This post is based on two post i wrote two weeks ago approximately… My journey into Steemit - After a week and My journey into Steemit - After two weeks and was made for the "Tell your story contest" created by @varunsangwan.
Hi everyone, my name is Claudio, and i’m from Chile (yeah that long and narrow piece of land painted in blue) i speak Spanish so i’m sorry for any misspelling…
I entered the WORLD of Steemit three weeks ago, if you continue reading you will find why i call it a WORLD.
And here's my story...
I was looking on internet for cryptocurrencies where to invest some bucks because i hear that Bitcoin explode and everyones who invest in the early days now is extremely rich. Well i was thinking of an investment of a few bucks something like 20 o 30 million dollars not much… as you all may know that quantity is easy to obtain in the real world.
Well first of all i found that i didn't know anything about the world of blockchain or bitcoin and how it could change the world and bla bla bla… there’s a lot of videos on youtube to get deepen into the bla bla bla (look at the next video if you want).
So when i understand what blockchain is an their potential, i start my quest for gold, which in a small period of time take me to realice that maybe (only just maybe) was to late to buy Bitcoins for a simple reason i don’t have any money … and start any investment without money is a very difficult task.
I have to say that i found really interesting an promising projects (excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum) like https://maidsafe.net which i feel is going to be amazing if they achieve what they want, https://ripple.com and their future network, the Storj cloud drive https://storj.io, among many others...
Then i found that the blockchain allow for a new form of investments called ICO or initial coin offering (which by the way has no regulation anywhere) where all the projects offer their shares in form of new coins called “whatever you want COIN” and the people invest believing that specific project could reach the stars… logically there’s a lot of excellent on going projects like https://mobilego.io/ but i found crazy things like the Chronobank which when i first saw remember me Chronotrigger (because of them now i’m playing it again!) or some guys who raised funds for production of synthetic zirconium oxide! the zircoin… in this page you could find a lot of those ICOs if you want to spend some bucks.
Following my journey (through the dark) happens that i found a page called Steemit.com, where in simple words pay you for publishing content, not something new in the internet or ask youtubbers or bloggers around the world, but the form is new and i found that really interesting.
I’m not a Youtubber, Blogger o Twitterian (or whatever name you say to people using twitter) with thousands or millions of followers moving from another platform to Steemit (like @allasyummyfood, @smokyribs, @flavcity or many others), in fact i don’t think anyone ever follow me. (At this time i have 122 followers in Steemit which is AMAZING!)
Well continuing my quest, i decided to create a new account which took almost 2 days for approbation, but i did it!.
When i enter Steemit as everyone i found that i didn’t know anything about the platform, so the first post i looked was a beginners guide created by @thecrytofiend where i learn about Steem, Steel Power, Steem Dolars, how submit a story, the markdown, and a lot of very useful things.
I thought that with all that information (and other FAQ and help that i had read) i was ready for posting... well then i started to write.
I’m a researcher mainly on educational issues, and also on public policy issues, so i have a lot of things which only need to be adapted to be well understood by the general public, and some of them translated from Spanish to be understood by English speakers. This is mainly what i want to share with this community or what i hope to do!
So my first post was about a recent investigation of high performing public schools, when the post was ready i felt like this could be the greatest post ever created… maybe when i woke up i will have 500 upvotes or more!!.
But as you may know none of this happened, only one upvote, guess who it was? yeah mine!!, i think even if my wife or brother create an account they wouldn't have voted for me, because the notifications and the new content only stay for just a second in the new section of this page... and the promotion option is a little bit expensive for new users, if you are new around here and don't believe me look at this page
So i started the long journey of promoting my post by myself as a minnow, first of all i enter to the Steemit chat where i had read that one can promote your own post. The first thing i do was copy/paste my link into the GENERAL forum but someone i think the moderator @steemitqa banned me… or at that moment it was what i thought.
At the first moment i didn’t know what happened… then i read the rules (at the top) and all came sense to me lol… well for some time i enter that forum and a kitten told me that i couldn't speak there lol. (now i know that i was muted only)
Well i left that room where they don’t wanted me, and start promoting what for me was the greatest post of all time on Steemit… well at the moment i write the original post i had 14 upvotes and a potential payout of $0.5. (Finally that post pay me $8.68 with 23 upvotes, which by the way was INCREDIBLE! someone pay me to write whatever i want!, i lost almost 3 hours of work doing that but that's not important... maybe for my boss is but who cares.)
So i told myself, well myself lets Resteem some post, which by the way (at that point) i didn't have the slightest idea of what that's mean for me, but for some reason those post appear in my blog!. (Yeah now i know it's to promote other users post...)
Then i create the second most influential post in the history of Steemit, i left all my educational research of the note, and i did something where it would have guaranteed something like a million upvotes, i took the top 15 latino hits from youtube and create a list. Think about this (or like me), a list with videos with 1 billion views or more… if only 1% of those or even less the 0.5% or 0.1% of those clicks on my post its going to be great. But again nothing… the only great thing was that @steemradio saw the post and told me to post with some specific hashtag to support them, they gave me 0.5 steem dolars! for supporting them. (Finally that incredible post reach $2.88 with 12 upvotes, i still don't know why my incredible estimations fail lol)
At that point came to my mind all the whales, dolphins and minnows i had read… the vote and the promotion for the post was so different. Looking for post related to this i found a lot of initiatives like the one from @gtg who delegate steam power to new users i don’t even know how you do that but thanks (i still don't know), another one performed by randowhale which initially i didn't understand but thought that something good should be because all the comments say thanks and things like that (Now i can comment that i have used that service and was great for a minnow, but as almost any newbie i gave one time 2 SBD wrongly and i lost 2 precious SBD).
At this point i found in the WORLD of Steemit things like: a bot called @cheetah which seek to eliminate some abuses on the community; @steemcleaners which i thinks looks to do the same (remember that with great power comes great responsibility my friends lol); also something called witnesses that i stil don’t know what the hell is but i upvoted @gtg @cervantes and some others hoping for a good reason; and a list of weird things that you don’t even imagine…or maybe you already know.
Following, with this journey on Steemit, in my three weeks here i was able to understand and learn a lot of things related to the platform and people.
Well first of all i learn that it's addictive, that from the moment you receive the first real upvote and the first real comment, leaving aside all those people with whom you exchange some upvotes and were you don't have even the most remote idea what they wrote... yeah everyone in this platform has done that... is magnificent. For someone with almost no participation on social networks, nor in places where pay you to publish things i have to say is great.
Yeah! real people actually like what you wrote or at least they feel sorry for you lol... some others start to following you, is not like Facebook were your brothers, sisters or friends will follow you, and will comment your post and photos no matter what the hell you publish, they have to!.
And someone is paying you to write and share content... what a great felling. If you have one of the worst weeks of your life, keep your mind occupied writing things for unknown people is the best exercise i've ever have. Believe me i know! this month has not been easy for me (but those are things not concerning this publication).
I also understood that your wife (boyfriend, girlfriends or whatever you have) will not like this in a short period of time... if you have a daughter this could be even worse (not as you may think, this wasn't the reason of this shity month). Kinda remember me back when i was a young boy and play Starcraft (oh great an almighty SC!) on battle.net and my mother yelling me everyday, that i was a yunkie, to go out and play with my friends. She never understood that i was playing with friends... real people! or maybe not... that i will never know. (I have to say that Starcraft is still my favorite game)
Well i thing all the questions was answered in my story...a lot happened in a month as a Steemian (i left a lot of things out of this story), and has been a very fun time!.
Finally, maybe i will continue here for a long time because it seems like a great community, logically i will not let my job as a researcher even if i succeeded in becoming or be like a whale (which is really tempting). I think i will be satisfied with being able to use this platform to spread my research to people and make you laugh a little with some irreverent post.
Final comments
I'm still trying to understand what the hell Whaleshare is!!!
This platform needs to be more friendly for new users, i thing this could be a big thing if you want that the community grow exponentially, like Facebook, Twitter or many others. I think there's a lot of things to improve but this is not the time to write about that.
I started to write things in Spanish and i need to thanks @cervantes and @sancho-panza initiative for voting one of my post!... it was a translation of one of my first post and it pay me something like $28.
My post My Journey into Steemit - After a week is the one that paid me the most, $51, which is the greatest payment i've received until now. Hope in the future i surpass that hurdle.
Hope you enjoy it!
HAVE FUN!
Follow me at @ciag