I’ve always resisted buying votes or promoting my posts.  I guess I felt like somehow if my work was good enough it would attract votes organically and paying for votes felt kind of sleazy.  I’ve also had a lot of fun voting for other people and resisted lending my steem power out.

I’ve put a lot of personal effort into my posting and would like to do things that build the community as best I can.  I’ve also purchased steem (and sold some too).

I’m always considering what would be the most beneficial way to help myself and this community grow.  I would like to make a good return on the effort spent on blogging and it is hard to find an audience without any type of promotion.

<div>
<p><a href="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma5xtZwq13m5hrg2UpR3GjGQXPHG3naw1dBL3NqnJ7Vzq/crystalLightRefraction.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener"><img src="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma5xtZwq13m5hrg2UpR3GjGQXPHG3naw1dBL3NqnJ7Vzq/crystalLightRefraction.jpg" alt=" crystalLightRefracting.jpg"></a><br>
<em>More light splashing (or refracting) – click for viewing full screen</em></p>
</div>

It is difficult for any writer, photographer or artist to get anywhere without some type of promotion.  Just putting a book up someplace will not make sales without some type of marketing.  No one is going to pay the same amount for a painting in a farmers market that they would for the same quality of painting hung in a high class art gallery.  (Perhaps they should, but that could be a long debatable philosophical discussion)

Most of the pay for votes services here were not too attractive to me because they didn’t focus on the content or focused on it in a way that I didn’t understand well or couldn’t find benefit from.

My own ability to find quality content is admittedly somewhat limited by my habit of voting for people who vote for me.  Plus I don’t always make the best choices in what to vote up.

Considering all these factors and more I decided to start loaning out some of my steem power to groups that I felt were beneficial.  I’ve delegated steem power to @trufflepig and @steem-ua.  I’m seriously considering delegating steem power to @qurator.

I just joined @qurator with the 4 steem entry fee to kind of test things out.  So far I’ve been impressed.  

<center>[<img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmSSjgs1swFwv64uXRVpB9DAtzSnDv2Eeqr3CnPAup4WVV/Banner.png">](https://steemit.com/qurator/@qurator/qurator-3-0-update-post-guidelines-or-registration-details-or-tier-changes)</center>

## Weku Qurator
There even seems to be some activity on Weku for @qurator but I have yet to receive any votes from them.  You are supposed to add the #qurator tag to your post and things are all done manually at this time from my understanding.

My guess is that since my account name at Weku is @litesplasher they don’t realize that I have a paid Steemit membership.  My Steemit login name, logo and one of my posts was taken on Weku.  You can read more about it here: [Hello Weku](https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@litesplasher/hello-weku)

The person who is impersonating me on Weku has basically no original content, has barely posted anything except my work and has more followers on Weku than I do.  I think this brings up an important point about why we need to reward beneficial content.  

## Beneficial content

It is always subjective what high quality or good content is.  If we are just after quality content what can happen is that things that are of high quality such as professional photography or epic poetry from old authors can be taken and posted as original material in hope of a good payout.  I don’t think this has a very good result in most cases.  At least on Steemit there are some really good ways plagiarized materials are discouraged.  Plus without a reputation that has been built with a lot of effort the payout of even high quality content is often low around here.

Sometimes beginning bloggers get discouraged when they work for a long time on a post but it does not reward them much.  Perhaps it is difficult to see other posts with a very low amount of effort be paid out more.  It is also very difficult to really know how much effort did go into something.  Sometimes it take a lot of practice to know how to get good results, yet the time spent actually doing something might not be very long.

Some of the vote buying systems reward posts of any quality level so long as the person buying the vote pays for it.  I don’t view this as too beneficial.

I feel that actions that are beneficial to the system as a whole should be rewarded.  This has a lot to do with quality posts but not everything.  To be inclusive of everyone at any skill level I think we need to add some human judgment into the loop.  I think it counts for a lot if someone is making some progress, and putting out some effort that is supportive.

Sadly, just being inclusive to everyone might not be the best ticket to long term lasting success for a cryptocurrency.  At least in this point of the game, giving out a bunch of free coins too quickly to a lot of people tends to tank any coins market.  Lots of people just dump the coins on the market especially if they think there are a lot of them and not much effort was needed to get them.  What you really need is to build up some core support and investors who are willing to hold the coins for more long term.

One of the worst things to happen to any cryptocurrency imho is to have the primary holder(s) of the coin get their coins from stealing them from the rest of the community or through other unethical actions.  You don’t think that one persons actions can make a big difference but they can.

As with anything, there is a certain amount of wiggle room in what is beneficial and what is not.  I do think that the way @qurator is structured can help tip the scales towards encouraging and retaining beneficial content developers and certain standards.  But please do let me know - what do you think?

If you do decide to try qurator and sign up I would appreciate it if you added my name as a referral by adding: referred by @lightsplasher in the memo. Thanks in advance if you do.  They provide a lot of detailed information on how the program works, if you are more interested you could start by looking at [The Daily Qurator #389](https://steemit.com/qurator/@qurator/the-daily-qurator-389).  I was really happy to see one of my posts featured there.


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Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments.  The pictures were taken by me with my Galaxy S9+.  Text and graphics copyright 10/11/2018 Lightsplasher & Litesplasher.