Hello everyone! I'd like to give you all a little insight into my experiences on Steemit and what I've learned over the last 60 days. But first a little backstory as to how I heard about the site...
Backstory...
It was late July and I was sitting at home trading stocks with the finance channel (CNBC) blaring to help keep me up to date on the world's latest breaking news that might affect the markets. Only, something different was mentioned today. One of the founders of Steemit.com (don't remember if it was @ned or @dantheman) came on the show and was talking about a revolutionary social media platform that was going to pay its users for the content they contributed...
I thought now here is a novel idea... paying people for the work they do... I need to look into this.
I signed up a couple minutes later and had my first post ready and submitted within hours. The rest of that day I researched and read everything I could about Steemit and cryptocurrency in general. I had no previous experience in cryptocurrency but I was pretty experienced in financial markets in general and had heard a great deal about Bitcoin over the years. I felt like this was finally something I had been looking for... something I had been waiting for... and it didn't even cost me a dime to sign up! Just my time!
As I dived deeper into the platform these are some of the things I have learned over the past 2 months:
1. Things they are a-changin
Since the day I signed up a lot of things have changed. There was no reputation number next to each poster's name, a lot of the posts being submitted didn't have pictures, the chat rooms were not used much, there was no reblog feature, the entire profile and back office for each user looked much different, and introductory posts were guaranteed money makers!
However, since that time... the one constant has been change. Although, that is not necessarily a bad thing. The site is currently still in beta testing mode while upgrades and changes are tinkered with before the hard launch takes place. What the site looks like today could be very different than what it looks like a few years from now...
2. It is not for those after the quick buck
(Do you see what I did there?)
Not sure if you have been around long, but when I signed up there were a couple quasi celebrities signing up and bragging about the thousands of dollars they were making with very little effort on their part. It was enough to make the little guy sick. Thankfully that has died down quite a bit since then. For most people they will need to put in the time building an audience before they ever see any real rewards. So, anyone looking to make a quick cash grab, unless you are Kim Kardashian, this site is probably not for you...
3. The price of steem trends down... for now
Take a look for yourself. The chart shows it all. There are several reasons for this but I won't really go into the specifics of it here. Just know that there are ideas being thrown around to better support the currency, also any long term investor in steemit shouldn't be worried about the day to day fluctuations in the price of Steem. I have only been around for the last 2 months so I have basically only experienced a down trend, but take a look at that chart before this downtrend...The price had exploded skyward thousands of percent and now is simply retracing that moonshot. As of today, the price has not even retraced all of those gains, if that gives you any kind of idea how big of a move up was...
4. Through hard work and persistence you can earn real money
Once you decide what areas you are the most knowledgeable in and what areas you would like to blog about, you can go about cultivating an audience. It took me almost a month before I ever saw a post go over $1. There is no telling when that will happen for each user, but if you keep working at it, it will happen. I invested no money to start with and I joined after the initial pump, yet today I still could take out a couple hundred dollars of real money any time I want. That is not bad considering I would be doing similar things on other social media sites only with no monetary gain. The main takeaway is... don't give up!
5. Don't try to game the system or you will find yourself on the outside looking in rather quickly
Don't get suckered into the jealousy trap of seeing how much others are making and think that you need to take shortcuts in order to get to where they are. Several posters have tried this either by plagiarizing, taking advantage of other's kindness, or by using technology to improve their standing... in most cases it came back and bit them in the butt. They were flagged, reputation destroyed, and now are either hidden or off the site all together. Don't let that be you...
6. Steemit is a popularity contest, but so is life
As mentioned previously, there are certain users that have an inherent advantage over other users. The ones that are already popular outside of the site and have a strong reputation for one reason or another are able to hit the ground running when they sign up for Steemit. Most people don't have that luxury, so they have to build up their brand the hard way. The more people that you can bring from outside the site the easier it will be for you to build a reputation and ultimately make money on Steemit.
7. The length of time spent crafting a post has no correlation to rewards earned
Unfortunately, there is no correlation between time spent creating a post and rewards earned on said post. Especially when you first start out. If the best post in the world is written, yet no one reads it, is it really the best post in the world? You have to market yourself and your post! You also have to give the people what they want. Meaning, you need to spend some time learning what kind of posts do well and what ones do not. Then, as you build an audience your rewards will get a lot closer to matching the effort put into each post...
8. Project Curie is a life saver
Even taking into account all the advice mentioned above, I still would have had only a couple posts go over $1 in value if it weren't for Project Curie @curie. A fellow author found me and showed me the light, @kevinwong. If not for him and @donkeypong I would have never found Project Curie and probably would have left the site out of discouragement by now.
What is Project Curie you might be wondering?
It is a collective of authors and whales who have pooled their resources with the sole purpose of finding great posts buried in the rubble and ultimately help less seen authors get off the ground. Project Curie votes for content they deem has wrongfully been ignored by the larger community. Then after rewarding authors for their work and shining a light on them, the hope is that the authors can better build their own brand and create a self funding blog on their own. Thus contributing to the overall diversity of the site.
9. Mankind is more selfless than I originally thought
To go along with what I posted above, there are several groups out there that have solely been created to help the smaller authors get noticed. These groups don't get monetary rewards out of this process yet they are donating their own time and their own resources. It truly is a selfless act! Without groups like these, the new guys signing up would have a very difficult task ahead of them to ever make any money on the site.
10. You get out of it what you put into it
Like most things in life, the more you put into it, the more you will ultimately get out of it. If you spend the time cultivating an audience, networking with other users, creating good content, interacting with the community, and ultimately just putting in the hard work, you will reap rewards from this site.
The question belongs to you... will you put in the sweat equity to ultimately see the fruits of your labor?
Live well my friends!
Image Sources:
1. http://thehiveblog.com/arco-avenue-gets-a-facelift/
2. http://alex-aldridge.deviantart.com/art/A-Quick-Buck-529872347
3. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/
4. http://www.successpraxis.com/the-benefits-of-hard-work/
5. http://www.statecollege.com/news/columns/willful-ignorance-gaming-the-system-the-decline-of-trust-in-our-society,1460803/
6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3181611/The-curse-cool-Kids-popular-school-losers-adults-claims-study.html
7. https://johnscottstories.com/2012/10/16/gaming-the-system/
8. http://www.mma-core.com/photos/True_activism_Mission_vision_strategy_execution_and_RESULTS_Thanks_for_your_selfless_acts_to_bring_mankind_together/104345
9. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481181541414193573/
Follow: @jrcornel