Okay, so I've been on this website for almost three months now and the only thing I can say it's that the journey was amazing. I started posting here after seeing a video from @jerrybanfield talking about Steemit, and after publishing a few times I got around $250 from @curie, which was more than I made in months of working in other places.
Because I like this place so much I do my best to write as many articles as possible and post as often as I can, because I realize this website represents a huge opportunity, not only for me, but for everyone creating content right now. Working really hard, developing your profile and getting really big can help you get more rewards than you can imagine.
The sad part is that I see more and more people joining every single day, posting garbage content, "articles" containing maybe one image and a few lines of text, thinking they are working really hard and they should be paid for what they do. They wonder why people don't upvote their hard work and why they are not making a lot of money. Some of them say Steemit it's stupid because with over 2000 posts they didn't get thousands of dollars, yet they omit the fact that their posts are nothing but images with some text that bring no value to the reader.
And here's that part where you, the content creator who spends time creating something amazing, articles that actually provide value, high quality content that gets you the rewards you need, have a huge opportunity to get pretty big before everything changes, and why you should take advantage of that opportunity as fast as you can.
As @jerrybanfield said multiple times, Steemit has the opportunity to get bigger than a lot of social networks out there, just because it gives the user the opportunity to actually make something with the time invested into the platform. I don't believe it can become bigger then Facebook or Twitter, at least not without a lot of work, but it certainly can get close to the top, and become better than other blogging platforms, like Medium.
Now, here's the "downside" of Steemit becoming really big, and why you should put in the work now, that the platform is fairly small - if you posted on Medium for more than two or three months you'll know that it's pretty hard to get anything out of that platform. It's hard to get followers, it's hard to get comments and it's hard to be "somebody" there.
The reason is that there are so many people on that platform and there is so much "competition" and so much content to be consumed that it's hard to stand out with anything. There are people writing really long articles, short articles, funny articles, serious articles, debating all kind of subjects and teaching others all kind of things.
After almost three months on that website I barely managed to get around 10 followers and a few comments, maybe some likes, but nothing more. I fear that once people realize what Steemit is about and once people find out they can make a lot of money if they just put in the work, it's gonna be really hard for some people to get anything no matter how much they work.
Right now, if you post something, you'll instantly get to the "New" section of the website, and you'll stay there for a few seconds. If you refresh the page after two minutes, you'll have to scroll a lot until you find your article again. That happens because a lot of people post all the time, and because of that your article has only a few seconds to get the attention of everyone who just got on the "New" page.
If your article isn't good enough to get the attention of those people, then the only way of getting others to see it is to hope they scroll down and they maybe see your work. If this is how it works now, that we're around 300,000 people on this platform, imagine how it would be when (not if) the number gets to over 1,000,000.
The competition will be really big, and once people who are interested in creating high quality content show up, it's gonna be even harder to get noticed by others and to get upvotes. You'll have to work way harder than anybody else, and you'll have to create unique content that provides a lot of value to the consumer.
Otherwise, you'll just be another content creator that gets a few views and a few upvotes on his content, nothing more. That's why I believe that at this moment we have a HUGE opportunity to get big with the content we create, and prepare for the big wave of people who will come in the future.
I'm not saying that more people on Steemit would be a bad thing, absolutely not. I can't wait for this platform to grow and see where it goes from there, I want this website to become huge, just like most of you want. However, we need to realize that once more people come in and once more people start creating content, it's gonna be really hard to get followers and become popular if you don't have anything to show already.
That's why I believe you should invest as much time as you can into Steemit right now, and create as much high quality content as you can. If you're can get over 1000 followers and over 1000 Steem Power when the website will be really big, you'll have a huge advantage over most people who don't have anything valuable to show, especially if you also have great content. You'll have a decent number of followers and enough influence to get discovered by others.
If you don't do that, and you ignore your profile, once the website gets really big and once you realize you can get a lot out of it, it may be too late, because you'll have to compete against millions of people who have the same goal as you, and in order to succeed, you'll have to come up with something new, something unique.
So, if you're new here or if you've been on Steemit for a while but you didn't work a lot on your articles and on the content you create, I strongly believe it's time for you to change that, and work really hard. If you can become big now, that we're around 300,000 on this website, you'll have a huge advantage when we'll get to millions of users. This is your chance to maybe change your life, so take advantage and work really hard.