It’s been a few months since I ran this contest. Let's be honest, I've only run it twice. I took a break for several reasons, but it's always been on the agenda to come back. I'll just give a bit of background as to what started it and why I'm doing it again now.
When I first started on Steem I landed in interesting times. They weren't the times where you could earn thousands with the right curation, that was well and truly over, but curie and blocktrades votes were getting posts up to and sometimes over the $100 mark. Then we had a glitch where SBD shot up in value and because it’s default exchanged one to one with post value, converting it at the market tripled the amount of Steem you could buy and I hit 500 SP in no time. The value of Steem and SBD fluctuated at high levels for a while and my upvote was doing great at supporting new accounts and rewarding interaction.
I was positive and excited to be able to grow my account while supporting newcomers to grow their's. Then the price of Steem just kept dropping. My support felt like it was getting more and more pathetic no matter how much my SP grew and I felt like I couldn't do much to help others. @abh12345 suggested that as small accounts we should look up. If we do so much to help others that we don't build our own accounts, then we'll never be in a position to help others. Shortly after this I came across @tcpolymath (Tim) and his @themesopotamians project, which I was accepted into. It was a project to make dolphins and as we graduated through the ranks we were asked to do a project of our own to help others, in order to upgrade. The accounts couldn't give huge upvotes, but the coming together of such positive people and goals helped to motivate me to keep trying. My upgrade project was the “For the Love of Comments” contest. This was in part inspired by @mattclarke, who is a great supporter of interaction. Without the interaction why would we bother to be here?
Shortly after my first winner was selected HF20 hit us. It hit the small accounts the hardest and this is a blow that Tim really took hard. It undermined what he was doing and he has scaled everything back. We still get support from him, but the project is no longer growing like it once was. It knocked the stuffing out of a lot of steemians and my feed has never quite been as active since. Then Steem just kept dropping and my upvote value with it. At 1000 SP and climbing I was barely making a non dust vote at 100%.
I decided to take a break from the contests for a bit and keep building my own account, but I still can't help trying to encourage and support others.
Another little project I started experimenting with just before HF20 was seeing if I, as a minnow, could do anything to help support a redfish. @nonsowrites agreed to be my guinea pig, thank you Nonso. He had worked really hard and now has a couple of big delegations. I can't claim to have had any influence in that, he earned it, and I could never really help him with big upvotes, but I hope my continued support helped keep him going along with a few others who kept him motivated. So can a minnow help to support other accounts? I think so, but maybe Nonso is the best one to answer that question.
I've decided that now is a good time to offer another delegation up. A couple of things have motivated me. One is @steevc's 10k minnows push. He's getting us brainstorming ways to help get more people up to minnow status and keep them there. The post and all the comments are worth a read because there are lots of ideas for redfish to help themselves.
The other thing that has put me in a position where I feel I can spare a bit of SP is getting awarded a delegation from mattclarke for participation in a tag he is promoting. If you like The Simpsons it's worth a look and considering participating. The chance to snag a delegation which will last the rest of the year is still available.
Continuing along the lines of small users helping themselves, @contestkings is a useful resource. They publish a list of verified contests daily. So it's worth checking in to see what’s up for grabs each day.
and now for your chance to win a delegation for a month
So now that I've finished boring you all to death with my Steem life story, I'll tell you how to win a 100 SP delegation. Keeping it along the theme of 10k minnows, I'd like the delegation to go to someone with less than 500 SP. So leave me a comment telling me why you want to become a minnow or nominate a redfish you think should be a minnow and why. I will also be giving out dustsweeper prizes to entries I like and I usually like all entries. ;D
Update: @mattclarke has, once again, generously offered to match my delegation. So the winner will get 200 SP