Every month I produce a Post benchmarking report with the aims of:

•	Aiding the Steemit Community with a place to benchmark their posts and growth

•	Create a report that can be used for comparisons in other periods

•	To track my personal targets and record achievements

Over the last few months I have added new data to this report, including comparisons to the same period last year, top earn authors and authors with the highest number of votes.

If you missed last months full report you can read it here:
https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@paulag/february-2018-steemit-post-benchmarking-report-blockchain-business-intelligence

## Financial Performance
### March ’17 Report

 ![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/7f0449908ba311a81e8d38cf2fb8e6df5b7cimage.png)

### Feb ’18 Report

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/087608c496a8f50e32676b3318a900ab0d72image.png)
 

### March ’18 Report

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/8c19b1fcebf834e46ceb58e502b7108d6f85image.png)

 
In March ’18 the % of posts with No payout was 13% up from 10.8% in Feb.  Although in March ’17 this was 24.6%.

The % of posts with a payout of <$1 is up to 69.29% from 68.37% in Feb.  The number of posts that earned over $500 reduced from 41 in Feb to 13 in March.

The average post payout value in March ’18 was$1.76 SBD down from $2.56 SBD in Feb and $3.81 SBD in Jan.  If we exclude posts with no payout the average post payout increases to $2.03 SBD.  In Feb the average post payout excluding post with no payout was $2.87 SBD.  In March ’17 these values were $2.62 SBD and $3.48 SBD.

The number of posts reduced from Feb 18 to March 18 by 10%, although the payout value reduced by 38% for the same period.

However from March ’17 to March ’18 the number of posts increased by 2472% and the total payout value by 1627%

### My Stats

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/8c1b98963639dcacdb9a4e82b20eb9467fdfimage.png)

 
With 9 more post in March than I had in Feb, my total post payout is down 33%.  It was also down 33% from Jan to Feb.  This month I had 55% of posts in the payout range of $2 SBD to $10 SBD.  As mentioned before I was expecting to see this as I have been trying some new types of content on Steemit.  My posts however still earn on average $20 which is considerably higher than the average post on Steemit.

### Top Authors based on payouts

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/93ea31964a34a55f03b4ad3c95e29f0694fbimage.png)
 
From this report we can see that many of the top earns from last month are still on the list.  However the top earner is down 56% and the second highest earner is down 37%.

### Top Category’s

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/4bd03663c892ffbc2df5522b8299247b166aimage.png)

 
The top 2 categories remain the same as last month and there is some movement between the remaining categories.

## Comments

### March ‘17
 
![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/3bddce5726516667c33c333f60c85f7463a8image.png)

### Feb ‘18

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/cee12d8d9511abc5fc8a2a1bbe33780e4e52image.png)

 
### March ‘18

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/85f5c49a3e2d579ad3147312499b3db1deefimage.png)

 
The % of posts with no comments remained consistent with Feb at under 45%.  More or less Feb and March % for comments remain consistent.

From March ’17 to March ’18 the % of posts that received no comments increased from 39% to 44%.

### My Stats

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/c32893f02dc6e7998212f032f0b8d20097a1image.png)

Last month 88% of my post received 11+ comments, this has dropped to 51%.  Again I am not surprised as I mentioned above that some of my content for March was different to what I normally post.  However I am a little disappointed with the engagement levels and intend on reviewing some of the posts to see how I can improve this.

## Votes

### March ‘17
 
![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/76d95eeaaf20fdf7968eb7d7969066b9f090image.png)

### Feb ‘18

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/b8dc47b6db230ce06851383c8d7e741cb3b4image.png)
 

### March ‘18

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/fc8f13567b73ccbe4dded6a35c2d708bb3fbimage.png)
 
The % of posts with 0 net votes has increased from 6.7% in Feb to 7.6% in March however this was only 0.44% in March ‘17.  

The average number of votes per post in March ‘18 was 15.23 up from 12.75 in Feb 18.

### My Stats

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/ee36d6873dbfed65a6a4391852aac8d5b23dimage.png)
 
Awesome 100% of my posts received 51+ votes without the use of voting bots.  Go girl.  Could not be happier.  

## Other Data

![image.png](https://cdn.utopian.io/posts/3ab7b740412a275da5f137bd994fd842ba63image.png)
 
The line chart above represents the number of new posts per day in March 19 and the bar chart below that shows the peak posting hours.

March saw a general downwards trend in the number of posts made per day.

 ## Conclusion

As the price of STEEM and SBD continued to fall in March, this has had a direct impact in the worth of a vote and so the financial performance of posts.

I did find it very interesting that the average number of posts per day fell in March although we have a very high month with new accounts registering. The average number of posts per day also feel in Feb.  I wonder if this is directly related to the price of STEEM and SBD as people are not earning the same, although I posted more myself!

 If you missed the report on new users for March you can check it out here

I would also like to mention the rise of Dlive now positioned in the top three tags in terms of gross post payout.

With regards to my own data, happy to see the average number of votes per post is up, but at the same time I am a little concerned as the level of engagement by way of comments is down.  That could indicate more people vote for my content with some sort of auto vote and are not actually reading it.  I think improving the engagement is where I need to put some effort in for the month of April and hope to improve on the comments stats. 

So how did your posts preform in March ’18  ? - Please do comment below and let me know.

## The Datasource and Query

As always I have connected to Steemsql managed by @arcange using Power BI and the query is used
for 2018 data was

``` language
 SELECT
     author,
    category,
     created,
     children,
     total_payout_value,
     net_votes,
     pending_payout_value
     FROM 
     Comments (NOLOCK)
      where created >= CONVERT(DATE,'2018-03-01')
     and created< CONVERT(DATE,'2018-04-01')
    and depth = 0
```


And 2017 query was



``` language
SELECT
    author,
    category,
    created,
    children,
    total_payout_value,
    net_votes,
    pending_payout_value
     FROM 
    Comments (NOLOCK)
    where created >= CONVERT(DATE,'2017-03-01')
     and created< CONVERT(DATE,'2017-04-01')
    and depth = 0
```

I am part of a Blockchain Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #blockchainbi. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #blockchainbi team and we will do our best to help you...

You can find #blockchainbi on discord https://discordapp.com/invite/JN7Yv7j


<br /><hr/><em>Posted on <a href="https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@paulag/march-steemit-post-benchmarking-report-blockchain-business-intelligence">Utopian.io -  Rewarding Open Source Contributors</a></em><hr/>