This is just my personal view and based on my observation, I might be wrong as I don't know all the answers in the world. I only share what I know and think and feel..
This is in regard to blogging on Steemit. I think more to socializing on Steemit. I know most of us in here coming to Steemit to earn some money while at the same time doing something that you love, maybe sharing about your hobby and passion and your daily activities and get some steem token while doing that, sounds like a happy fairy story right? But what if your post, don't get the support or upvote that you dream of like the one you often see on the trending page of Steemit? You must feel a bit discourage and wanted to just quit and just forget about making money online. You become frustrated and upset as you been told about Steemit, the earning site where you post and get a reward for it! or worst, the people who introduce you to this site been telling you about how their earning on steemit been worth 100$ and you wanted the same and they kind of promising you that you will also get the same result if you work hard and post whatever it is you like or you have followed the contest of the legendary thediarygame but still no great result that you been hoping for?
I know and understand how it feels to be in that situation. I've been there too.. my first month starting active back on steemit back at the end of last year in October, I only earn about 50cents worth upvote on my post, that's because I joined curation trail and been buying steem and powering up so I'm eligible for the 1000SP requirement for the curation trail. There is no such thing as steemcurators community account back then. You are on your own.. if you don't get social connecting with other communities of your interest then delegate to them so you get support in return, but your post got to be very good and quality one to get an upvote. There is no guarantee upvote even if you have delegate steem power to the community of your interest. That's the situation back then on steemit. People who get on the autoupvote of whales/account with big SP are usually users who have been very long time in steemit and been contributing a lot to the community and they are good with networking with other kind and love to socialize whales and orcas of steem..
Now the new era of Steemit after 100days of steem has begun, a lot of good things and improvement initiate by The Steemit Team/Steemit Inc. People who just started their journey on Steemit been so super lucky and I could say being pampered by The Steemit Team and also the initiatives of other community members with the steemcurators community account. The chance for you to get visible/recognize if you have the talents and skills also higher. In conclusion a lot of good things being offered to the community. Yet, I still see people complaining about not being visit by the steemcurator01 or they don't satisfied with their post reward. Some even said they are going to stop posting on Steemit if they don't get the reward that they want for their post. I think people should start treating Steemit like a social media platform, where you socializing with others in the platform, share what you know, be useful, just like how you behave in real-life social settings or other social media platforms. But in Steemit you have the chance to get a reward for your activity if you doing it right and valuable to the big investor of steem like The Steemit Team/Steemit Inc. The reward given by these stakeholders are not guarantee and its merely a gift for being active and being valuable social user in their platform. They are not in obligation or owing anything to you. People need to understand this first. Then all the things that you doing on the platform if being reward, is like a reward points for being active,thats all, especially if you don't put in any money/power up your steem token you bought from the exchange or buy from other steem users. If you want to help the ecosystem grow, help by support the ecosystem with power up your steem and delegate to any community of your interest. Join hand with other building the community steem power then be self sustainable, no need to depend 100% much on The Steemit Team delegation or upvote anymore. Lots of way to earn steem token by participate in the contest and other writing challenge by the community members and also The Steemit Team if you don't want to spend your own money to build up your steem power. You just have to find a way and work on it.
As for my journey on Steem, I have share how I start on Steemit, to earn money online at the beginning, then I start to understand how the Steem Community work and start to adjust my approach. I chose to stay at steem after the fork that split steem community to steem and hive. I chose Steem because I believe in the new management of Steemit lead by Justin Sun from the Tron Foundation. I have the hope that he will change how they will handle the community on steemit. Also another reason is I think the way of previous community leaders treating the partnership or new investor of steem, Justin Sun not that nice and unfair. I don't want to get into the details of the drama here, but I've been following the drama since the beginning and discerning the situation from both side. I chose Steem and happy and glad that I chose to stay last time.. I started @steemingcurators with @ ciska at first for the intention of being a community curator account. Then ciska wanted full ownership of the account and the community so I just let her steer the community and I just helps what I could, and I finally see that I can contribute to the community, by being a Steem Greeters, as I have been through all the difficulties and other possible situation of the newcomers of steemit and steem ecosystem before and I understand how confusing and overwhelmed this steem world if you're not into that nitty-gritty details of the technology. I think I can help the newcomers to understand how the community here works and get to know other tools that will help them navigating steem ecosystem. Thats how the Newcomers Achievement Program been created and been through lot of improvement too. Then to help with the retention and early support, 500SP Program that help them to start off on steem community too, so they can use it to delegate to the community of their interest and get continous support and keep buidling up their steem power. Maybe I have created too much program for the newcomers, also I created Steemit Nursery community for those who just started less than 2 months on Steemit so they can get support and recognize right away only after they have verified themselves to avoid gaming the program. I finally feel that I have something useful to contribute to the steem community through my role as Steem Greeter. I hope you all will find something or place where you can contribute your time or skills to the community too. If not, then just being helpful and socializing like you do at other social media platform will do too. As you might get reward by doing that as compare to nothing if you doing that at other social media like Facebook/Instagram or Twitter.. So just keep on being positive and enjoy riding the Steem Ship..
Much Love,
cryptokannon.