Dolphin 541,753—Monthly Report: October (2019)

Echo, Echo, Echo

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to my monthly report for October, 2019.

You are out there, right?

I mean STEEMFest is currently in full-swing, and it's gotten kind of lonely out there, even though I know that many, if not most of us, couldn't make it to Thailand.

So, anyway, at the risk of hearing my own echo by posting this, I will forge ahead, since come hell or STEEMFest, I've published one of these every month now for 21 months straight. No reason to stop now.

Quick Summary

I go into this knowing very little about the numbers before I put them together. Some months I've had a feel for things, others, not so much. October was one of the latter. I was surprised to find out how many posts I'd managed to publish, since I thought I had a lot fewer than what I ended up with. There is also something about my posts in the month of October that I think is pretty cool, a milestone, if you will, because as far as I can tell, I've never accomplished it before. It's something I probably won't be duplicating in November, though.

I'll tease that now and fill you in later in the appropriate category.

So, let's get into the numbers, shall we?

Posts (no comments)—18

I still wasn't able to average one post a day, but this is a 50% improvement over September's total, so I'm happy to be out of that slump and hopefully trending up. I blamed last month's major drop on a lack of SNAX earning rounds, but those are back and may have helped me with some incentives. The fact that I can buy SNAX on STEEM-Engine whenever I have the resources, though, is beginning to erode the need for SNAX scoring rounds, so I'll have to find new reasons to post as often as I would like.

I don't know if that makes sense to you, but I'm guessing it might to at least some. I love to write, I just find myself writing about things that might have an audience, rather than as many topics as I might care to explore. I need a better mix of that.

Comments—152

This number just keeps going down. I've been concentrating mostly on getting posts out and answering any comments on them, then wandering over to my feed to upvote and possibly leave a comment if I have something to say. Usually by the time I've managed to post, it's the next day before I'm answering the comments because I published later in the evening and then went to bed.

I'm not sure what else to do, though, while I'm working. I could try to dedicate a day or two to just going out and commenting. That would mean taking the few hours I have to go beyond my feed to find other posts, something I've done before with more time. We'll see. Having another 70 comment drop from September's comment total, which was 77 off from August—at this rate, I'll be down to zero by December, so I need to do something to turn these numbers around.

Upvotes given—67/205

Believe it or not, this is an improvement over last month. Not by much, mind you, but after the last category, I'll take it.

The number of posts in my feed keeps dwindling, so I'll need to either try to follow more people again, or go play in the tags. Or something. Communities, from what I've been hearing from the recordings of STEEMFest, can't come soon enough for me. Something needs to make content discovery drop dead simple.

Upvotes received—997/2212

Curie showed up on the last post of the month, or these numbers would have been closer to what happened in September. After nearly going another 30-days without them stopping by, I was wondering if maybe I no longer met their criteria. Apparently I still can, even if it's more quarterly now than monthly.

Otherwise, producing six more posts didn't really increase the number of users or upvotes on my posts. Without the numbers brought by the curation trail, the average number of upvotes per post would go down.

Earned SP increase—220.117

While down only 10.5 SP from last month, I had more posts, so the average per post is less. Even so, just like last month, I'm pleasantly surprised to see I'm over 200 earned SP. Even with the curie curation trail upvotes, I did not have a post make more than 32 STEEM/SP in the month, unlike other months. Which means that, for the most part, there were no one shot homeruns accounting for most of the SP.

I hinted at earlier that there was a milestone or benchmark I reached this month. It involves the STU on posts. October 2019 marks the first time since I joined that every post published earned more than $1 STU at payout. Lowest was $1.126, while the highest was $13.062. So far, this month isn't looking good for keeping posts above $1 STU (thanks STEEMFest), but it was cool while it lasted. That's not to say it can't happen again.

Breakdown of total SP earned for posts and comments was 208.333, with 11.784 coming in curation rewards.

Total earned SP as of 10-31-19 was 3524.024. Including investments, all SP was 8,668.825.

Highest single payout—15.829 STEEM/15.768 SP

Curie came calling on the last post of October, one I called The Man In The Basement, a fictional story for Halloween. I'd describe it as a psychological drama (I wish I could call it a thriller, but I don't feel it quite reached that level. I kept trying to turn it darker but it would always lighten back up a little. At any rate, I'm glad I decided to take the time to put it together.

Self-Upvotes—0

The streak continues.

Contests—0

I struck out all around in October. Maybe one of these days I'll manage to do enough to garner something.

Flags given—0/received 14

The uptick I mentioned last month with regards to downvotes on my posts increased nearly three times over September. As far as I can tell, the anklebiters (what I call the low SP accounts running around downvoting to prove some point that only they know and care about) have been emboldened by the freebie upvotes a day, so yay, I'm among the many I'm sure who have been on the receiving end of their mildly annoying but mostly symbolic tantrums.

Reputation Ranking—66

While it did not go up a full point, my reputation rank did increase by just over half a point, though, which I hope can be added to similarly in November so that next report, I can say I'm now at 67. I'm aiming for 70. After that, whatever level increase I manage to achieve will be frosting. Just because I say so.

Investment—155.757

I actually bought more STEEM, but not all of it was powered up. I'll get to where the rest went in a moment

As I mentioned last month, I decided to go ahead and buy more STEEM even though values were not cratering more, figuring that if I was encouraging others to buy, I probably should do something. With additional income thanks to being employed, I've decided to buy smaller amounts at a time than what I've done in the past, power up some of it, while using the rest for something else.

Token Trading

For the most part, I continue to sell off airdropped tokens I receive on STEEM-Engine, and then buying up SNAX. I haven't been keeping track of what I've been selling, though the record is all there. I'd be surprised if it surpassed 15 STEEM in October, though. The tokens aren't really getting much traction from what I can tell, simply because more are doing what I am rather than investing in them. In my case, it's simply because I'm not sure what they're there for, or what their intent is. I'm also wondering what's going to happen to them when Communities and SMTs finally appear.

The tribe tokens primarily identify with tags. Communities won't necessarily have tags, but will be the tag, for all intents and purposes. So, while I'm not sure how that will work yet, it seems like tags will either disappear or become secondary things. And with SMTs, well, due to the more decentralized nature of the STEEM platform versus what STEEM-Engine has, I'm anticipating that there will be more investments heading towards SMTs. At least, we all hope that's the case, right? Otherwise, much ado about nothing if not.

SNAX

My SNAX buying continued in October on STEEM-Engine. Total liquid SNAX on STEEM-Engine at October's end was 7,718,692.6733.

Scoring arounds for SNAX via STEEM posts rankings also continued, with a couple of hiccups. As of 10-31, total SNAX from STEEM posting was 194,962.5607.

I have an initial goal of acquiring 10 million SNAX. After that, I'll have to see what I do, and how much. SNAX selling has already slowed from what it was before I began buying, so I'm not sure what more there might be out there. People continue to fill buy orders at much lower prices for some reason, but that's okay. To each their own. And it's not like there's much I can do about it.

Miscellaneous

I'd love to commit to some kind of goal for the month of November. I do know I have a tall order in store matching last November's earned SP total of 494.552. I'm not aiming for that, but I would like to reach a total of 4,000 earned SP by the end of December. I'd say there's an outside chance of doing it.

As long as the Big SP come back from STEEMFest.

If you've been watching the live or recorded streams of STEEMFest, you'll note that Steemit Inc. sent a relatively large delegation to Thailand compared to what happened last year in Poland. I take that as a good sign that things are doing much better there, along with all of the production and communication we've seen from them. While the desired goal is for them to take a backseat to all that is happening elsewhere on the blockchain, in the meantime, it's nice to know that the folks behind the health of the STEEM blockchain are in better stead, too.

I'm looking forward to a Communities roll out, quite frankly, more than I am SMTs, mainly because I feel they have the potential of finally providing the means for content discovery that I was really expecting to enjoy when I first arrived. Hopefully, Communities won't wait for SMTs to be hardforked before they show up. It seems like there's only one person working on it, though, so who knows. I did not even here a guess as to when they might appear, while with SMTs, we at least have a tentative schedule of March/April next year.

I don't like at least a tentative date. It doesn't have to arrive on time (as long as it's not months off), but a ballpark would be nice.

I'm hoping for no more sidetracks and distractions, please. Full speed ahead with Communities and SMTs.

November is off and rolling. Not much I can do to stop it, so I'll try to make the best of it with the time available and the days left.

So, with that...

Onward and upward.

For another monthly report, kindly check out the one @bashadow produced for October. You can find it here.