Hi Everyone,
I have been on Steem for over 20 months. So far, it has been a great journey. It is great to see how this platform has evolved from just a simple blogging application (Steemit) to an enormous range of applications. We have applications relating to music, games, videos, live streaming, fitness, crowd funding and many more. Most I have yet to try out. I have used DTube, Actifit, Busy, SteemPeak, Partiko, and DPoll (as a voter).
The price of Steem might be considerably lower than it was when I joined but the utility of the blockchain has increased tremendously. With the right marketing, Steem should see its price increase somewhere in line with the potential that it offers. The gif below is my advertisement for Steem. It is not particularly polished but contains the main themes I believe should be expressed.
The advertisement is focused on Steem applications and what these applications have to offer. To date, most of the Steem advertising has focused on rewards for content creators. In my opinion, this has led to false expectations from people joining. Instead, I believe the focus should be on what Steem has to offer. People should join and remain on Steem because they are enjoying themselves. The rewards, which in most cases is very small, should be seen as a bonus and not the focus. Another important aspect of Steem is the benefit to investors. I wrote a post, ’Advice to Potential Investors in Steem’, explaining the options and benefits to investors. I plan to make a short advertisement for investors as well.
On to the full post
This post is not going to be about the development of Steem, as amazing as it has been. Instead, I want to make a comparison between my early posts and my more recent posts. I have compared my first 50 with my most recent 50 posts (paid out). I have compared the posts in terms of votes, comments, and payout (includes curation rewards). I have chosen to make these comparisons in terms of mean and median values. I wanted to include ‘views’ but those statistics are currently not available.
I consider 50 posts a sufficiently large sample to draw some conclusions. I considered extending the sample to a 100 posts but I used bots to promote some of those posts, therefore including them would have distorted this comparison. I consider upvotes, comments, and post payout reasonable metrics to determine my progress. All three have their limitations but considering I did not use bots or resteem services for these posts, the comparisons should hold some value. I have considered both mean and median values for this comparison. Mean is reflective of all posts while the median is more reflective of the typical post. Median eliminates the effect of the outlier posts that earned either considerably higher or lower than the typical post. Mean is still important as that captures overall performance.
How do they compare?
I have briefly explained the methodology I have used to make the comparison. Let us now look at how these posts compared. Table 1 contains the mean and median number of votes and comments and the payouts for the posts (including curation rewards).
Table 1: Comparison votes, comments, and payouts
Upvotes and comments have increased tremendously. Both the mean and median values are almost 10 times higher than when I started. At a glance, for a period of just over a year (last post in the first 50 to the first post in the most recent 50), the increase in votes and comments appears to be very good. These numbers indicate that I have built an audience and have increased engagement with my audience my using posts. However, my mean payout per post has fallen. It is about half of what I received when I first joined Steem. At first glance, this looks very bad considering that I now own over 85,000 Steem and I did not have any Steem prior to my first post. The median payout per post has increased by about 30 times. This is a massive increase, which should indicate the success of my posts. Mean and median values tell very different stories in the case of payouts.
The conflicting results of the above analysis need to be inspected further. The difference in mean and median payouts can be easily reconciled. Most of the posts in the first 50 (28 posts), received very low payouts of less than 0.1 STU (Steem Token Units). Several posts received very high payouts. There were three posts with payouts of over 40 STU and one post with a payout of 136 STU. For the 50 recent posts, there were no posts with payouts higher than 15 STU. However, only 8 posts had payouts below 1 STU.
The recent 50 posts received lower payouts because of the lower price of Steem. The graph in Figure 1 displays the price of Steem during the periods for the first 50 and the recent 50 posts.
Figure 1: Price of Steem at time of posting
Source: coinmarketcap.com
The average price of Steem for the first 50 posts is approximately 3 times higher than the price for the recent 50 posts. If the average payout for the first 50 posts are adjusted to the price of Steem for the recent payouts, the mean payout per would be about 1.8 STU. This is about 2/3 of the payout of the recent posts. The recent posts have the benefit of my high Steem Power. The doughnut chart in Figure 2 contains the breakdown of the votes that my posts have obtained over the 31 days between 05/01/2019 and 04/02/2019.
Figure 2: Breakdown of upvotes received
Source: Steemreports Spectrumecons Incoming Votes
To counteract the effect of my self-votes with higher Steem Power, the mean payout of the recent 50 posts should be adjusted downward. If the mean is adjusted down by about 30%, the payout falls to about 1.95 STU. In terms of rewards obtained from other users, my posts, on average, are performing slightly better.
I would like to revisit the votes and comments. The recent 50 posts are receiving approximately 10 times more votes and comments then the first 50 posts. Is this increase purely representative of a greater following? The number of votes and comments is also dependent on the number of other posts as well as the number of users voting and commenting. The graph in Figure 3 contains the number of active authors, curators, and users during the time the first 50 and recent 50 posts were posted.
Figure 3: Number of active authors, curators, and users
Source: Arcange Steem Statistics 2019/16/02
The number of active authors has slightly fallen since the first 50 posts. The number of ‘curators’ has increased by about 2 to 3 times. The increase in the number of ‘curators’ could be because of bots, applications, and auto-curation but I do not have data to support such claims. The increased ‘curation’ would result in more votes per post for every post on average. If we assume that the average number of votes increase by approximately 3 times because of this extra activity, the natural increase in the number of votes for my posts align more closely to 3 times rather than 10 times higher.
How about comments?
Have the number of comments increased because of greater interaction or because more users are commenting? The graph in Figure 4 contains the number of comments at the time the first 50 and the recent 50 posts were posted.
Figure 4: Comments
Source: Arcange Steem Statistics 2019/16/02
The number of comments have fallen. They have dropped by about half. That would indicate that my posts have received equivalent to almost 20 times as many comments in respect to the average post. This is a strong indication of far greater engagement with the community.
Further implications of more ‘curation’
Figure 3 showed about three times more ‘curation’ now than when I posted my first 50 posts. I speculated that this increase is because of bots, applications, and auto-curation. This additional voting dilutes the power of all users’ votes. Therefore, votes are worth less than when less users are voting. These additional votes would have reduced the value of all posts. This would be another reason as to why the value of my posts have decreased in value. It is difficult to determine the extent of this decrease as it depends on the amount of voting power used. If the additional votes are from those with low voting power, the change will be minimal. If the additional votes are from those with high voting power, the change could be quite significant.
On other social media
I also share my posts on other social media such as Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Minds. I have also started sharing some of my older posts on Weku. I have almost 1,000 followers to my Facebook page and over 600 follows on LinkedIn. Some of my posts have received quite a bit of attention on some of the other social media. Facebook and LinkedIn has generated a few interesting discussions.
I was very late to join social media. I only started my Facebook account in 2017. Prior to that, I did not see social media as particularly relevant to me. Prior to 2017, my claim to fame was my journal articles and presentations at conferences. I became fairly well known within these groups but had no presence beyond that. After leaving the Government, I still wanted my voice to be heard, so I started my own YouTube channel, which I used to express my views on economics. A few months after that, I joined Steem, which I think was one of the best decisions I have made in my life.
Conclusion
I have had an exciting first 20 months on Steem. I had the very pleasant surprises of some very high payouts on some of my early posts. Those great payouts were quite a boost. These days I do not get those types of upvotes but I have built a reasonable group of followers that support my posts. This has added some consistency to my payouts. My payouts are down in terms of dollars earned but higher in terms of Steem earned. The higher voting activity has also pulled the value of my votes down, which has lowered the payouts of my posts.
I do not post as often as I did when I first arrived. Most of my early posts were my videos plus write-ups explaining the content of the video. I post less videos these days. Instead, I write quite a few detailed analyses, which I attempt to make relatable to my audience. These posts often take several days. I include updates on my work with my actifit posts.
Overall, I am quite happy with my progress. In terms of post payout, I am doing a little better than average, which I believe is a little lower than 2 STU at the moment. I am very happy with my level of engagement with the community in terms of comments. I still aim to elevate my work to become one of the top content creators on this platform. I still have a long way to go but I am learning and trying new things all the time. The website usesteem.com has a list of the top 500 authors by payout over the last 30 days. You can access this site using the link below.
Source: 
I think the value of my payouts for the last 30 days amounts to about $25. This is still a little less than the payouts of the users on this list. I am confident that in a couple of years, I will break into the top 500.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I thought it was about time I did an analysis of my progress. I would recommend that anyone who has been on Steem for some time to do a similar analysis.
More posts
If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.
