There has come a point in my steemit career where I've decided to stop using vote buying services.

I was shamefully using them to grow my SP in a less than organic way; I couldn't help but think that I was scaring away people who would otherwise vote. But I wanted so desperately for my vote to be worth at least a couple of cents, without putting in as much graft, time or real world money as so many others on the platform have.

I received two Badges of Originality from a top curie curator ( @carlgnash ), but for some reason, it didn't occur to me that by buying votes, my content which I'd put time and effort into was being invalidated by the bought votes. And although what I was writing was good, my attitude was not.

Src

Recently, I received my first @curie vote on a #comedyopenmic entry. It wasn't a 100%, I'm still ecstatic, I never expected even a small curie vote just by looking back at my extensive history with vote selling services; scenes such as this were all too common:

And it was when I woke up this morning and saw that vote, that I realised I'm better off taking the honest route, I think in the long run it'll pay off.

It came at a good time too

The other day, I had all my posts flagged which would've cost me 200 STU (so probably around $400) - despite having the flags removed, it gave me a bit of a kick up the arse to say that I didn't deserve those rewards and that I was a hypocrite for accusing someone of taking an unfair portion of the reward pool whilst doing it myself.

So, I've recently been keeping all the SBD I earn, and have powered up the large majority of it, I've also sold a small amount to buy cryptocurrencies I like the look of, and some I've donated to causes I believe in here on steem.