I’m sharing this Anniversary with those on the Palnet platform as you guys make me feel young and excited again about things to come! Cheers .

It has been an interesting year to make it to another anniversary on Steem that is for sure. I often wonder how this period of time will be seen in the future. Along with all the things I’ve tried out and the many failures I’ve had. Which ones will be the winners I get to let run wild and use to take me to the next stage? Perhaps next year I’ll have an answer.

How Will History Showcase This Period Of Time?

I often wonder how the last year worth of time I spent on this platform will be preserved and looked at years from now. Will it be considered the dark ages where so much talent left due to the price of Steem, they're inability to gain viewership and a whole host of other reasons? Things have been tough and many seem to be dealing with what is being called “Steem depression.” Quite a horrible bug to your willingness to work on content at 3 am as you try and juggle everything in life.

Will it be seen as one of the bigger times of prosperity in the amount of Steem people using the platform earned? Where years later we all joke about this time in the history of the platform where you could earn more than 1 Steem and did not even have to be number one on the front page to acquire that much.

My two years here have been interesting ones, to say the least. It is also interesting just how many June 2017s I keep running into on this platform and have been since I joined. This was the group of people I grew up with on this platform. Many of them are no longer around. The ones remain seem to be very hearty people that can survive even during a drought. We have also seen some good times from SBD going crazy and the hard times of prices crashing hard.

Tried Out Some Dapps Platforms

During this time I’ve had my fair share as I continued to try and find something that works for me. The only time you should really fear failure is when you can’t afford to have a failure. While I’ve never been one to jump head first into things right away I’ve also tried out a number of things. I even tend to be a bit late to the party as I look at the bigger long term picture than trying to make a quick few bucks.

I tried out a few different Dapps. This period of time for me is when Steemit turned into Steem. As I was willing to go out and find what else this ecosystem had to offer. While I understand how people get so lost and tied up in this simple semantics of what to call things. I’m still quite convinced when people call the ecosystem Steemit they are correct from their point of view. Most of the times they have yet to venture beyond that front end further into the massive ecosystem that is Steem. Perhaps one day they will swim in the deeper waters. All I got to say is you more than likely won’t drown in those deeper waters so swim and enjoy them.

This was also when I become a somewhat early adapter in using a Dapp called Engrave. I was very much putting everything into trying to make it work. I wanted to drive as much traffic as I could to it so I could better understand acquiring traffic and evolve. Ultimately all the efforts I put in on my Steemit side of my blog was one wall I did not see it overcoming and decided it was best to keep trying to build it up more. I still need do some link cleanup but I’m feeling lazy for the past couple of days.

I even tried to change up who I was to try and conform to another dapps style called Steemhunt. While I did enjoy commenting over there on the short style they use. I only made it as far as one post and knew without a shadow of a doubt it was not going be for me. I did, however, gain an appreciation for what that Dapp is.

I kind of wish I could use Steemhunt to than link out to my full reviews. But that really not what that platform is about either. Many just don’t have the time for long content and they are just looking for a very quick answer overview. For now, I’m using something not in our Steem ecosystem to try and do that. It’s got even a shorter character limitation so it’s more like trying to leave a quote about the game than anything else. I’ve not talked much about my Steam Curation page. Soon I will be I’ve just not gotten around to it how that’s going. Short answer not very well.

I did find another platform that holds some promise. Palnet I’ve only joined it the other day. Perhaps next year’s anniversary will have some great things to say on how that adventure went. For now it’s still an adventure with some old people I’ve not seen in quite some time.

Either way, I’m glad I tried out a few different things. These were not the only Dapps I tried as I’m a gamer and there are plenty of games to play in our ecosystem as well. There’s never any way of knowing for certain without trying and I think that’s is why many never do. Why find out you are a failure when you can just be one with zero effort!

Archdruid Gaming

For a big chunk of my time, I poured my heart, soul, and many cursing words into this community—oh so many! This is where I did quite a few things that took me out of my element. I was for a short while a community leader; along with, being a curator for a curation guild. It was an interesting experience I’ll give it that.

Those in my real life know I hate taking on any leadership role what so ever. I’m normally the first one in and the last one out. I tend to be that silent one in a corner hidden away just wanting to be left alone to do my thing. I’m more of the type to just do an entire group project solo in a fraction of the time. So this appears out of character for me to be running my own blog let alone my involvement in that community as a whole at that time. It was also not beyond my capability either. As anytime I take personality quizzes I’m a dam Architect. Clearly, those things are wrong or I’m more of a threat then I let on--hmmm!

In my very early stages I ended writing a post on curation—Curating Video And Written Gaming Content. Kind of an odd way to go about it since I was rather green at that point still. Throughout all my experience when I was one I say it held up quite well.

There was also a point where I was so filled with passion it was left in a post I was asked to write about the community. I also have no idea if a single word in The Making Of A Community or anything else in it was shared at the last SteemFest. This is why I was asked to write something about Archdruid in the first place. I don’t attend those kinds of events and never watch any of it either. Perhaps it’s better I don’t know!

If it’s one thing I won’t miss its writing a weekly author showcase. I swear they did next to nothing for those featured in it and some of them took me 8 hours as I always struggled to find the words. Really great content creators in them sadly many are no longer around and I felt like I could not do enough.

That was also the hardest part of when I was a curator. So much amazing talent during the last year just up and left. Some of them have started over on YouTube, Twitch, other sites, and their own site. I wish them the best. It’s not easy to have to rebuild over again elsewhere. I hope the success they are willing to work towards becomes a reality even if it’s not on Steem.

My big dream for a curation guild was to evolve it into being able to solve a very simple problem. How to help amazing content creators to break even on at least the costs of making their content? I’m not talking about the time spent just the costs. As that is a whole other issue in itself.

The easy answer is all about math. If you make 1$ off each post and say a game costs $60. You only need to create 60 posts about that game. I also always hated that answer. But I failed to find a better solution.

Perhaps one day curation guilds overall will evolve and be able to leverage their knowledge of finding some of the hardest working content create out there and get them band deals, free products to review and other stuff. Taking home a nice cut of the deal for themselves for the effort. Going far beyond just curator rewards from the pool which has it’s limitations.

For those that where kind enough to pick up the workload for that community. I hope to see it rise far and beyond anything I could ever have dream off. The sky the limit you are going make it amazing.

Focusing Beyond

At some point during the last year, the platform got the wake-up call to start promoting outside of our own bubble. To start building up social media accounts, share content, and go beyond discords. I like to think I’ve got in on that before it became trendy but I have no idea. All I know is I’ve been sharing my content outside and look for new places worth expanding as well. While also trying to improve my SEO a little on my pages as I just want more traffic for future plans to expand.

While I’ve tried a lot of other social media platforms from Facebook to Instagram. Twitter has been my main focus as it feels like I’m getting the most for my time spent. The Steem ecosystem has lot of active people over there. Content gets shared around from retweets along with some light engagement on them.

Reddit has been one of the places I really want to expand into but most places on it are not happy with people self-promoting their own content. A lot of the gaming ones do not and will even delete or threaten to ban you for doing so. There is also that toxicity that many content creators for gaming content talk about that can be found on Reddit. So it’s an interesting playground to say the least.

The one place that does welcome you to promote your own Steemit links on Reddit is the weekly Steemit thread. Which case I highly recommend you spend the whole what 30 secs to follow the format they are asking and share. That is the current one only open for a couple more days.

It’s places like that which don’t take a lot of time. I do need to spend more time on Reddit learning where I’m more welcome and being more cleaver elsewhere. I’ve even considered writing one of my game reviews and posting the entire thing over there. Just to see if I got anything out of it or if that was just being silly.

Another thing I tried was maintaining an Index. I remember just how quickly everyone gave up on that fad as well a while ago. I carried out for a number of months before I decided I did not see any tangible benefit to my blog for doing so for the amount of time it took to maintain.

There are other places I share to as well some I’ve already talked about. Others I’m still working on trying to get a better understanding and see if it’s worth the time in doing and more importantly sharing. Lots of amazing content on this platform many I get to see in my own side of things in gaming.

This part of my Steem adventure is sure to continue into year three. Hopefully, it was the start of a very bright future moving forward of laying down a lot of groundwork. If not and it fails I’ll make some changes and keep trying to move forward.

Final Thoughts

There has been a lot of ups and down and just moving sideways. Some days I just never wanted to type another word again. The very thought of creating another game review either thrilled me or made me question what the heck am I even doing. With a little luck and a lot of hard work the new me of next Steem anniversary will look back at this post and laugh a little at how well things turned out.

Cheers and have an amazing day. I have nothing special planned for today other than some Path of Exile.

My First Anniversary

• My One Year Steemit Anniversary
• Over The Weekend For My First Steemit Anniversary

Information

Photos were taken and content was written by @Enjar