9000 delegation, give it to someone else, and get the same results with me operating between 90%-100% with 1,000 SP.

Personally, I try to keep my VP above 90%. There are time it will drift down to the 85% level but I am not comfortable there. If I end the day at the 90% level, I know the next morning I'll be around 96% or so...which I tend to immediately bring down to the 90% level before I head off to work.

What amazes me is I see so many on here, who have significant SP but their votes are worth little because they are between 10%-20%. Over time, I watch them stay in the same range. They will power up a bit, perhaps even getting near 30% only to run it back down. Why do you operate at this level? Slow down for a week (or take a couple days off) and get that voting power back up. Make your vote worth something.

The answer many give is "there is so much good content, I just can't stop voting". While that might be true, it is a mathematical impossibility to vote over 20% a day for any length of time. If one voted at 25% a day, after 20 days, that person would have zero voting power left (5% x 20 = 100%). Instead, people run their voting power down and keep it there, opting to maintain a range much lower than normal.

People like to whine about the unfairness of the reward system and how the Whales are favored. Without getting into that nonsense which I already dispelled in a number of posts, here is a situation where people are leaving money on the table. You are doing a disservice to everyone who creates quality content that you like and upvote by having your voting power so low. It really is that simple. When I lack the ability to maintain a high voting power, I screw everyone I am upvoting out of 80% or 90% of the reward that my vote would normally carry. Since most of who I vote for are dolphins and minnows, I am pissing away a large percentage my part of the reward pool that could be distributed to smaller accounts.

So why are you pissing away your Steem Power?

Stop doing that...it is a disservice to all.

If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and a resteem.

Pictures by Google Images.

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I'd say it's because people have entered others in Steemvoter, or on those Distribution Lists and so their votes are automatically gone before they even log on.

I don't have any Steem Power but I really struggle to get above 20%... there really truly is just so much that I want to commend and congratulate the efforts of. Of course no one has delegated any power to me, so I'm not affecting anyone else... but it is hard. There really is so much good work here. I get too excited.

I'm leasing delegated sp and it has really boosted my presence here. I think it is worth it if your sp is below 5000 and certainly below 500. I would love to have someone delegate it to me for free, but it is relatively inexpensive and much better bang for the buck right now.

How does one get a delegation

Yeah, that's the problem with having to conserve votes. If you get involved in a discussion, you start upvoting replies and WHOOSH, it's gone.

The fact that a few thousand SP is going to make us financially independent is making me all jolly! Dolphin status incoming within this year for me.

Absolutely you will.

I read today there was another who thinks like me...@cryptoctopus stated in one of his comments that he thought $100 was realistic.

You will make dolpohin...a little extra upvote to help you get there....

$100 isn't realistic . Facebook has a market cap of 500 billion, us less a billion. As steem and blockchain is disruptive innovation, it will eventually be much bigger than what it replaces, since it doesn't only steal market share, it increases wealth generation.

Why are you so bearish with your 33x predictions?

That is in 12 months....

After that, it is much higher. 😁

Now for those who have at least 500 SP on Steemit or those who use busy.org, you have the vote slider bar

A nitpick. I think a slider takes effect at 1,000,000 vests rather than at 500 SP. Not a huge difference in that right now it’s at 487.733 STEEM PER MVEST according to steemdb.com

Good to know. I'm delegating 500 sp each to 20 noobs in my home city.
If they get the slider bar straight up that'll be good.

This is a great idea. If people would delegate to those who have 45-55 sp - that would make a huge difference. Instead of giving more power to whales who already have power, help the little guys come up.

#underabigtree
I'm trying to build my home city.
Ironically I think the face to face element is really important for online community building.

I agree. The locations that have regular meet-ups seems to do well. I'm seeing this is the SE Asian communities near me.

Good for you to get it going locally. Find the people who blog already about your location and they might jump over.

Personally I think it somewhat related to "traditional" social media. On Facebook or Instagram I can "like" or ❤️ basically any post I want and it doesn't do anything to my power because there is no power on those platforms. When I'm here on steemit I get a bit carried away and want to upvote those commenting on my posts and posts that I really liked and posts that might be about something I never thought about etc etc.... I really should stop upvoting for a few days and let my VP fill up again, but I want to reward what I like!
I understand what you're saying for sure, it's just a conundrum for me personally to fully implement it!

I was making the mistake of voting too much since I just joined, I need to take a day or two off so it can reset, or at least only vote once or twice a day. This was a great write up and should prepare me for when my SP is higher. Thanks for that, it will help me help others down the line. (plus if I build back up to 100% I think I'm worth $0.01 now wooooooo!

The SteemNow app is really handy for keeping an eye of what your voting power is. When it gets to 80%, most recommend letting it power back up again.

Peace.

Heya taskmaster... I'm a guy that finds it hard to comment on a post without upvoting. Because people will see I'm there and see that I didn't vote and I fear seeming ingrate.

I want to tell those guys I care about them, but if I show up empty handed am I not showing I don't care enough?

This is why my voting power is so low T.T

Forget that logic. Your comment is worth as much if not more than a small vote. We only average about 2-3 comments per post and engagement is what drives the alexa ranking. The more comments the better and do not worry about voting or not.

I comment at least 50 times a day and surely do not vote on 30% of that. I've only been asked about 2 times in 6 months.

Just keep commenting. You can make up for all the people wasting their breath in the chat rooms for free.

I agree, getting an upvote is nice really nice, I am waiting for the time I will be amazed. But I love the conversations, the comment and reply. And really get to know the people you want to vote for. No comments on a blog but 10 votes is not a good blog. It works depressive :-) I vote to fast, I am the typical example of this blog. Signed in to a few bots, and got out again. It left me no voting power at all! And I do want to vote myself, and not on some Arabic , or Chinese text I am not able to read. So interacting is for me most important.

Thank you for asking this!

That's a really good point.
I haven't crept back over 40% in several weeks.
Didn't realise the reduction was that severe.
Might have to leave it alone for a while :)

Go to steemnow.com and play with the calculator.

It will really show you what your votes are worth at different levels.

https://steemworld.org is pretty slick as well with knowing your voting power if you have not checked it out yet

Steemworld is an awesome site too...a ton of info.

I love every bit of this post,is highly educative. As a newbie that is still leaning, I was able to get a whole lot of information here on how Voting Power can be managed. But you made mention of bandwidth in your post which I don't really know what that means. Can you kindly help me to throw more light on it sir.
Thanks

The things is for me at 100% my vote is worth a penny. And at 50% it worth...a penny. Now obviously thats not true, its undisplayed sub penny differences, but yeah. I have to get more SP before I can bring myself to pay attention

My voting power is very low, but since my SP is still very insignificant there is not much difference between 100% and 30%.