Author Rewards vs. Curation Rewards

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It has been over two years now that I have been on the STEEM blockchain. One of the first and wisest things I did when I got started here was to create an account on Discord.

Probably the second smartest thing I did once I had a Discord account was to setup Ginabot. As part of the Minnow-Power server, Ginabot has been in invaluable tool in getting alerts about things that are happening with my account.

Someone resteemed one of my posts... boom, I get an alert! Someone upvoted my post or followed me... boom, I get an alert. Someone downvoted me... boom, you guessed it, I get an alert.

Like all programs, Gina goes down sometimes, but she always catches back up and even though I have the @esteem app installed on my phone, I still look to Gina for important alerts and notifications about my Steem account.

It used to be that Gina was sending me alerts all day, every day. Most of them went something like: "Your Author Award Just Arrived" or "Your Curation Reward Just Arrived". It used to be that I would get a pretty fair mix of those alerts through the day.

Lately, or more specifically after the latest hardfork I have noticed that it is far more rare to get the "Author Reward" alerts. The fact is, since the recent changes to the reward structure, far fewer people are voting on comments.

I always struggled with keeping my Voting Power up when I was actively upvoting comments. It was always a delicate dance between having enough VP to upvote the content I enjoyed while still being able to upvote those who took the time to comment on my posts.

I will be honest, since the hardfork, it is pretty rare that I throw out a comment upvote anymore. Even with my @bozz.sports account on the Sports Talk Social platform, I do a horrible job of upvoting comments. It is a habit that I have slowly gotten out of. According to Gina, so have many of us.

The idea was that with the improved rewards on curation, most comment votes would be relatively dust unless they were more than a certain dollar (cents) amount. I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but for the majority of us, it wasn't worth it.

As someone who is a pretty active at commenting and who used to see Gina virtually blowup all through the day with "Author Rewards", I can't say as though I am seeing the benefit. I have spent a good deal of time adjusting and tweaking my manual and auto votes to maximize my curation income, but I don't think it comes close to what I was making on a weekly basis via comment rewards.

What about you readers? Have you noticed the same thing? Is this just the reality of Steem these days? I know that some people have started Steem-Engine tokens to reward comments via something besides STEEM, but do you feel it still holds as much value as those "Author Rewards" you used to receive? Let me know what you think in the comments!


Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports



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76 comments
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It's probably the same for the me, I must have earned a fair bit once all those $0.025 comment upvotes were added up! Probably more than I do from curation now.

However I always felt that the true value of most comments was much nearer to 0 than to 3 cents, so I've no problem with the new system!

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I think what I miss the most are those orcas and whales who would occasionally throw out some nice meaty upvotes on comments. It was always a welcome surprise. With so much competition on individual posts for curation rewards, it was nice to have something that was all my own.

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It did get insane sometimes. I remember getting $20 for a comment once.

The all time record is nearly $3K.

Something not quite right about that though!

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That is a little extreme, but if I had been on the receiving end, I probably wouldn't be complaining!

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I got $80 once on a comment contest and I was very, very excited about it!

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That is awesome!

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Same, I subbed to a lot of whales on Gina just to farm the upvotes every day. Made a lot of pocket change from that just by interacting a little. Then I disappeared, and when I came back it was no longer a viable business. Sad!

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Yeah, I know, it is pretty sad that has went away. It was smart business though. You find someone with a lot of SP, read their stuff, form a bond and maybe just maybe they reciprocate a little.

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Exactly, also had to measure the generosity. Some were extremely generous, while others upvoted like 1 comment or none, so you know where to head lol. I still see some people who upvote most of their comments but they're small like 0.05. Haven't seen the 0.1+ regular votes lately. I could check, maybe there are still a couple people who stayed doing that despite the incentive to change tactics.

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I did earn a lot that way as well! I got some $18 votes from a couple whales on comments, even a $80 from blocktrades once hahaha. I used to farm that. But now that the vote efficiency has been reduced to 50/50 and the vote value has gone down by a lot, people seem to have stopped upvoting as many comments and are instead focusing on using their votes for curation rewards (at least I am).

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$80 on a comment?

That must have been a real double take moment!

I did used to put more effort into commenting when there were potential rewards, but I did find it a chore. I've always preferred to earn through posting.

I wonder if @abh12345 could do some analysis of how earnings for votes and comments have changed.

I actually quite like his new alt token system for rewarding comments.

!ENGAGE 20

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Yeah! I want to research these tokens since a few days ago when I started getting a few due to my frequent comments.

I never found it bothersome, I read and type really fast, so I can make 30 comments in around 10 to 15 minutes. At that time, I wanted to increase my engagement. Ironic how the token you gave me has that name :P

The premise was that the more comments I made, the more of a chance that someone would click on my name and either follow me or vote a post. It worked better than I expected. I got around 900 followers in a month from 0 and many other benefits such as immediate invitations to join communities, lots of curation, etc.

I think commenting still has those benefits, and since I'm so talkative and happen to be skillful at it, it was never more than a really entertaining and productive pastime.

And if you see those statistics somewhere, do ping me, I'm as interested as you are because I find comment interactivity to be an essential asset on this platform.

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If you hold 100 comment coins and use the tag "cc", your commenters will be awarded one free token per comment. It's a way of showing appreciation without draining vp.

Posted using Partiko Android

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Thanks, I will have to look into that.

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I use this as well on the weekly #BeerSaturday post to give each comment something back beneath the !BEER they get.

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I use this as well on the weekly #BeerSaturday post to give each comment something back beneath the !BEER they get.

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What was that?

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Fuck this downvoting person..

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(Edited)

I downvoted you because you self-voted yourself to the top with a low-quality comment. If you want to self-vote to the top, at least post a long comment or something that contributes to the conversation or the post.

I like comment sections clean, so I clean them with my votes. I upvote the good stuff and downvote the bad stuff. If you're angry about that, then either make good comments or don't upvote yourself to the top.

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You act like a moderator in here.. It was my choice to do whatever i like with my sp not your business at all.. Do u think i care about you if you attack me i attack u back simple as that.. fyi i just stuck in here and you really make my day worthy..fuck u

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(Edited)

It is also my choice to do whatever I want with my SP. If you spam with your SP, I have the right to counter-spam with my SP. It's as simple as that. We're all free to do, and we're all free to receive the consequences. It's up to us to measure our actions.

And no worries, I'm also happy :P

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Do as you want.. if that you wanted too.. i can spam u till u get bored.. fuck u bitch.. go fuck ur father instead picking me as your fight! Shit head white girl fucker!

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And who r u to act like an angel in steemit.. Such an hypocrite person are you lady.. Do you want to get fuck.. i buy you for a 100$ if you want..

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How much does each token cost?

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It's about 1.1 steem for 100 CC tokens.

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Can they be sold easily? I mean if I buy them, will my commenters be able to use them? Thank you for sharing this information, by the way. I think I will start using this.

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I'd refer you to comment coin for more info:
https://steemit.com/@commentcoin

There's always the possibility for CC tokens to become valuable in the future, they're still new so prices are low right now. Good opportunity to get started. They can be sold on steem-engine.com very easily. Each token can currently be instantly sold for 0.006 steem each.

BTW price just dropped. :-)

Helps to become familiar with se exchange:
https://steem-engine.com/?p=market&t=CC

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(Edited)

The EIP definitely deincentivizes upvoting comments. I stopped after the fork. Voting comments is basically guaranteeing a 50% penalty on vote value...why wouldn’t I save it and try to maximize my earnings by using that power to vote on a post that is at (or I believe will be at) threshold?

Now, that is selfish and only “in it for the money,” but hey, people respond to incentives! Of course I’m going to try and act in my own rational self-interest, otherwise I would be betraying my role as a market participant.

I try (not always great about it though) to give SE tokens instead. I mean, I truly appreciate interaction and want to reward it...not sure if it’s a fair swap, but I didn’t make the rules.

!BEER
$trdo
!DERANGED
!COFFEEA
!SHADE 5

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Great points! I totally agree with you. As much as we enjoy the community aspect of this place, we all pretty much came here for one reason. That might not be what keeps us here, but it sure is good motivation!

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It's a shame that people are only here to destroy a good thing. Stick to it and keep on keeping on.
Always take the higher ground, keep your head down and Steem on!

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I keep throwing a small upvote on comments. It serves several purposes, a bookmark for me to see that I have replied, a hope to trigger dustsweeper... And even though it doesn't give a reward, it is still a nice gesture of affirmation! After all, not every thing needs to have a monetisation chat component!

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I didn't realize that dustsweeper was still even around. Better watch out or the guy that is dinging me for using SBI might consider that a pay for votes scheme and start downvoting!

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Oh, they are hitting you as well... Sigh, it's getting a bit tiresome.

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Oh, they are hitting
You as well... Sigh, it's getting
A bit tiresome.

                 - bengy


I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

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I think they're hitting everyone with SBI? I'm not sure but that's what I was told.

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At last count it was people doing the sponsoring... But I suspect that is a divide and conquer tactic.

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I didn't do any sponsoring and have been getting downvotes all year. So I don't know, maybe it's as you say and are just trying as hard as they can to disinsentivise the system.

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It isn't the little gnat ones. They come in 0.1 to 3.00 dollar hits!

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Waaait, I thought this as a smaller operation. They really are fully invested in this campaign. Do you know who's heading it? Wow!

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I'm getting a few 0.000 downvotes from 15 SP people. I think they're also trying to reduce my SBI rewards. How big are your anti-SBI downvotes?

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Most of the ones I had been getting were pretty low like less than $.05 or so. The one I got the other day was $.73 or something like that.

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Damn, they really want to reduce your rewards to $0 just because "buh there was an exchange, inorganic = heresy!"

Have you also been getting support to counteract the downvotes?

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On that occasion yes, I did get some support.

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Let me sweep some dust tonight :)

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Thank you! Mister sweeper!

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I'd sweep you as well but there's @dustsweeper for that and I'm currently testing my new curation rewards potential since I powered up 2500 SP

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I do the same thing. I have around 6 comments per post. Usually around 3 are natural and around 3 are bots. I upvote the natural ones so that they're above the bots. This improves the appearance of my comment sections a lot.

I used to give a lot of votes when the votes were worth more, but now that they've been reduced, I'd need to use at least 60 or 70% to reach the dust minimum.

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Yes even with 10K Sp I find it a problem with this damn dust upvotes for Comments. I also am guilty of over extending my VP for all the upvoting I do

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exactly, you're giving hearths on insta or likes on fb when you like it and when you want to show some appreciation for author. even if my upvote of the comment is a dust, I will still do it. Nice gesture of affirmation, as @bengy said.

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Yup, there is much more to interactions than the monetary part!

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Yup, there is much more
To interactions than the
Monetary part!

                 - bengy


I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

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I used to regularly upvote comments myself back when they counted but I didnt really see a lot of upvotes on comments and have got used to the change I guess
but Like you I do rely on Ginabot when she goes down I feel lost lOL

!tip

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Well... it is what it is. Comments have other value and that was so before, as well. The occasional vote on them was just a bonus for me. And it still can be. But I do feel some adjustment in that regard is due. Maybe lowering the dust barrier.

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I wasn't really complaining. I just feel like people don't comment as much anymore because the driving factor is no longer there.

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Yeah .... I notice that my Author Rewards have dwindled to almost zero. Thank God I have found few new places where I can earn a little money for all my work.

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I never used Gina, but I do upvote comments I value on my own posts. It may only be 2c, but the person will get something and it gives their rep a small boost. If the Steem price goes up I can give a little more :)

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Hi, @bozz!

You just got a 2.65% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.

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I don't upvote comments anymore. I used to reward pretty much all the comments on my posts but that was in the day when my less than 500sp was worth 16cents upvote! I found out the minimum payout for posts was around 2 to 3 cents a long time before the last HF. I think the main difference since the last HF is in the curation curve thing. You get a better return on your investment (upvote) if the post is popular (receives more upvotes) and comments are not likely to get large numbers of upvotes. It is hard to say if it is the fault of the HF that there are less upvotes or the general price of steem. I used to be able to give a 3 cents with less than 20% upvote (and I had a much lower SP than now). Now I can't even get 2cents with a 100% upvote. I think there is less engagement with comments than before. And yes I miss the surprise upvotes, sometimes worth more than my posts for a whole week!

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I think as you said it is a mixture of both. The incentive just isn't there anymore to get an upvote on your comments or to upvote others comments. I also think it has seen a decline because users have left. I know when the HF was first implemented a lot of people made the decision to not upvote comments but instead upvote one of the commentors recent posts. The problem with that is the majority of people who comment on my posts I already follow them and upvote all of their stuff :)

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