In the post [a quick look at @null, and the profitability of promoted posts](https://steemit.com/stats/@furion/a-quick-look-at-null-and-the-profitability-of-promoted-posts) by @furion, after analysing the last ten days of data (01-09-2016 to 10-09-2016), he makes the following conclusion about promoted content:

>If we look at all the posts that have been promoted, we can see that in general, they have been very profitable so far.

Sadly this is a mistake. Analysing all promoted posts show that **most are not profitable**. Most promoted posts **failed to earn more than the cost of promoting them**.

# Results

Only **36.78%** of the posts that were promoted ended up being profitable. Out of **764** posts that were promoted only **281** were profitable; **483** were not.

<center><img src="http://steemit.bitcalm.mm.st/posts/prom_post/pie2.png"></center>

<center><strong>Users are paying too much for promoting their posts.</strong></center>

This is what I would expect. I've seen a lot of posts on the promoted pages with a low reward and relatively high promotion cost.

It's a new feature and the cost of promotion hasn't found a balance. Over time a good value for post promotion will be found and more posts will become profitable.

# Method

I gathered all transfers to the @null account and parsed out the permlink from the `memo` field. I then gathered the post content and compared its `promoted` value (the amount spent on promotion) with its `total_payout_value`(the amount earned).

I did this only for the following posts:

* That have a `promoted` value greater than zero
* That have had their first payout

It's possible that a post may become profitable after the first payout; however, since there's not enough promoted post data, I have to stick to the first payout. Since posts are removed from the promoted feed after the first payout, I think it's more indicative of the promoted feature. Moreover, my feeling is that posts seldom do better on their second payout.

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