Another Day, Another Post - How I'm Handling The Current Price
Hello Everyone,
How's it going today? If you have been checking out SteemIt today, the price is still low and the mood with some is foul.. :) There is drama from the trending page to promoted. :)
People don't like to feel like they are losing money and we all get stressed from time to time. Human's have a bad habit of looking around to see what others are doing wrong when they get afraid. Some people even lash out. I do it myself. When I catch myself doing it, I always come back to what is my responsibility and what can I control.
Let's face it we all just took a paycut. When an industry is having financial difficulties there is generally turmoil and restructuring to adjust to new market conditions and that is what we are seeing here in my opinion. I have no idea how long it will last or if it will get better or worse.
Based on those thoughts I thought about who and what I want to support during this time.
Here is my current strategy
Most Importantly, I'm going to keep on posting and engaging with others on the site.
I am going to support those who are here for the long run. Those have a track record of creating interesting content, powering up, building the economy and engaging with others. Those who have proven they are here for the long-term.
My focus is going to be Dolphins and Larger Minnows who are participating, creating content, platforms, or tools that support the community. In my opinion we need to work on the middle class to grow the number of accounts that can support a diverse community and who are interested in actually using the site.
In my opinion the redfish and smaller minnows will need to form their own groups and networks and build their accounts. In addition there are many great curation plans out there, and many of us have delegated to some groups to help newer users gain traction.
Also, I will remind myself and others that this is the time to accumulate and when the price goes down more people can elect to buy in if they believe in the project.
In other words, I am going to do what I've always done.
Are you doing anything different to cope with the current market conditions? Let's talk about it in the comment section.
We're on the same page when it comes to who to support. The middle class has been somewhat neglected for so long that we're now seeing the error of our ways. Many of the minnows who've I've personally tried so hard to support didn't choose to build themselves up and aren't even around now to vote for. There are still some that show promise and if they're willing to work through these bumps in the road, I'm more than happy to help. We all took a pay cut and if they can deal with my vote being a lot smaller than it used to be, hold, they should be able to reap the rewards, later.
Many of the new accounts could be taking full advantage of strength in numbers instead of waiting for handouts from everyone else. They changed the rewards curve so long ago to give them more power, and yet it seems like many refuse to take advantage of that. They think a two cent vote is nothing, but when we all started, it would take 100 minnow votes to achieve two cents. That two cents can quickly turn into 4 if they play their cards right. Then 8, then 16. It just takes a bit of time.
So, much in here to agree with. They need to quit whining, buckle down and build their accounts. It is a speculation market. If you need .02 cents to live on recycle cans or something. We are all hoping our .02 turns into more.
Also, I to have spent a lot of time and votes on some minnows who are no longer here. Now, I feel it is a better move to empower them to help each other while we retain those who have put in the time and effort and HELD their stake. :)
I'm one of the minnows about to die. I hold out hope, but this is fading. I've been here one year and the biggest mistake I made was not reaching out to bigger accounts from the start. I thought a large circle of minnows would make up for that, but I was wrong. I have auto-voters who support me, I'm in qurator and sbi. I spread my votes as best I can - etc.
I have two friends that came in at the same time as me and both of them went for the big accounts tirelessly while I wrote posts about minnow tips, weight loss and art. They are both now near 5000 sp, and I cannot pay my rent. One of them told me early that no one under 10K sp was worth his time here. I think he is smarter than me.
I brought in about 20 content creators in various genres this year with the promise of good visibility for their work and payouts. All are gone now except my son @bxlphabet. When I die soon, he will too. He has been posting consistently and working on steemmonsters in discord and loves it. But this will come to an end.
I just passed my year here a week ago. It has been a very interesting year. But I dropped most of the other balls on my weight loss work and now am paying that price.
The reason a lot of content creating minnows do not fit in here is that we are not about building a stake in the future of a platform. Authors, artists, and coaches are on many platforms. We do not invest in them. We earn our daily bread from them. We are about keeping many balls in the air and trying to survive.
And this is what is says when you sigh up for steemit:
Nothing about the need to build up a stake. One of my content-creating friends sent me this snip when she left in November. She thought I was stupid to keep trying in such a difficult place. Not even the good price at the first of the year made her want to come back.
I think you have a good idea about building a middle class here. But the flood of people has to come from somewhere. One on my other friends who left said, "None of my moron fb friends could ever learn how to post here. They may be morons, but they are my morons, so I am going back over there."
And before you say he does not make money on fb - yes he does. Like me, he has affiliate links, books and coaching there and does pretty well with it. I wish I could say the same, but I have neglected everything else for steemit to my detriment.
As for the current price? It's killing me.
So many people trying to earn in crypto are having a terrible time. The wild year is bound to have a difficult impact on nearly anyone who's primary source of income is crypto.
I also know some people who have been able to monetize their Facebook accounts through writing about products and services.
I had a decent chicken blog going on Facebook myself. However, it just wasn't a subject that was going to gain a lot of followers here. :)
I hope you can hold on, and if you need to find another income source, try to keep your blog alive by posting once in a while.
I don't know when or even if, but I do believe the markets will boom again.
Good wishes to you and your son
Chickens! I'm in a Thai neighborhood in Bangkok and chickens are everywhere. I have many posts about them, since this is such an interesting sight to me.
Thank you so much for your good wishes. I am trying to hold on and stay positive and comments like yours help me a lot.
It's simple. Your content is not interesting enough for majority of people. You need to speak in more interesting ways and about topics that actually are exciting. I almost felt asleep checking your page out.
Are you are traveler or do you need to lose weight?
Food, health, and travel are what I mostly post about. Since 40% of Americans are obese and 40% are overweight, I do think my topics are interesting enough for the majority of people, but I see you do not agree.
Please do me the favor to comment further so that I can improve.
Write about other topics too, something exciting.
What would be your top ideas for exciting topics? Consider that I am a 58 year old, female, weight loss coach, living in SE Asia.
I don't understand why your gender and age has any relevance. Now we are making everything digital.
well said, seriously nail hit on head
some of us have been here through a lot of the storms and we weather them and keep on
people can choose to be grumpy and unleash it on others or do something more "normal" and keep writing posts and creating content like this :) is our choice
bravo
When you say people need to focus on building their accounts, do you simply mean keep on posting? And does strength in numbers simply mean finding communities to join or is there something more to it?
Just wanting to check in case there's something I'm missing.
When one posts, they earn STEEM, Steem Power, and SBD. I guess what I mean by building the account is adding value to the wallet, mainly in the form of Steem Power, because having more Steem Power is what gives your vote more weight, which means you can place more rewards on someone's post. More people around having higher powered votes means more people can earn more. So the more you build each other's accounts up in value, the more you'll earn over time if you consistently help one another out.
There are far more of you with low value accounts than there are with high value accounts. If you worked together, you'd all slowly but surely be able to build each other up, get higher and higher valued votes, and earn more and more.
Use the internal market to sell SBD for STEEM, then power it up along with the STEEM you earn. If and when the value of STEEM rises, so will the value of your account, and your votes will be worth more as well. What I mean by building up the account is stockpiling as much Steem Power as you possibly can by posting and earning, then use that Steep Power by voting for one another instead of not voting at all or wasting the small votes on posts that already have hundreds of votes. Don't spend, just hold. It pays off in the long run.
Right, okay, I getchya. Thanks. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. So do you think most people with low value accounts *aren't * doing that but are cashing out instead?
That's not an option for me, living in Australia. Cashing out 20 bucks isn't worth it :) But if I was in, say, Venezuela, I would be paying myself out to buy a million dollar loaf of bread.
I'm hoping to continue to build up my account as I grow. I'm a bit nervous about that actually as out in the fiat flatlands I'm broke. I would hope that I would resist paying myself out for 200 bucks in the real world every now and then and instead reinvest it but I guess I'll wait and see on that one.
Whatever people do with their money is up to them but it doesn't make much sense to cash out as it comes, yet some folks do, yes. It's easier to find reasons to support people who can in turn support others than it is to find reasons to support people who just want to take the money and run.
Even these folks in need would benefit from posting more now and holding on for a few months or years instead of just giving up completely because the value of the tokens dropped. They could buy a bakery instead of bread if they'd just play their cards right.
Sure. But some people are in such dire straits that they can't make the more rational decision because they need that pittance now. Building up for the future is not an option open to everyone, unfortunately. But I get what you mean.
Very true. Couple days ago I was reading the new reports on world poverty they released and it said some people in Africa live on less than a buck sixty a day. Can you even imagine?
But they lived, and got this far in life without the added income a place like this can provide. If they continued to live, while working here, and holding on, living longer, they could have a life beyond the loaf of bread.
I agree with that sentiment, and feel the same way. Those of us sticking it out during the down times will hopefully see the fruits of our labor. Supporting those active still is crucial in my opinion. Thanks for sharing @whatsup!
Time to band together with the Holders!
yes I couldn't agree more!
Hello @whatsup
The subject you picked is really hot lately...
Many people are expressing their concerns...and I think it is absolutely natural...
What “bothers” me actually is witnessing lots if whales powering down lately...but I keep reminding myself that most of those people were the first ones that bought when steem’s price was below .10
So even nowadays...they might consider selling because hey....it is still 10x their investment...maybe more.
I am only 5.5 months here but I believe in this project in the long term.
That is why I bought 1.3K steem yesterday and powered all up. And I will continue to do so if the price keeps going down.
Maybe it is an opportunity...maybe a mistake...we’ll see
Congrats on buying in! Good timing also... I hope.
Regarding the whales that are powering down that is actually a mixed blessing. On one hand we need better distribution. On the other hand it could drive down the price some. Again though if the price is low that opens the door to more people being able to buy a little stake. This project is really young, we can survive some ebb and flow.
I'm with you. I've lost money on steem purchased, but only if I choose to sell now which isn't happening. Matter of fact I've only ever powered up and see no reason that would change in the next few years.
With the PIF contest we are trying hard to keep redfish engaged and growing. My current vote isn't enough to effect a dolphin, but the smaller members I can make a difference of them getting paid or not sometimes.
With the current market conditions I'm looking to purchase more steem if I can figure out where to pull some money from. If I can double my personal SP that would put me in a much better situation to helping others. Also trying to post a little outside my comfort zone like I did last night with this post We all have sorrow, But if we are wise, We know that there's always tomorrow. It's actually way outside my comfort zone for sharing, but it's an important message that I feel others need to hear.
Other thing I'm doing while steem is low is starting a second account which will become the home of the PIF Curation Contest and then other contests. While steem is sitting so low it allows me to add SBI shares to that account without a major investment. These share will build up a nice guaranteed vote on each post which will help fund future contests. Currently just starting account builder posts for @pifc right now which are designed to help power up that account. This account will hopefully be hosting a range of contests designed to help new members engage with the community and grow their SP. Trying to come up with contests and reward programs that are designed to encourage account growth over rewards that will be cashed out. If anyone has ideas let me know please!
Really great proactive things! I love that you are focusing on other accounts your own size and it is my guess and experience that is a good strategy. I did the same and those accounts grew also. If you do it well, you will attract larger attention.
The way I see it helping engage those who are around the same rep score as me and getting them to help curate the smaller members with the contest achieves 2 things at once. First we are keeping a part of steemit active and engaged that steemit needs to stay alive IMO. Those in the 50's rep score are pretty critical to potential of a middle class emerging in steemit and IMO a middle class is essential to the long term viability of this platform. You can't have 100k accounts all hoping for a visit from whales. People like myself I believe are the future dolphins of steemit and we will help keep it growing.
Second we are then helping the redfish get off the ground. More of them we help and draw into our own little community of account growth oriented stemians the better. As we are looking for those who create their own quality content it's the exact type of people we need to earn enough that they stay interested. We don't need more bots, we don't need another resteeming service, we don't need yet another POS that spins content, and we don't need more scam artists. We need real live humans which require real live human engagement to keep them interested until they start earning $$$. It's horrible looking at newbies posts in the intro section and the comments they get. It's bot after bot trying to get their teeth into these brand new members...horrible first experience for someone coming on.
Anyways it's a topic I can talk about for a long time. Hope at one point someone with some spare SP is willing to give a delegation to @pifc so we can launch it sooner then later. Would love to be running that account even with 10k SP, which is a ton to me, but a drop in the bucket to some accounts. While a small amount I know it's a big ask as it's asking for something in return for nothing and each SP represents potential earnings to the owner. Sure at some point someone will see the PIF movement and it will happen, until then we are growing slow and steady 13 weeks into the contest.
My "people in the know" told me to get out months ago. But I figured nobody really knows anything.... so I stayed because I like it here and what goes down must come up.
Today there was another article in my news feed. This time stating it thinks Bitcoin is going to head down to $2,500. Well that would suck. It might even happen. We might not even break even by the end of the year.... or ever.
Still, I enjoy writing so I will continue writing my fiction and posting it here.
Recently I won neoxian's fiction contest. I plan to release a new piece later today.
You've got people? I want people! :) Yeah, I'm inclined to believe it is going to be a long bloody summer, but I do think it will recover.
Congratulations on the fiction contest!! That is awesome.
"There is drama from the trending page to promoted." No one should promote drama lol.
Today is looking a little better than when you posted this so that might lift everyone's spirits a little which is good because I have noticed a pretty grim mood around here too.
I don't know, the price is a bit depressing but I am loving the more favorable ratio of Sp to SBD in the payouts. With less competition for attention it has been easier to engage with the others who are dedicated to the site. Plus some of the larger accounts are doing things like you mention here and helping people who seem to want to stick around and in doing so they are "grooming" the next crop of successful users. I guess what I am saying is that it isn't all doom and gloom. I, personally, almost doubled my sp and bought sbi for some people who I thought deserved it and put myself in a much better position for whenever the price does creep back up.
There is always opportunity in crisis for those who know to look for it.
Time to accumulate? I don't know. It seems like the market is in an Elliot Supercycle wave 4. This could drag out for a while and go down another 50% fron here.
Sure it could! I think the summer is going to be long and bloody. Many people who accumulate do it on the way down and even on the way up!
In the Steem Economy, it is a great time to earn your stake.
It takes for ever for minnows and redfish to grow. They / we need the support of dolphins / whales ect. We can form a bunch of groups and our votes combined would still be worth next to nill.
I look at the low price as an opportunity to get in at a decent price. Others who bought in at higher prices now have a chance to lower the average price they paid.
I haven't invested yet but I am keeping a close eye on that price. My goal was to grow organically, which I think is important to prove can be done for the success of this platform. That plan may change if the price keeps dropping.
It does take forever! It has taken me nearly 2 years and a little of my own investment. For those who don't want to put in money, they will have to put in time.
We have:
37 Whales
260 Orcas
1686 Dolphins
8243 Minnows
129,615 Redfish
If we are going to grow the minnows are going to have to accept, it can be done, but it is going to take a lot of time. :)
Glad you are here, and figuring out how to grow your account
Time is not enough either ( unless you can live to be 500 ) and neither is good content. Its the lack of support for plankon / redfish / minnows that is one of the main reasons for the extremely bad user retention.
I am not speaking about accounts that have just signed up but ones that have been here for 2/3 + months showing they are willing to stick around but get little action from users on their blogs. Lots get frustrated and leave after a period of time when all it likely would of took to keep them around is an upvote or two from a whale / dolphin to keep them motivated and in return when they grow they likely do the same for the new plankton / redfish that arrive. That is how we start improving user retention. All the steem on Steemit isn't going to be any good to anyone if all the minnows and redfish decide to leave the platform.
If accounts can't grow organically here then its highly likely Steemit won't succeed.
That's exactly what I said to someone the other night and got raked over for it. I told them I might make being a whale if I found somehow to post from my grave someday. Maybe if I was like twenty I might make it by the time I was fifty. They will argue with you until you are red in the face that the increase in competition for attention has absolutely nothing to do with it and that posting quality content continuously will get you there yet I see people who've been on here for over a year still making less than two dollars a post. Now look....they are all here telling each other to drop anchor and close the gates. How pathetic. They are all going into swarm mode, look at 'em....
All dressed up in incognito so you can't distinguish which one's going to be more ruthless, you gonna get eatin' by a whale, orca or dolphin?.....my bets the one on the left. (it's always the lefties) Yeah I thought something was up the last few days seeing all these big hitters on each others blogs. Frickin millionaire people crying over taking a pay cut yet when the minnows cry out they tell them to write more quality content....it wasn't doing them much good to begin with and it surely isn't going to do them any good with the upper tier having a attitude like this.
Some of those with SP don`t realize the reason why they are getting comments and upvotes on their blog is because they have SP.
I would like the ones that say, make quality content, to go and start a new account and with no aid try to grow that account.
You should go read this article, it's lengthy but you will see why it's in a whales best interest not to upvote, the creation of a rewards pool actually diminishes their stake. It also explains why it's in the best interest of the platform that so few keep a hold on their stake.
https://steemit.com/steem/@spectrumecons/steem-explained-by-an-economist
That was lengthy. Admittedly I only skimmed it as it detailed allot of stuff I already knew. Awesome post for anyone to read. While from a certain point of view its not in the best interest for whales to upvote if they never upvote the site will become a ghost town and all the SP in it will be worthless to them.
The question is how many of their own sock puppets are they up voting? They can write under a lot of different names, several have multiple accounts. They cherry pick and promote very few people, I am assuming those are the ones who made it between minnow and whale and why there's so few of them. It also explains why a newbies vote is worthless, built in self protectionism. Seems to be that if you aren't talented enough of a writer the only way for someone like that to get anywhere is to buy in, use bots, create their own army of sock puppets to vote them, invest in delegation. Otherwise you'll be long dead before anything significant pans out here.
I made 95 posts that didn't earn enough to be rewarded. There are a limited number of accounts with both stake and time to curate.
Some will see the opportunity and others will not.
Everyone likely made their fair share of post that didn't earn enough to be rewarded. We all made plenty of comments that are in the same category as well.
The problem is the ones that don't see the opportunity are going to far outweigh the ones that do. Which could mean there is no opportunity because this place needs users to be successful.
Being able to make money on Steemit is what its attraction is. If the average Joe / Jane can't do that then this place won't succeed and will end up being just a niche site. Millions of users aren't going to stop using Facebook to come to a site where they watch the same posters raking in all the rewards while they get a handfull of upvotes and 2 cents.
The price will not always be this low. Many will get discouraged and some will not.
I've never been of the opinion we will compete with Facebook. I know others are. Many of us are trying to help where we can, but people are going to have to reset their expectations and it isn't my goal to retain a lot of people can't either create amazing content or invest. Those users come later with the additional front ends. Just one way to look at it. We aren't ready quite yet for needy minnows. Right now we need people who can deal with the early stage of the site and figure out how to make it work.
It will not be that way forever and this is just my opinion, for right now those are not the target people to retain... In my view. :) No sight that has to pay their users to stay will be successful either.
I've always called sub 500SP's plankton and had no idea what a redfish was - but it sounds bigger than a minnow
this is my fishrank:
Whales (500,000+ Steem Power or 1,000+ MV)
Orcas (50,000 – 500,000 Steem Power or 100 – 1,000 MV)
Dolphins (5,000 – 50,000 Steem Power or 10 – 100 MV)
Sardines (500 – 5,000 Steem Power or 1 – 10 MV)
Plankton (0 – 500 Steem Power or 0 – 1 MV)
This post covers all this stuff well:
https://steemit.com/steem/@spectrumecons/steem-explained-by-an-economist
I using the levels as recorded by steemitboard. Because that is where I steal the data from! :)
This is great though, I will check it out.
Actually I just had a look - Redfish can be pretty big!
is content really important in a social media platform? i am not sure at all. i was never on facebook but i have seen enough posts there. i think the quality of content over there is very ordinary. i see better content over here but there is no one to read them.
any writer will wonder about that a lot.
the other relevant question that needs to be asked is monetization of content through ads far more effective?
when i read this post, my first impression is this:
there is a perception that keeps coming across on that i feel i must point out. it is not like the people who write good content will exit because they cannot make money. i dont think they are making much money anyway and i agree that it is relative. i think quality content creators will exit if they dont get people to read their stuff. those upvotes that we always obsess about dont have to result in money all the time. but as a community i would think we are obliged to help them get better. that comes with generating viewership and quality criticism.
if any community wants to be successful, i dont believe that it is by showing solidarity with people who have stake. they dont need it. money is unsustainable in the long run as a incentive.
right now, what is steemit's identity as a community? maybe that is still a work in progress and we have no idea at the moment?
It's decentralized at this time, which means we are starting to gather naturally into sub-communities. Eventually, the site will support that better. For now there are people who care more about quality and they are banding together.
In addition, there are contests, communities that are more about just gathering. I'm more into the social network side than other things.
I don't think that it is all about the content, it is also about investment, speculation and networking.
hmm, i see your point. steemit is a social networking platform. You have rightly pointed out that it is about money (investment and speculation) and finding alignments(networking). they play a far bigger role than content itself.
this puts things into perspective for new comers or even people who are at the bottom. when new people come into the platform they have limited ways too engage with other people. the relationships you are talking about takes a long time. so their only option is to focus on what they do and do it as well as they can. hence they produce content. that is the edge they have.