This analysis was inspired by a comment from precise in this contribution. It is an analysis about the trends and distribution of account creation activities. Below is what the comment said leading to this analysis.
Well done for this great analysis sir steemitph. Very impressive and quite comprehensive.
Here's my 2 cents:
I strongly think that this is just half of the equation. Account creation in STEEM is akin to acquiring farm lands but not being able to maximized it's potential because no one is farming it. A farmland could be seen as a potential investment but farming is a different story. One needs to exert substantial effort, time and initiative to reap the fruits of the farm. Going back to STEEM, "the farm" was oversold, most of the people who bought the lands never realized first hand that they have to do some form of farming.
In relation to my first point, if i could suggest, the above analysis would be improved (i think) if we look at the trend on how the accounts were utilized. The activities over time and the value of each accounts over time.
Delimitation
In this analysis I am using data available in arcange's Steem SQL Public Database. This is my first contribution where I used more than one table. I used the Accounts table to obtain data related to account creation date, reputation, and Steem Power; and the TxTransfers table to get the SBD spent to pay for upvotes.
For the analysis to have personal meaning, I limited the data used to accounts created on the 17th of July, 2017 when my own account was also made.
This analysis is quantitative in nature and will not look at the quality of posts or comments, it will also not account for other factors like offline activities that may have an impact in rise of reputation.
Methodology
I ran this SQL query to get the data:
SELECT *
FROM Accounts (NOLOCK)
WHERE created = CONVERT(datetime,'7/17/2017')
To get the SBD spent by the top 3 highest reputation score to pay for upvotes, I used this query:
SELECT *
FROM TxTransfers (NOLOCK)
WHERE [FROM] in ('steemitph', 'tradewonk', 'hamzayousaf')
AND amount_symbol in ('SBD')
I worked with the data in excel to capture the ones that began with https:// via the =RIGHT(text, [num_chars]) command.
I plotted the data-points in an excel spreadsheet to make the charts.
The Analysis
The chart above will show that on the 17th of July there were 2941 accounts created, 47% of which had no posting activity. Only 64 (2.2%) were active enough to have at least 1000 post+comments. The chart shows a direct and strong correlation between the posting activity and rise in reputation. Some may say that there was no need for an analysis to know this, and they'll be right to say so. This is why I am not ending this contribution with just this.
In the below chart I zoomed in to the Top 20 users with the highest reputation. I did a similar combination chart showing the reputation against the posting activity of each user. I changed the color of the bar for my own account to highlight it. Here it can be seen that while tradewonk had significantly higher number of posts (6 times as many as my posts), his reputation isn't necessarily so far from mine. In fact, while tradewonk had 4 times as many posts than hamazyousaf, reputation-wise hamazyousaf was still able to surpass tradewonk.
Another data point I looked at is the Steem Power holding of the users in the Top 20 reputation. This shows that tradewonk is in control of dolphin level Steem Power, after tradewonk, my 3000+ Steem Power holding is next. I have always thought that holding bigger Steem Power helps in ones ability to either engage more or be appreciated more. Both of which invite people to return the favor leading to more upvotes, then resulting to rise in ones reputation.
Here is a table showing count of posts, reputation and Steem Power holding of the Top 20.
| User | Rank | Count of Post | Reputation | Steem Power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hamzayousaf | 1 | 2174 | 14155250530580 | 835 |
| tradewonk | 2 | 6996 | 12825104454773 | 26410 |
| steemitph | 3 | 1310 | 12233640904750 | 3337 |
| charlesx | 4 | 798 | 10980393105536 | 745 |
| techtek | 5 | 974 | 10877251049145 | 822 |
| nandan | 6 | 311 | 8754583484328 | 517 |
| moromaro | 7 | 1631 | 7492537025756 | 2606 |
| design-guy | 8 | 414 | 6991485461015 | 412 |
| otage | 9 | 2994 | 6770018388078 | 1295 |
| yellowboy1010 | 10 | 779 | 6504893371623 | 678 |
| tanyaschutte | 11 | 707 | 6428205179629 | 271 |
| popovicsjodie | 12 | 464 | 6051462632116 | 393 |
| coldsteem | 13 | 2388 | 5883949368472 | 757 |
| sunisa | 14 | 3008 | 5856769567671 | 429 |
| yasu24 | 15 | 1526 | 5765032396360 | 671 |
| agsttne | 16 | 192 | 4909022608927 | 354 |
| jsock | 17 | 966 | 4388468933464 | 298 |
| kanokwan | 18 | 1612 | 4117830765677 | 316 |
| masummim50 | 19 | 1161 | 4009109596860 | 317 |
| exhige | 20 | 807 | 3702706595446 | 246 |
In my earlier days in Steemit, I tried using some upvote for fee services. I looked at this data as well to highlight the amount of Steem Dollars spent by the Top 3 users with the highest reputation.
This chart shows that between the three users, 2375 SBD (now valued at $26,125) were spent to pay for upvote for fee services. 75% of the spend was from hamzayousaf. The user spent a total of 1,749 SBD which if he saved would have added $19,000 value to his account. This is part of the reasons why hamzayousaf and tradewonk rose faster than most accounts created on the 17th of July.
Conclusion
Like what precise said in his comment, activities are just as important as investing in a platform like Steemit. Without activity, the growth of one's money will purely be based on price appreciation of Steem over time. Like in his analogy using a farmland, the farmland is likely to appreciate in price over time, but there are activities one can do to benefit more from the farmland.
There's got to be a good balance in effort and quality - it does not necessarily mean that posting four times as much will also be rewarded four times the amount of Steem/SBD.
Paying for upvote for fee services is really enticing for newer members of the community, but as what I pointed out here, saving the SBDs or using them to power up might be a better idea.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors