Don't you believe that excessive vote buying can harm your brand, too?

Anything is possible and there are some negatives for buying votes for sure. Especially when you are super open about it from the beginning like I was with the first few posts I made that got any traction.

But there are positives as well. For example, you and I are having a conversation right now presumably because you saw my post was at the top of the Trending page. That's how most people find me. I personally find it easier to spend money to upvote the posts instead of posting 20 fake comments a day on stuff that I probably won't find interesting.

The majority of followers you generate through paid trending positions, will never start interacting with you on a regular basis, since they didn't begin to follow you for what you do (being like-minded people that have a true interest in being part of your community) but for your position.

That's true. Most of them are idiots for sure and just leave stupid low-effort comments. But they pump up my follower numbers which looks good when I approach a company and tell them I have 4k followers on Steemit. Most people do not heavily research who exactly interacts vs who doesn't, just like most people don't really examine your post history. Your rep is 72, but people are probably not investigating how you got that high beyond a cursory glance. They just see the number and it makes them feel a certain way about you. Same with Insta followers, Twitter followers, etc.

That said, a lot of them actually do interact with me on a regular basis. I don't want "the majority" to, because they're idiots who just leave shit comments hoping that I'll follow or upvote them. That's fine with me.

Only organic growth is sustainable, especially when it comes to community building. That's at least my personal experience from almost two years on steemit. Even though this is a rule that applies for many other market segments.

Nope. Not even close.

Do you think anyone would have any idea who I am if I tried to grow my account "organically?" First of all, I'd have literally nothing to write about because my first ~5 or so posts on here were all about how fucked it is that content hits the Trending page mostly b/c of paid upvotes. My 5 posts after that were talking about the irony that I was also boosting my own posts to Trending and encouraging people to do the same.

Even if I had written about something else, paying to boost them to the top is the #1 most efficient way to get exposure, followers, etc on this platform guaranteed hands-down no contest whatsoever. You instantly get the top spot in the most valuable piece of real estate on the site.

People who are new here and don't know any better assume it's because you are a good writer, popular, or both. People who are here a long time want to read it because they want to see what you possibly could have considered good enough to pay actual money to boost.

I paid $400+ SBD to boost this piece of shit. I don't even want to think about how much that is. I'll probably lose money on it. But I might get a client or two, maybe a few people who want to help market ICOs, and I'll show this article to companies I'm trying to negotiate for influencer marketing deals. But I might not.

I made a post on Reddit the other day talking about how I built my account here. After reading it, someone who has a podcast/YT channel/newsletter with 200k+ reach interviewed me for an hour on his show. I spent the whole hour talking shit about Steemit with the 1.5 caveats that it's excellent for exposure if you have the money to invest to boost your posts, with the .5 being that the community on here is for the most part not terrible.

If I was a blonde girl with lots of photos/videos of myself in "oceanwear" and was part of a group of my 2016 buddies where we all upvoted each other's posts, I might try to push the "organic" meme too.

But I'm not. It's 2018 and the bubble is over. Steem is effectively centralized and other than self-upvoting, vote bots are the fastest and most reliable way to grow without circlejerking people I don't give a shit about or writing pandering articles about cancer, autism, starving people in Africa or how Steem will FOR SURE 100% hit $20 maybe.

I prefer my way.