100 days and beyond- An analysis of my steemit journey so far

This is my 101th day on steemit, which is almost 1/3rd of an entire year! It amazes me to see the time flying like anything. I don't think I'm a great commentor, content creator or someone who is capable of doing some great things. But somehow I managed to survive here for all these days. I would like to analyse my journey here for first 100 days.

WHO AM I?

I hadn't written a good #introduceyourself post here as I was completely clueless as to how this system works afterall. So let me properly introduce myself. My name is Sathya and Sankar is the name of my father. Due to we use our father's name as a tale behind our name, my official name became Sathya Sankar. I'm a Mechanical Engineering graduate hailing from Kerala, located in the southermost part of India.

After completing my graduation I worked in various roles in a number of companies. To be frank about it, none of them satisfied me. Eking out a life in bigger cities is an unimaginable task if you have a petty salary. Out of frustration, I gave up those jobs and for last 5 months I'm doing work as a farmer in nearby fields. I have big dreams. Dreams that may sound unachievable for many. But one day, I hope I will be living my dream. Nothing to exaggerate. I'm a simple Homo sapiens sapiens.

My Steemit Journey

I did my entire schooling through Malayalam medium so my knowledge in English was pathetic than what it seems now. Out of eagerness, I started learning the language in whatever ways possible. During that journey I got to know about Quora and through reading answers on Quora I gathered a fair idea about steemit. Thanks @amank whose answers on Quora were brilliant enough to attract many to this platform.

The Last week of January this year was the time I recieved the password of steemit. I had never met with any social medias that looked anything similar steemit before. It looked bizarre. I used my fist few days to commit a lot of mistakes. In the day 1, I commented in other's blogs asking for followback and upvotes. Wait, I never did it with that single sentence spamming comments. I used to read the entire article and comment something related to that along with asking for followback and upvotes. Infact the only message I sent on discord to @bobinsin , whom I later gave a witness upvote to, is Hai bro please follow and upvote. I was fortunate enough not to get flagged. I don't regret in doing so, because Rome was not built in a day

I happened to meet @sayee , who is from the same state which I belong to, on the second day itself and it was she who guided me on 'What to do and what not'. My approach would have been quite different had if I not met her here and perhaps I wouldn't be writing this very article that you read now. Thank you chechi.

One single man whom we indian steemians see as our leader is @firepower. My reputation went up from 25 to 30 just because of his $2 upvote then in one of my earlier posts. Not just that. At times, He has upvoted a number of my posts unexpectedly which indeed is one of the major reasons how I achieved the reputation level 50(I know, many achieve this reputation within few minutes of entering steemit). I observed a few people from India possessing a high amount of Steem Power, ie more than 20,000 SP, in their wallet. Apparently they have invested their money over here to produce more money, nothing else. I would like to emphasize this point again as one cannot spot a single sign of any talent or quality in their blogs. Although I don't like to mention the name, I should say the fact here. One person from Delhi keeps on posting some worthless contents and self upvotes them all. His steemreport statistics says he self upvotes 54% and upvotes his alt account with remaining 46%. I do completely understand that I have no right to say what he does is wrong. It is his exclusive right to do whatever he wants as he has invested a sizeable amount of money on steemit. However, steemit is a community and designed to be so. There should be some involvement in the things happening around. Having great influence but being selfish won't fetch anything other than a bad name. That's where I found @firepower to be a man of morality. His involvement in steemit community is very huge. I do believe He represents us The steemians from India and by now he has helmed a number of meetups in various places all over the world. I wish he will soon enter the list of top 20 witnesses! All the best brother.

I cannot say that my reputation level 50 has entirely come through organic votes. Infact, after hearing a lot about bidbots I experimented them several times. The reputation I gained from 35 to 42 was mostly by bidbots. It is much easier to enter 35 to 42 with a few dollars valued upvotes. But after that point, you need heavy votes to be casted on you blogs inorder to gain every 0.1 reputation. Later on, I learnt a lot about the harms caused by bidbots to the reward pool and thus now it's been two months since I had used bidbots for the last time. Infact, it is after stopping to use the bidbots that I earned much.

I hereby vow that I won't use Bidbots on my posts anymore even if I get nothing as reward

steemSTEM

I'm thrilled to talk about this community. I couldn't find any community other than #steemSTEM that consistently contributes and supports a vision that it stands for. We now have access to great scientific knowledge and contents here on steemit. It is @dexterdev who introduced me to this community. There is no doubt he is one of the few good bloggers from India who write science brilliantly. As a person whose education revolved around science, I was able to produce a couple of science articles that the steemSTEM community found interesting. I'm really grateful to steemSTEM for the knowledge I gathered from steemit. I will keep on supporting the community as long as this platform exists

Have I earned any money from steemit?

Well, some people come here and earn hundreds of dollars just for their #introduceyourself post. I'm not that prodigy. I had to wait for two months to cash out something. I cashed out 10 SBDs in a time when it valued ₹100 per SBD. I recieved 1000 rupees in Indian money and the very first thing I did was to refill this LPG cylinder that had been emptied months ago. This one cylinder is more than enough for us for next three months as we use firewood a lot.

In the last week I cashed out nearly 35 SBDs and bought a Google Chromecast and a Keyboard. I have no laptop or computer with me, so I use Steemit from my mobile phone. I thought of making use of our TV for this purpose and bought these input devices. Now I'm able to caste my android phone to TV and type in big screen.

Somethings I would like to say

I love steemit not just because I was able to make some money, but also because of the the real life connections that I got through this platform. I spoke to Mr @kamesh who resides in Jammu& Kashmir, the northernmost part of our country, over phone. I communicated with @dexterdev and discussed briefly about steemit and many other things. Recently I called and talked to @erode , an engineering student from Tamilnadu..... The list continues! One can make wonders if he/she uses steemit in a good way. But, as a community a lot of disparities co-exist.

As I have mentioned above, a few people from our region act selfishly. If they continue this act of greed, eventually they would be wasting their time here. Inorder To act selfishly one should have enough influence as that of the great Technical Analyst who publishes 10 posts a day and upvotes them all. Or else, they should engage with community. They don't seem to realise the power of having friends all over the world over making some steem dollars.

I recall the days when I yearned to get friendship with the people from other countries. Even through Facebook and Twitter I was not able to get recognised by foreigners. Now, through steemit some people located far away from my home recognise me. I'm waiting for @lordjames to come to India to meet him in person. Also I would like to see @matbaker in person.

I hope everything that we anticipate come true one day.

Finally, thank you @good-karma and @esteemapp for making steemit easier for people like me. Your frequent upvotes are really encouraging!

Steem on friends!

All contents of this post including photos belong to the author, that is me,

@sathyasankar