Hi Everyone,
For 13 posts, I gave away a large proportion of my post earning to my top upvoters and to those that gave good insightful comments for my posts. Most of my posts did not earn that much but I had one post that brought in over 7 Steem to each of my post beneficiaries, see 'Valuing of Life (Third Revision) (Part 1)’.
The reason for this little initiative was to give back to those that support my content (upvotes or comments). Currently, Steem offers minimal incentive to users to curate content manually. Curating is time consuming and the rewards are very small compared to delegating to bots, which requires zero work or effort. I used the beneficiary feature to reward those that gave my posts the highest valued upvote. Voluntarily upvoting my post comes at the cost of not earnings from selling votes. I gave out 20% (15% for DTube videos) of the post’s rewards to the three accounts that gave the previous post the highest valued upvotes. I also gave 20% of the post’s rewards to the account that provided the most engaging comment. This was to give accounts with less Steem Power an opportunity to have a share in the rewards. Sadly, there were a few occasions when posts did not receive any engaging comments.
Even though most of the 13 posts had low payouts. The total given out in beneficiary rewards was reasonably good, equivalent to about 60 Steem. It is surprising how things can add up. The table below contains the total amount given out to each beneficiary as well as the number of times they were beneficiaries for posts.
| Benefactor | Rewards (Steem) | No. |
|---|---|---|
 @honeybee | 1.39 | 2 |
 @steem-ua | 3.15 | 5 |
 @steembasicincome | 0.71 | 2 |
 @steemplus-pay | 3.89 | 12 |
 @vegoutt-travel | 2.58 | 4 |
 @famunger | 4.97 | 6 |
 @sweetsssj | 1.60 | 2 |
 @dtube | 1.95 | 2 |
 @funbobby51 | 1.09 | 1 |
 @organduo | 8.83 | 2 |
 @holm | 10.77 | 5 |
 @fredrikaa | 2.44 | 3 |
 @curie | 0.68 | 1 |
 @hendrikdegrote | 1.23 | 2 |
 @poeticsnake | 0.68 | 1 |
 @magicmonk | 7.74 | 1 |
 @alexis555 | 1.26 | 1 |
 @mangos | 1.88 | 2 |
 @doughtaker | 1.21 | 2 |
 @redes | 0.62 | 1 |
 @ausbitbank | 2.01 | 2 |
 @abigail-dantes | 0.56 | 1 |
 @steemstem | 0.56 | 1 |
| Total | 61.80 | 61 |
I converted the rewards into Steem at a rate of 1 SBD to 0.8 Steem. The adjustment was made to simplify the results. I think the initiative was a partial success; giving out equivalent to almost 60 Steem, is quite good. I was hoping there would a little more competition from the top upvoters to get into the top spots. Most of the beneficiaries did not upvote the posts, which they were included as beneficiaries. Becoming a beneficiary did not seem like much of an incentive to continue upvoting.
I was able to give out a decent amount of rewards (equivalent to 60+ Steem). Using post beneficiaries as an incentive to upvote or comment on my content was not particularly successful. Lack of voting on beneficiary’s own posts as well as lack of comments is a strong indication of that.
I included the names of the beneficiaries along with a link to the post explaining the rules in each post. I also included the names of the beneficiaries in the comments section of the previous post. I think most of my readers did not quite understand what I was trying to giveaway. I did not include ‘giveaway’ in the title of the post but instead hoped my readers would see it at the end of the post and respond. The posts were not about giving away rewards but about rewarding those that genuinely contributed.
Another possible reason is that a higher percentage of people prefer Steemit.com rather than Busy.org or Steempeak.com. Busy.org and Steempeak.com have easily accessible notifications to inform them when their names are mentioned. The notifications would have informed users when they became beneficiaries of a post.
I am surprised how difficult it can be to giveaway money. I will try something a little different next time.
