# What is Shadow Rank?
Shadow Rank is directly how much of the available Steem Power the entire Shadow Pool will dedicate to each of your Posts in Up Votes. This is the same as looking at the Up Vote slider on Steemit (if you have enough Steem Power to access this feature). 20% Shadow Rank means your Posts will receive 20% Steemit Voting Power (0.4% VP) from each Shadow Caster (member of ShadowBot).

# What factors effect my Shadow Rank?
There are numerous factors that effect your Shadow Rank. I will outline below the top 5 most critical aspects:

1) The amount of Votes you allow ShadowBot to cast for your account vs the number of Posts you Author is the primary thing you can do without spending more money to gain Shadow Rank. ShadowBot uses Shadow Rank to reward those who contribute more voting than posts. This is why you can easily earn more with less than 7 REALLY GOOD posts per week with ShadowBot than a spammer looking to make 10 posts per day! ShadowRank is our anti-abuse mechanism that ensures only good authors and Shadow Casters get the power we control!

2) How much Steem Power you have powered up (or designated to you). ShadowBot obviously rewards those who have a high percentage of the Pool's Steem Power provided they do not abuse resources (see 1). A good Shadow Caster that obeys the first guideline with a high percentage of the total Steem Power ShadowBot controls will earn a higher Shadow Rank. This directly benefits those who choose to 100% Power Up their posts instead of cashing out as those with more Steem Power each day are favored over those that have the same or less than previous days.

3) Powering Up. This is a big bonus you get from ShadowBot. Everytime you take 100% of your rewards OR deposit and power up your Steem Power, your Shadow Rank is directly benefited. This goes directly back to point 2 where your Steem Power matters. ShadowBot looks for members who contribute to the Steemit community and are long term investors, NOT those looking to quickly spam and make out! Those who over time increase their dedicates Steem Power will see a great long term increase in their Shadow Rank!

4) How Shadow Rank decreases?
There are many things you can do that lead to your Shadow Rank decreasing as well as a few that are out of your hands.

Things you can control are the first 3 above. The things you can't control are as the pool grows there will come a time (around 5,000 active members) where there won't be enough votes to go around without lowering some. At this point the pool would have over 500,000SP and earn a very nice amount each week. It would require to grow farther that at scale we earn less per post through our Shadow Ranks all going down to make room for the new members. This however would benefit us all as earning 50% of 2,000,000 is much better than earning 75% of 500,000!

5) How well your posts over the past 30 days have performed. If you have earned more than you contribute, you will see a big boost in your Shadow Rank as you are deemed a good author.

# Summary
If you want to be a good Shadow Caster it is simple. Limit your voting to less than 7 times per week (at 100% power) to allow the majority of your Voting Power to be utilized by ShadowBot. Author good posts and keep them to under 10 per week to ensure you do not "drown" the Shadow Queue "Pool" in posts that do not earn well. And tell others! The best way we can all earn more with ShadowBot is by growing!