Q4 2018 #STEEM Experience Report (Part One)

I have been meaning to write this post since the end of the year but for some reason it has been difficult to get it started as being busy has limited my time to go through most of the numbers of the past quarter. I wanted to ensure that I give a great summary of my experience as I think it would not only be a key moment in my Steem journey but also a strong way to finish my first year in the ecosystem. As I travel today across the country on a plane, what better time to sit and reflect about my experience on Steem in fourth quarter of 2018?

I may have been a quarter of many mixed signals as Steem followed the general market to weakening prices that ultimately led to a loss of developers from Steemit Inc as they needed to lay off 70% of workers to align their resources with the new reality of continued sub $1 Steem prices. However, I will not focus on that as there is enough of that being discussed in elsewhere. These new prices accelerated my purchases of Steem in that I was able to surpass 10k just weeks after getting above 5k and Dolphin status. I would have never imagined it when I first started (probably because Steem was over $4).

The main reason for taking these actions were the experience I have had not only seeing the opportunities that existed across the ecosystem, but also the amount of engaging conversations I have been having as part of belonging to a passionate community. Then, in the midst of the FUD you could see all of the communities come together and provide solutions for long term sustainability of the protocol. This is when it was clear to me that the value is in the community as the technology will evolve with it. It also allowed me to improve my cost basis through my Dollar Cost Averaging strategy put in place since Feb 2018:

That was over 4,000 Steem for an average cost of a little under $0.50 which is ot great considering the lows we had also seen during the quarter. Another first for me this quarter which is related to my purchases was doing my first conversions of SBD to Steem. I was able to accumulate over 100 SBD since the Summer which was te first time I sold SBD for Steem in the internal market. Given the fact that SBD was below the $1 peg, a conversion still converts the SBD assuming its $1 worth while using the average Steem price over the last 3.5 days to get an amount of Steem for the conversion. My transaction was very successful which made me go a step further to actually buy SBD using @blocktrades and then immediately converting it to Steem. This resulted in a little over 1,000 Steem for the quarter.

Unfortunately, the debt ceiling being over 10% has led to a haircut being applied which has reduced the protitability of this strategy which is why I have not done it again. However, the latest increase in price has is making this viable once again so I may give it a try for my next purchase.

While my net Steem Power is below 10,000, it continues to grow via earnings and my purchases. Given my increased stake, Curation rewards have been growing quite positively as I am now getting about 2 Steem Power per day. When I take earnings into consideration, I have now earned over $1,300 USD for the 2018 year which represented about 1,356 Steem Power for the year. While it only represents only 11% of total Steem Power, I continue to find engaging ways to improve the earnings to no longer rely on only purchases to increase my Stake. The last quarter was great to accumulate both ways as the lower price made for more Steem in my wallet!

Screenshot from SteemWorld.org

Part of my efforts have been using my Stake to delegate to great projects and communities to help improve my earnings while also helping the community grow and achieve goals. The newest one I joined last quarter was @partiko which had their first round of delegation which sold out very quickly. In fact, they received more than double their target thanks to a whale that provided a huge delegation. This delegation also introduced me to the mobile app which as changed my way of engaging while on the move as I often am. It quickly became my go to way to engage with the community. In fact, in about a month I was able to get into the Top 20 of users in Partiko points!

Screenshot from Partiko App

The quick rise in the leaderboard was due to my continued efforts to increase engagement broadly across the ecosystem. The opportunity provided to earn Steem motivated me to increase engagement to the highest I have ever put my efforts into. One of the ways I have gone about measuring my efforts has been benchmarking my results on @abh12345’s Curation and Engagement League which is a weekly report of progress among those who participated. Shockingly for me, I was able to place top 10 a number of times while also placed in the Top 25% every week of the quarter.

Another metric I closely follow since joining the community last year is my progress on @steem-ua which if you recall served as an alternative reputation system in the ecosystem. While I still do not know exactly how it all works, it is clear that it is weighted towards the amount of followers acheived with superior scores as well as votes received. I often mentioned that it is not about the destination but the journey that makes it worth the effort. It encourages me to see the trend being favorable as I continue my journey here.

While it has slowly grinded higher for me, I have also benefited from their daily upvotes for delegating Steem Power to the project. These and the other delegations have provided a great way to grow my earnings and Steem Power as the opportunity remains with prices so low. However, I have also started to realize an effort to give back to the community. Regarding delegations, I have given some delegation to two very interesting and selfless projects in the blockchain. First, @pifc recently had some challenges when a large delegation was pulled. They immediately made a post of the situation and got great responses from the community as they well deserved. I provided a 100 Steem Power delegation indefinitely given their support to highlight the importance and opportunities of curating great content from smaller users.

The other project I delegated to was @steembasicincome which has a great program of distributing SBI units to users that are sponsored. Not only does the sponsored user get a unit, but so does the sponsor. Therefore, it incentivizes giving to others as well as engagement and activity as the program has now become more automated to benefit the active users in the community. I have found it to be a great tool to motivate users for activity. It is one of the best ways I have seen to also create contest that require engagement! I look forward to continuing to use the program as I try to motivate engagement. For example, I continue to reward a SBI unit for those that remain active after I curate their #introduceyourself posts (which I have also continued to do this past quarter).

This is the end of part 1 of my experience report. However, don't wait for the next installment tomorrow to provide me feedback and recommendations in the comments below!

Source

Discord: @newageinv#3174

Chat with me on Telegram: @NewAgeInv

Follow me on Twitter: @NAICrypto

If you are like me and interested in continued personal growth, invest in yourself and lets help each other out by leveraging the resources they provide by using my referral link:
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