I have made an analysis of the promoted content and how much return people make on their investments there. I have gone over almost all the promoted content yesterday, and recorded the following information:
profit of the article at that time
number of followers of the author at that time
money spent on boosting the content
And then after 1 day has passed, I checked them again, I've recorded the following:
profit of the article now
number of followers of the author now
I have a sample size of 45 articles, but I've only looked at minnows posts, people with less than 70 followers, since popular people with 100+ followers get huge profits anyway so that would distort our analysis.
So I was curious how much profit can a minnow make, how much return in investment, and how effective is the promoted content. The posts recorded, were pretty random, and some of them were good quality, some of them were bad, so I was not biased in the content quality.
I got the following results:
| SBD OLD | SBD BOOST | OLD FOLLOWERS | NEW SBD | NEW FOLLOWERS | MONEY DIFFERENCE | PROFIT | FOLLOWER DIFFERENCE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 107.06 | 98.17 | 10 | 115.05 | 10 | $7.99 | -$90.18 | 0 |
| 25.99 | 31.02 | 13 | 26.86 | 13 | $0.87 | -$30.15 | 0 |
| 0.5 | 30 | 3 | 0.55 | 4 | $0.05 | -$29.95 | 1 |
| 0.5 | 30 | 15 | 1.8 | 15 | $1.30 | -$28.70 | 0 |
| 98.22 | 27 | 23 | 102.43 | 24 | $4.21 | -$22.79 | 1 |
| 1.41 | 21 | 36 | 1.31 | 36 | -$0.10 | -$21.10 | 0 |
| 0.02 | 21 | 18 | 0.06 | 19 | $0.04 | -$20.96 | 1 |
| 4.35 | 20 | 60 | 4.49 | 60 | $0.14 | -$19.86 | 0 |
| 0.5 | 13 | 4 | 1.59 | 5 | $1.09 | -$11.91 | 1 |
| 3.47 | 12 | 52 | 3.56 | 56 | $0.09 | -$11.91 | 4 |
| 2.82 | 10.38 | 12 | 2.65 | 14 | -$0.17 | -$10.55 | 2 |
| 18.51 | 10 | 59 | 18.58 | 63 | $0.07 | -$9.93 | 4 |
| 96 | 10 | 43 | $90.60 | 43 | -$5.40 | -$15.40 | 0 |
| 0 | 10 | 5 | $0.00 | 5 | $0.00 | -$10.00 | 0 |
| 0.37 | 10 | 24 | $0.92 | 27 | $0.55 | -$9.45 | 3 |
| 0.01 | 10 | 32 | $0.01 | 32 | $0.00 | -$10.00 | 0 |
| 0.03 | 9 | 23 | $0.03 | 22 | $0.00 | -$9.00 | -1 |
| 0.01 | 8.04 | 30 | $0.00 | 30 | -$0.01 | -$8.05 | 0 |
| 0.66 | 8 | 68 | $0.83 | 71 | $0.17 | -$7.83 | 3 |
| 0.18 | 7.38 | 17 | $38.43 | 18 | $38.25 | $30.87 | 1 |
| 0 | 7.01 | 33 | $0.17 | 33 | $0.17 | -$6.84 | 0 |
| 34.13 | 6.73 | 46 | $37.70 | 51 | $3.57 | -$3.16 | 5 |
| 0.04 | 6.66 | 38 | $0.06 | 39 | $0.02 | -$6.64 | 1 |
| 4.83 | 6 | 53 | $4.48 | 55 | -$0.35 | -$6.35 | 2 |
| 0.06 | 5.02 | 62 | $0.06 | 63 | $0.00 | -$5.02 | 1 |
| 11.54 | 5 | 67 | $11.88 | 67 | $0.34 | -$4.66 | 0 |
| 0.01 | 5 | 35 | $0.00 | 37 | -$0.01 | -$5.01 | 2 |
| 0.76 | 5 | 59 | $0.84 | 63 | $0.08 | -$4.92 | 4 |
| 0.03 | 5 | 59 | $0.03 | 60 | $0.00 | -$5.00 | 1 |
| 0.1 | 5 | 68 | $0.12 | 69 | $0.02 | -$4.98 | 1 |
| 0.96 | 4.04 | 42 | $1.01 | 46 | $0.05 | -$3.99 | 4 |
| 0.05 | 4 | 46 | 0.05 | 46 | $0.00 | -$4.00 | 0 |
| 0.08 | 4 | 46 | $0.08 | 47 | $0.00 | -$4.00 | 1 |
| 0 | 3.5 | 9 | $0.00 | 10 | $0.00 | -$3.50 | 1 |
| 4.58 | 3 | 7 | $4.88 | 7 | $0.30 | -$2.70 | 0 |
| 0.04 | 3 | 8 | $0.04 | 8 | $0.00 | -$3.00 | 0 |
| 0.04 | 3 | 51 | $0.03 | 55 | -$0.01 | -$3.01 | 4 |
| 1.89 | 3 | 26 | $2.01 | 30 | $0.12 | -$2.88 | 4 |
| 0.07 | 2.3 | 47 | $0.07 | 47 | $0.00 | -$2.30 | 0 |
| 0.46 | 2 | 43 | $0.45 | 44 | -$0.01 | -$2.01 | 1 |
| 0.1 | 2 | 36 | $0.14 | 40 | $0.04 | -$1.96 | 4 |
| 6.64 | 2 | 25 | $6.24 | 25 | -$0.40 | -$2.40 | 0 |
| 0.04 | 1.86 | 51 | $57.02 | 56 | $56.98 | $55.12 | 5 |
| 45.42 | 1.83 | 58 | $46.46 | 58 | $1.04 | -$0.79 | 0 |
| 0.14 | 1.59 | 2 | $0.32 | 3 | $0.18 | -$1.41 | 1 |
Then let's see the results:
| . | MONEY DIFFERENCE | PROFIT | FOLLOWER DIFFERENCE |
|---|---|---|---|
| AVERAGE | 2.4727 | -8.4947 | 1.3778 |
| MEDIAN | 0.0400 | -5.0200 | 1.0000 |
The results are very very bad, newbies have all lost money on average, and they barely made any new followers. Now in this analysis it's better to look at the median values since the first elements cause data spikes and skew the data.
But regardless, newbies are doing pretty bad, and there were some good quality stuff there too. And considering that most data points consist of low SBD boost investments, they still could not make money.
This doesn't mean that if you invest 100-200 SBD in promotion you will get money either, I haven't analyzed those posts, but I bet they lost money too.
Promoted content in it's current form, doesn't boost our chances for our content to go viral. So either the system gets redesigned, or more whales and sharks will have to vote there, otherwise it is a failure.
Disclaimer: The information provided on this page might be incorrect. I am not responsible if you lose money from the information you've read on this page! This is not an investment advice, just my opinion and analysis.