<center>![pexels-photo-256417.jpeg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ1Ukt3DFmGiJEocdHyvc6gmc1DNcK14YocS7PNPCLmTF/pexels-photo-256417.jpeg)</center>

> It's only words, and words are all I have
> To take your heart away 
> -- 'Words' by the Bee Gees, "Sinking Ships", January 1968

These are the words that reverberate in me when I hear the word 'word.' 

***

I have always been fascinated by words and how words affect us as a person and as a people. We use it everyday - in our conversations, in our writings, in our reading. 

**But how much are our words worth in Steemit? Are these values (payouts) accurate in determining the value of our words? Do we let these values determine the value of our words? Or are the determinant of this values lie outside of Steemit?**

## Posts with Video (or Audio) only

One realization I had when I extracted some data, was that there are posts that do not have words in them but only videos and most likely audios, but that's something outside the scope of this analysis until the technology comes to analyze those videos and audios.

> One technology that came to mind is the one I encountered in Whaletank hangout - a transcription service by @nutela and company. But this is again a different story.

So the main question I want to find an answer is - **how much is each word in Steemit worth?**

## Per Tag, Not Per Category

Accuracy is one of the things I bear in mind when composing my posts. Since we are analyzing Steemit data, the data we present and the data we extract, are important. I believe tags are one of the factors that contribute to our post's value.

So another thing that I wanted to know here is  - **per tag, how much is each word worth?**

## Word count for each post in the last 24 hours

Due to the limitation in the tool that I use, I only extracted data of the posts of a day. I ran the tool today, so the posts covered were those until yesterday.

 
### The outliers

<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmd3nARA2CmLvNf4PLdhuN1ZdXrMbTRPv2dPi7E7Erx7uW/image.png) </center>

**'life'** is again an outlier with 2,712 posts, 632,521 words composing those posts, and $6,210.011 total payout for those posts.

## Average word payout

Here comes the hard part. Presenting the data in an easy to understand chart.

### Average word per post

<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmbniRcnbQsJYyXZ1U4iy8DigjWEme8WwZsMxVSHsyXTPk/image.png)</center>

Of course, the tag that will most likely garner the highest word per post is a post that only has one post and has lots of words into it. If you want to know which post that is, it's a [post](https://steemit.com/@samir1993/breast-cancer-treatment-options-just-cure-it-and-save-life) about breast cancer.

There are even posts that have no word in them! [Here's](https://steemit.com/love/@proyectox/amazing-20171014t213915641z) an example.

<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSrAsfx7GbTwAuwkLj7kkzpYf9M8Sckut2jioEjTZUQ5z/image.png)</center>

Here are the top 10 tags with the most words in them:

| tag                  | ave word per post | post count |
|----------------------|-------------------|------------|
| breast               | 7584              | 1          |
| naturally            | 7584              | 1          |
| sovereignty          | 7104              | 1          |
| bourgeoisie          | 6783              | 1          |
| industrialrevolution | 6783              | 1          |
| bookreview           | 6783              | 1          |
| crashbandicoot       | 4397              | 1          |
| liberalism           | 3846              | 1          |
| neoliberalism        | 3846              | 1          |
| neoliberal           | 3846              | 1          |

We can see here that there are tags that have the same average word per post. This is as expected because it basically means that these were the **unique** tags used by the poster in the post with the most number of words. **breast** and **naturally* are unique tags used on the same [post](https://steemit.com/breast/@samir1993/breast-cancer-treatment-options-just-cure-it-and-save-life). 

## Where do I want to go? What do I want?

From the looks of it, this is not what I want. 

> This is one way of discovering what we want, by first knowing what we don't want.

## So what is it then that I want?

I've written that in the introduction of this post:

> **But how much are our words worth in Steemit? Are these values (payouts) accurate in determining the value of our words? Do we let these values determine the value of our words? Or are the determinant of this values lie outside of Steemit?**

So let's get down to the meat of this topic. How much is a word valued at here in Steemit per category?

### Excluding tags with no words in them, and excluding tags that have less than 10 posts

I present to you the Top 20.

| No | tag                   | ave. payout per word |
|----|-----------------------|----------------------|
| 1  | minnowbooster         | 0.092968             |
| 2  | sketch                | 0.086834             |
| 3  | korea                 | 0.07387              |
| 4  | steempower            | 0.061602             |
| 5  | bitshares             | 0.059492             |
| 6  | autumn                | 0.058865             |
| 7  | dash                  | 0.055745             |
| 8  | gold                  | 0.051557             |
| 9  | landscape             | 0.0509               |
| 10 | creative              | 0.048565             |
| 11 | dmania                | 0.047864             |
| 12 | steemitphotochallenge | 0.04717              |
| 13 | bescouted             | 0.046993             |
| 14 | poker                 | 0.045936             |
| 15 | canada                | 0.042635             |
| 16 | painting              | 0.041145             |
| 17 | mountain              | 0.039738             |
| 18 | drawing               | 0.037456             |
| 19 | friends               | 0.035934             |
| 20 | inktober              | 0.035373             |

And the chart. These excludes tags with no words in them and tags that have less than 10 posts in them, which trims it down to 400 tags.

<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPGDt7isvXWz9mFJSBPdHXUtDgApGbm1YP7U8h1PBM57P/image.png)</center>

We can see here that tags that include steempower and minnowbooster have the most value per word in each post which is $0.093 and $0.087 respectively.

> If I wanted to write a post about minnowbooster, does it automatically mean that each of my word is $0.093? 

That is not the case. Because this does not consider who wrote the post. And most likely, the author who wrote about #minnowbooster is someone who's already established and have whales following him.

## Conclusion

Let's go back to the questions I posted at the beginning. We can see here what each word we write is valued at. 

> **How much are our words worth in Steemit?**

Based on the table in the previous section, the highest value that each word is worth is **$0.093** and the tag that it's valued at that is #minnowbooster.

This value can be used to compare with the values on freelance writing sites. Just a quick google gave me between [$0.10 and $1](https://www.clearvoice.com/how-much-to-pay-a-freelance-writer/)  per word. And [$1.50-$5](http://www.scottcarney.com/2015/01/feature-story-market-cap-writer-wants-think/)  for those who are in the top tier of journalism.

> **Are these values (payouts) accurate in determining value to our words?**

You be the judge. But one thing that comes to mind is something I read or heard here in Steemit, I just forgot where - **Steemit is not a blogging site, it's for artists.**

> **Do we let these values determine the value of our words?**

Again, I let you be the one to judge that.

> **Or are the determinant of this values lie outside of Steemit?**

This is something I was not able to clearly find an answer here. But I believe in what @surpassigngoogle said to me in discord:
> much value is created in the background and rewarded on the outside. the chats is part of the community. 


***

***I am part of a Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #bisteemit. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you...***

You can find #bisteemit on discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/JN7Yv7j

## Credits

Data retrieved from steemsql by @arcange.

Custom footer by @bearone in partnership with @steemph and @deveerei.

<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZGnTyrW2uE8ap6dMSAUPbAg9N1XivD9An3ZfVK5yKmZf/eastmaeL.png)</center>

Image Sources: [[1]](https://www.pexels.com/photo/text-on-shelf-256417/)