I'm convinced Steemit's "Promoted" section is an underappreciated feature right now. Here is my case for boosting your posts.
I've had mixed success with boosting posts, but overall, promoting posts has proven very beneficial to me. I've more than made my money back, and whenever I boost posts I always get a few a few extra followers. Out of curiosity today, I totted up the combined earnings and promo costs on the top 25 posts in the promoted section...
The combined earnings (so far) are 800 dollars, with promo costs of $450. If you adjust the earnings for actual author payout (around 80%) it's still 640 dollars. So, statistically if you boost a post by $45, on average your earning will likely be around $64, and that's before we've even factored in the quality of the post. Do you fancy those odds?
So it's a gamble..
Yes, a gamble with excellent odds. Like a roulette table with twice as many red as black numbers. Some people are promoting their posts very effectively. User @nspart currently has 5 promoted posts with $33.50 promotional costs and $218 earnings from those posts and counting ($174 adjusted for curators). Other people having decent success recently with post boosting are @intelliguy, @aggroed, and some guy called @condra.
And it's not just for people with big followings. User @gamma-rat currently has 71 followers. His first 3 posts weren't very successful, but when he boosted his fourth post (yes, his fourth ever post) 145 upvotes came in and the post is on course to earn 40 dollars. @martin.the.chef promoted a post for $3.50 and it's on 24 dollars now with 5 days left. @sensei's (superb) intro post is currently at $90 after just a $5.47 boost.
But what if I loose money?
That is indeed a risk, but even if your promo cost exceeds your earnings, you will likely gain some followers and give your name a bit of visibility which will help you in the long term. Remember the cumulative effect on Steemit is very powerful.
How can I improve my odds?
So we've already established that you have superb odds to begin with. Now if you only boost the posts you're confident about, and don't bother boosting the weaker posts, you've again improved your chances. And when to boost your post? As soon as you hit that POST button. Early momentum goes a long way. A new post getting more attention will get more attention because it's getting more attention! Finally, I would also recommend you boost to at least the top 25 position, whatever the cost. There's only so much scrolling anyone will do on the Promoted page. After about the top 25, earnings drop off fairly fast.
I hope this has been some food for thought. If you've made a really good post and want to give it the extra attention it deserves, for goodness sake, throw some money at it.
Happy boosting!
Photos from Pixabay.