I suggest to not focus on how much sats you get for a post.

You are still new on SN and your reputation is low. You have to work on that first. Reputation is built by posting a lot of good content.

Once you have a reputation you will have also more rewards. With just one zap of 20k your post will not get on top. But with 20zaps of 100sats will stay on top long time and get more rewards. Think about that.

But yes, there is a trend on SN that old stackers could zap more sats to new users that post something good as a welcome gesture.

Keep in mind that you arrived on SN just when a new contest started MSM and users tend to zap less amount now, keeping the sats for better posts at the end.

Remember: do not consider SN an assmilking cow... You will end bad. Consider it like a better reddit, where you pay sats to post.

I only zap a post that I feel is under appreciated. A post with 2k sats or more feels like its already well on its way to being on the front page so I don't feel like I need to zap it.

Value-for-value is just a meme unless it is enforced somehow. Zapping is just my way of making sure others get the same value I got.

Maybe one day it takes 20k sats to make it on the front page. In the early days of SN a 200 sat post was front-page material.

You're definitely onto something. I don't know precisely what the mechanism is, but I've also observed the 2000'ish threshold.

I think it has to do with catching the right people's attention and eliciting the higher zaps that some big rollers are willing to drop.

It's still a small community and there's a wide range of how each of us zaps stuff. It's almost an entropy type situation: there are many ways to get to 2k sats, but only a few ways to get much higher.

I haven't won many sats on SN yet, but I don't really care, I've received a zap of 7000 satoshis and many of 1 sat, they are all well received, I came here not knowing that I could earn even a sat and I just got hooked on the platform because of the amount of knowledge I started ingesting, that's the most important thing, I used to post on Reddit without getting a dime for it, so I was going to do the same thing on Stacker.news.

I am yet to recieve a 2000 sats post, so I think I am like ineligible to comment. Haha. However, I don't think of it too much. I zap everything I read, albeit my default zap is the minimum. This way, I save the mental tussle overthinking too much about zaps and being zapped.

I've enjoyed you writing. Please keep doing it. What you say hear feels like you are on to something. I feel it too. That said, I have had no idea which posts will get zaps. Some posts I have slaved over get very little while others that completely spontaneous get zapped hard. My goal is to just keep writing. Reading responses and bettering myself. The zaps are a good nudge to get me off my butt.

Keep doing the work and without much expectation is the way...Especially when you are still new, and many stackers still don't really "know" you.

also, I think the better mindset is you come here to learn and have fun, instead of focusing too much on the sats.

I am also new to this zapping and sats thing. The journey will be interesting, l will keep an eye on this post to look for inspiration.

TheWildHustle remembers receiving over 4k during a nostr zapathon

The wife received 100k sats cooking dinner on zap.stream…..

TheWildHustles reason for zapping changes on a post by post basis, but mainly signifies the value I see in the post.

Almost cracked 3k today

Stop bragging. Your success is limited.

Make sense and post something that has legitimate insight.

✨️Self-Reliance: Create your own content. Don’t rely on others. Your work ethic will lead to success. ✨️Tradition and Consistency: Maintain a strong presence with consistent branding. ✨️Free Market Principles: Use SEO to compete in the open market. Optimize your content to be discovered and win

Lucky you. My threshold is only 1000 sats haha.

I attribute the decrease in zaps to MSM. Prior to this mad month, my posts oscillated wildly between 3000 to 8000 sats. Now I look back at these posts with incredulity - how could they garner so many sats?

Another reason is that I shifted my focus from discussion posts to personal recounts. Previously I would start off a post with “What are your X?” or “Tell me your Y”. I think discussion posts are the way to go if you wanna be strategic about earning sats.

Good luck n have fun! What’s your position these days?

So I've been here a little longer than you, and the most I've ever gotten is in the mid-3K range. My posts generally land in the 1k-2k range (with some not even hitting that level). And looking at daily posts in general, it seems that's the case for a lot of good posts. I think it may be better to look at the initial post as an aberration -- the right time, perfect subject matter, the right people reading it, etc -- than as what should be expected, and as you note, that may very well have raised your expectations.

If I were to not make another sat this month on SN (including dropping off the MSM leaderboards), I'd still have made more stacking here than from everything else I've done, combined, other than trading fiat for sats. And based on the way sats stack, most of my posts have a lot of people who like them. So if I've hit my "limit," that's fine, both from an income point of view, and also an ego one.

While I think all three of your points are legit, one more (that's an offshoot of MSM) is that different time periods will lead to different zapping patterns. I'm sure someone's done some stats on zapping during bull or bear runs, or other external factors that might impact numbers.

And I'm also guessing that there's probably at least some impact from other hot posts, either in the form of essentially being the sat magnet/sink for a lot of folks, or possible being the rising tide that lifts other ones, depending on how things work out.

I'm always rooting for the underdog. I look for posts that ought to have more than they have. If a post that I'm really interested in has a lot of work put into it, but already has a ton of zaps, I might not zap it. Probably will. But I'm really looking for what doesn't have enough yet which, as I'm scrolling, I'm sure is highly variable and at least somewhat mood-dependent.