I just figured out that I've been whitelisted by Minnowbooster. Whitelist feature is Minnowbooster's answer to combat vote buying abuse. Most bots simply use a Blacklist and just call it a day. I've seen some people like @themarkymark putting some serious effort into blacklisting. But even with the most perfect and efficient blacklist, that's still just half the story. We need to get the incentives right. There is a wide spectrum between not deserving a blacklist entry and being an amazing content creator.
2 Solutions
@smartsteem and @minnowbooster are the only major services I know of that attempt to make things easier for those who create better quality content. They have 2 different methods with pros and cons. @smartsteem locks most of its votes behind a star system. Vote sellers can choose to sell their votes only if the buyer has a certain minimum amount of stars. i love the flexibility of this system. You don't have to be "Great". Even making consistency valuable posts can earn you 1 star and unlock more votes for yourself.
@minnowbooster has a community whitelist and they only have 1 tier. You are either approved or rejected. This can very well leave the mid-tier content creators in the dust as most of the big votes are not available unless you are whitelisted.
Benefits of @minnowbooster Whitelist
1) Your profitability improves. Whitelist users get bigger upvotes for the same payment.
2) Higher availability of votes.
3) The daily limit on the amount of SBD you can send is doubled.
How To Get Approved
It's a community Whitelist. So you have to get invited by someone who is already a part of the Whitelist. Then you need 5 approval votes from other Whitelist users. If you get reject votes, you need to have 2 more approvals to negate the effect of the reject vote. 5 reject votes and you are out. Even if you do get the approval votes, then you have to get approved by an admin. It's bit of a tedious process. But it never hurts to try.
It's Gamified
You have 2 invitations which can be used to invite amazing Steem content producers.
You also have 5 votes in which you can use to approve or reject whitelist candidates.
To be accepted a person must be invited, receive 5 votes and be approved by an admin.
Keep in mind that your votes matter and voting correctly will result in bonus money and additional votes!
I've got votes and invites and I'm going to ask you to suggest great people to add to the list. You can suggest yourself. But don't ask for an invite if you are not going to use he service. It took me many weeks of waiting before getting finally approved. So allow those who intend to buy votes to get invited.
@minnowbooster community is strict on quality. So you'll need to have some seriously quality posts authored by you on your blog. If you think the description fits you and if you are not Whitelisted, please ask for an invite in the comments. I'll check your blogs and invite giving priority to those who I think would have the easiest time getting approved.