questions → can less be in fact, more?

vote-for22vote-against +23 -1

Can less be in fact, more?

Over the past several weeks I've worked to see how many times I could become "Yesterday's Top Voter". This wasn't of course an attempt to gain reputation or anything dealing with coupons. Instead, as a personal challenge I wanted to see if I could create a strategy to become Yesterdays Top Voter.

A few of the days I didn't even attempt to do this or I was simply to busy to work on it. I believe I was the Top Voter around 5 times in the past couple of weeks, I've been in the Top 15 for the other large majority. My system was actually quite simple, vote 5 or 6 times a day and only on fresh deals of less than 30 minutes. That's it.

I devoted the majority of my votes to deals focused on...
Free "anything"
DVDs/Blu-rays
Staff/Moofi Deals
Flash Drives/SD Cards

With my years of experience I've noticed that these categories are by far the most popular and most likely to gain votes. I know that this is simply an abuse of the system, however it worked. Less is more. Thoughts? :)

by studerc
asked 4 months ago

9 Answers answer

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vote-for7vote-against

Less > more? That must be the new math... :)

To complete your experiment, spend a week voting only for what you consider an actual deal, and let us know how it turns out. Nifty idea, either way.

okham
4 months ago

vote-for5vote-against

Good job, now figure out how awesomeness works :)

rprebel
4 months ago

vote-for6vote-against

@okham @rprebel I was getting really burnt out of deals dot woot in the past few months, this was a way for me to get more involved in my own personal endeavors. This experiment gave me something to shoot for, an actual challenge. My next experiment was actually going to be to figure out the best day and time of day to post a deal in order to get the Top Deal of the Day. Unfortunately from what I've seen, this is extremely random. I see amazing deals gain less than 50 votes while a really pointless crappy meme can get upwards of over 100. Maybe I will work to figure out the awesomeness meter, Challenge Accepted.

studerc
4 months ago

vote-for3vote-against

@studerc: This tickles me, because your next experiment is what I was talking about with my wife the other day. Some of my deals I think are really good and get few votes and others I post just because and go popular. I'll be watching your deals for the results.

okham
4 months ago

vote-for4vote-against

It all depends. I know I posted a deal for a really nice DVD set that was being released on Blu-ray for the first time back in November. It was at least $20 cheaper than I had seen it anywhere else. It got maybe 12 votes. Then a couple days ago, someone found it on Amazon for a couple dollars cheaper than I found it, three months later. And it was over 45 votes. I swear, I get frustrated.

bellavampyre
4 months ago

vote-for5vote-against

I tried an experiment about a year ago where I would look for 5-10 posted deals that were just as you said, less then 30 minuets old, and were also getting multiple votes in that first 30 minutes. If a deal was 10 minutes old and already had 3+ votes, chances were good it would be popular. I think I hit top voter a few times, and would be in the top 10 several times per week.

got boring after a few weeks though.

kamikazeken
4 months ago

vote-for4vote-against

@bellavampyre: time of day posted makes a huge difference too.

kamikazeken
4 months ago

vote-for3vote-against

Yesterday's Top Voter: studerc
http://deals.woot.com/leaderboard

and boom goes the dynamite.

3 in the past 5 days..that's not to shabby. Mission Accomplished.

studerc
4 months ago

vote-for5vote-against

Quality over quantity is what I'm seeing as the key to a good score here.

Most of my participation here is in answering questions, then voting, then comments. My list of deals and questions posted are still less than one page. For that, I'm currently 28th.

Gaming the system? No, I'm not. Knowing what's more optimal and doing that instead? Yes.

narfcake
4 months ago

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