Something I see a lot of on Steemit at the moment are posts where the writer is offering to provide a service for a price.

![03.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmNimMBnJkcaWxp9bWMA3juVV5MUiX1pRZiJPvxxvuaobm/03.jpg)

The most common are for Upvotes and Post resteems. Now - as a blogger myself, I am very curious about whether or not there are any real benefits to these kind of services. What you need to factor in are these points:

*How much the service costs (0.01SDB and upwards to 1SDB)
* How many followers the service provider has.
* The value of the service providers vote (and what percentage)
* Cost vs Reward.

Are you actually going to make money from the post, even if it is resteemed to (say 8k) readers. Does that mean to say that any of them will vote? Are they genuine accounts or perhaps bots?

There lies the rub. There is a lot of genuine people on Steemit. But for every one of them, there are likely four that are fake. You could well be pouring your hard earned Steem down the toilet as it were. Someone IS going to benefit but it certainly won't be you. 

Just remember - with cryptocurrencies comes anonymity - there are no legal rules or regulations to help you. Once you've sent those SDB's across, you're completely at the mercy of the service provider. Who's to say they won't downvote your posts rather than upvote - and who is to say that their resteems are worth anything at all?

It's all about doing your research. Taking your time to read and then double check who you've decided to trust. Look at their posts and read as many comments as you can. Any provider who is doing what they say they do will doubtless have many positive reviews -  a good sign. The instant you read more than two negative posts - move on - run as fast as you can.

Recently, I decided to have a go myself. I wanted someone to 'Resteem' one of my posts. I was interested to see whether or not they do as the service suggests. For 0.5SDB, they will resteem a post to 8k followers. Intrigued, I went ahead and paid for the service. I'd read good things about these people. Nothing could go wrong. ..

Guess what. Nothing happened. I waited. And waited. The next day.. I waited. Nothing. I checked again later that day - again nothing. Now I was getting the gut feeling that something isn't right. I decided to dig a little. My fears were confirmed. Other steemians had begun to complain that their posts were not getting resteemed. I sat here reading one comment after the next. All negative. Exactly the same situation as me.

I won't name and shame on this post but I'm sure you smart people know where to look!

So there you have it. BE AWARE of what you do - who to trust and ABOVE ALL - never click a link you're not sure about. NEVER enter in your secure KEYS.

In the end it boils down to this. Do you really need to pay for these services or should you take the time to work harder on your posts and reap all the benefits without paying someone to do it for you - or indeed - rip you off.

Again - I must stress - there ARE genuine people on Steemit who can help you in the ways you want. It's all about awareness and keeping an eye on what people are saying about them. At the end of the day, it's entirely up to you what you do and who you choose - but safety is the name of the game and this post is designed to look out for you all.

Be safe and have fun on steemit.

Feel free to follow me:

Steemit - @l5taylor
Twitter -  @l5taylor