Lets talk steemit #11 | Do you buy votes and why? An open conversation
Almost every time I go onto steemit chat and browse around the main pages within a few minutes I get messages from accounts that ask for me to send them a varied amount of SBD in return for an 'X%' vote which will give me 'x' amount on my post.
Now I always turn down these offers because I want my account to grow organically because people like what I post, as I say on many of my steemit talks I am on the site to share my opinions and to hear others opinions and if I make some money, which I would like to, then it's a bonus.
However at the moment is seems really hard to grow my account without paying for votes because although my follower count goes up the amount of votes I get seems to stay really low, which is another issue for another post.
So the reason I am making this post is to find out information from people that buy votes. As buying votes isn't something I look down on, if people want to buy votes it's really none of my business but I just don't want to personally. Firstly I would like to ask people who do buy votes, why? What is the main reason, is it for money, to gain followers or another reason.
And my second question is has it helped? So since you started buying votes, whether it be buying powerful votes or tons of small votes from doing so has your account got more recognition and has it helped you grow? Have you seen an increase of rewards and general votes on your account since buying votes?
I ask anyone that has or does buy votes to let me know you experience because I am genuinely intrigued as to whether people benefit in the short term and long term and just how people have found the situation. Finally I would also like to ask how it makes you feel, do you feel satisfied with the results and do you have any regret or guilt toward buying votes? Or is it simply something that benefits you so you do it?
I would really appreciate anyone that does pay for votes to let me know all about it on the comments so we can have an honest conversation about it, also if you are like me and don't buy votes what stops you from doing so?
PS. Have you ever been scammed trying to buy votes?
I've bought votes, the few times I've done it has mostly been out of curiosity. I once bought an upvote with 100 SBD to see "How big it is". It was far bigger than I had expected it to be and I got some unwanted attention with it, started to get pointless comments unrelated to the posts just like some people get constantly.
However now I'm not buying votes, at least for now. Maybe I could do it for a friend, just like when I was new I got a few bought votes from a friend. It was really nice.
I haven't noticed any difference on a long run that I would have gotten a special advantage from the bought votes. Maybe a momentary moment of joy for seeing a "well valued post", even though I know some of the votes were bought.
However I'm also selling votes when I'm high enough on VP. This means usually the times I'm not using Steemit and not voting myself, as I'm usually around 50-80% of VP when I'm active on Steemit. It's partially greed, but I just don't want my VP to be left out.
I'm already autovoting some of my favorite authors. If I wasn't so lazy I could put some of my votes in a curation trail, which would also use my VP for good even in times I'm not using Steemit. It would just require me to do something and currently I'm feeling extremely lazy about doing anything extra.
Some really interesting points to think about. I'm not surprised that buying votes came with some spam and unrelated comments as there is a lot of that around.
I would also assume that it didn't make a difference in the long run because the votes are only there if you buy, maybe someone would see a difference in the long run if they were consistently buying votes but it could be outweighed by negative attention.
I can see why you would sell votes because it uses up VP and brings in more money, but I don't really see it helping small accounts much because although it would give them a little boost at the same time it would bring disappointment when it stopped.
There seems to be a lot of opinions on buying and selling votes and as much as it could be helpful I think it does more harm than good because if you buy votes there is no need to put effort into what you post, I also think it can take away from the community of steemit, I guess it just depends on the scale of how widely it'd done.
Well people spam comments on high valued posts in the assumption they might attract big votes too, usually thinking the user with a high valued post is a whale of some sort.
We've seen how some users have bought large upvotes for low quality or plagiarized posts only to get them flagged hard. Sometimes even high quality content gets flagged as some are annoyed by the bought votes - even when the user themselves do not buy the votes but someone buys votes for them.
But buying votes for other people has mostly ended nowadays compared to the times when randowhale was the only voting bot and the votes sold were small.
I can admit when I'm selling my votes I'm not doing it to help any small accounts. It's purely to get my VP to use for some monetary gain. I'm not upvoting my own content and I'm normally trying to help other users with my votes even without being paid, but when I'm not doing that I'm picking the easy way for some money.
Currently the vote selling/buying is according to some one of the larger threats for Steem ecosystem. Luckily we are not blindly allowing any content getting large rewards with bought votes, as users are getting flagged for disagreement on rewards.
Thanks for the input, I think I've got a much better idea of how this voting world works and I can completely understand why you sell votes and I think when you are selling votes to people that are consistently putting out good content then it's not much different than just voting for them normally.
I think the issues arise and people get frustrated when they see 'shit-posts' doing well from paid votes because It puts steemit in quite a bad light and takes a lot away from the trending and hot pages.
I think it comes down to how people do things rather than the action itself but steemit is still in it's early stages so things could easily be very different a year from now.
@dr0tcl You have received a random upvote from @transparencybot for not using bidbots on this post and using the #nobidbot tag!
This is a good little thread, and it is one I have pondered on myself. I think the main problem is that you won't get people who have bought votes successfully to admit it.
Simply because a lot of the 'good' vote buying services are bid-bots, whereby the higher you bid (and also time you bid), will determine the percentage of your vote and whether you make money on it or not.
Ergo somebody who has found a successful bid-bot strategy is hardly likely to share it.
From what I can see and have been able to glean, if you pay around $100-200 in bid-bots you can expect to get anywhere from 30-100% extra in votes, however it is by no means a guarantee.
Anybody who pays for a resteem bot, is I'm afraid throwing their money away. I have around 7,500 followers and sometimes a resteem from me is worth a few bucks, many times it is not.
Anyway, I'll resteem this and see if we can get some more people on the debate...
By the way, I'm using the nobidbot tag these days, as it has created an alternative trending page which I have a chance of getting on!
Cg
I can understand why people wouldn't want to talk about using bots from the reasons you explained but It would be nice to hear some peoples experience with buying votes or being the seller to just hear how they found the process.
Ye I also noticed that people seem to waste their money paying for a resteem because it doesn't grantee anything.
Thanks for the resteem and letting me know about the tag, hopefully I can find someone willing to talk about their experiences with buying/selling votes.
Supper fantastic job
thanks man.
Well come
People don't buy votes they buy attention. :)
Living in the world of technology, every-one-of-us in this one big village call Internet. And as regular people you don't get notice by anyone, accept your friends and family.
Then come the social media problem, and anti-social people. They want attention. They will pay for that kind of attention, because they give them please that they are notice in the village call Internet. Get satisfied your Ego, and you will be calm and happy.
That is a bigger picture, this is just a regular situation on every social media. I know, that Steemit is not typical social media platform, but is acting like it, more and more every day.
Well said, I agree that the definitely is that big aspect of ego because everyone wants acknowledgment and rewards for what they do.
That's one of the reasons I don't buy votes, I know it would be coming from my ego wanting as you say attention.
Well people do buy votes, calculating the best possible win% they can get with the bought votes.
It's not only visibility, they're trying to gain outright advantage from the bought votes. Especially if they do not understand curation rewards and how a part of the payouts are going for the voters.
Great post dr0tcl and something i to have wondered over as a newbie minnow and most kewl informative feedback information from my fellow steemers! Cheers everyone! :D
thanks! It does seem the best plays to get information about steemit, are steemians. ahahaha.
Kewl! Nice 1 dr0tcl :D