So who hasn't read @yallapapi circle-jerking post, or another post where he shouts at us minnows saying, how bloody easy it is to get on the trending page. You basically just buy your way up, and get a following. He has done it multiple times and shows us again and again that he is alone up there in the trending page ( and of course the dude with the guitar).
Anyhow, if you are like me, you dint trust it, when people shout that it is that easy, and actually very cheap, it just feels like you are being scammed, all my alarm bells went off, and I just didn't believe it. But then again, he doesn't gain anything by tricking us. So is he right or is he wrong?
How much did it cost him to get on the trending page? How much did he pay the bots and the re-steemers?
Well it isn't a secret on the blockchain, and open for anybody to see, but I made it easy for you and put together how much @ yallapapi invested and made on his three digit posts.
I'm sure he doesn't mind me telling you guys, as he has been shouting at everybody to follow and told everybody the game already, just not the numbers, probably because it is tedious work, but i'm a sucker for numbers and excel.
I didn't do the calculations as punctual as an accountant, because I left out the fractals, so I could be a several steem of. If you are anal enough to go into the details, by all means correct me. I went through every line of his payments to bots and resteemers, even the refunds, and added it all up. I wont bore you with the 80 lined excel sheet
I left the numbers in SBD and Steem and did not convert it to dollars, as it doesn't make sense to me. In this blockchain, we try to make steem and sbd, and power up. Yeah, eventually you might want to pay yourself, but as a minnow, we first just want to get ahead. So no, I did not fool around with conversions from the time of entering or being paid out.
If you look at his first post that reached the trending page ( more important than you are) you can see it did cost him some money, I estimate 65 sbd, which is either a lot to you or not, but he is right that in "adds-land" its nothing.
He eventually rakes out about 10 articles and upvotes the sh*t out of them, and only three make a loss. The rest are all profitable, probably, also because he is creating a following and getting attention.
The total profit is quite ok ( look at the total, I estimate 360-400 steem), but as he mentioned, nothing to live of yet, but looking into the future of Steemit, he is creating a following ,and earning enough steem within a month to become at least a dolphin within a year.
My verdict:
@yallapapi is telling the truth and his facts are right.
BUT
You do have to have money to keep this up for days, and hope that no whale down votes you, out of sheer annoyance and takes it away.
Second, now the word is out, many people will start doing this, and the ROI on bots will drop, it will become, more expensive to promote yourself. You can already see the trending page starting to get the first people on it that want to game the system just like @yallapapi.
Also you need to be confident that people will vote for you and start following you.......... and that my friends still depends on good content.