My Experience Creating Capital on Steemit | Cryptocurrency Lifestyle
Creating capital is not a sin. On the contrary, it is the most basic form of viewing a productive life. In the morning, you rise up early, do something productive that creates more value than you began with, and then rest easy at night knowing that you did the best you could with what you had. Some of us are extremely slow learners. I know this, because I am one.
My Experience Creating Capital on Steemit Has Been Trial and Error
I am going to discuss some of the things I have learned, the mistakes I have made, and benefits I have discovered from my involvement on Steemit.
Pre-Condition: I began Steemit with 5 steem dollars - which is basically what you get with your FREE sign-up. No money of my own has ever been invested into the platform. None of my content has ever been down voted. My experiences with bots have all been flawed and basically useless.
Regarding Bots: I still don't understand how to use/create voting bots - Should I ever bother with it? Or focus on high quality content curation and community involvement? Please leave your feedback in the comments section!
Generating Capital
When I joined in 2017, I was incredibly busy with my own projects, and I didn't understand how the platform functioned. This is probably the number one reason for the burn-out rates where people sign-up and then lose interest. To-date, #TheDiaryGame hosted by @SteemitBlog, has been one of the most successful community engagement projects.
It wasn't until COVID-19 caused the most successful year of my life as a writer, to be thrashed by the Ides of March, that I returned to the Steemit ecosystem. With nothing else to do, I resurrected my life from the ashes of April.
In May, I decided to make a one-month commitment to writing on Steemit. The entire experiment crashed and burned. But, on May 27th, I began THE DIARY GAME. Since the day I began May 4th with an infuriatingly small $4 USD, and now, on August 6th, I have almost $300 USD of capital generated.
My goal, is to eventually earn $1,000 USD per month.
Understanding Steemit
Steemit is a blockchain structured social media platform that can be compared to Medium. When you create a post, you can write a story, create news, divulge insights, or showcase talent. The value of your talent including upvotes, resteems and comments, and the engagement you create, is what THEORETICALLY converts to capital that can be used to supplement your current income.
Since I am still very much a beginner, I choose to view it as a poor-mans investment vehicle by starting slowly. Since I live in a country that has a relatively weak currency, the Colombian Peso (COP), STEEM can eventually convert into a viable second income that I can withdraw or use for purchases. For now, I am going to pull out $50 increments to put into other types of cryptocurrency as investment vehicles. Eventually, I will convert it to USD or COP for paying rent, or buying essential items.
Insider Tips:
- Do not upvote yourself. Trust me, it helps you during the long haul.
- Create quality over quantity. Over the long term, you will gain a more lasting audience and income.
- Post at the time of day that your intended audience is most likely to be engaged.
- Earning doesn't get easy until you have a reputation score of 65. How you get there is up to you.
- The highest earners post up to 2-3 times daily. Consistency is everything on this platform.
- Participate in group activities or contests. Don't worry about quality - but community. Quality will come later as you learn how to write OR, showcase your talent.
- Curators in the contests place a higher value on people who don't use bots - this is a long term strategy.
- Newcomers should be powered up 100% until they get to 500 - 1,000 SP.
Current Issues Within Steemit
There will always been issues in a system that is inherently flawed, having been designed by humans. Sometimes contests become subjective. People use bots to increase earnings. Plagarism is as much an issue now as it has ever been. And, there are people who game the system, which results in a devaluing of the currency due to poor user value and interest.
Hive in a nutshell, is the ugly stepchild of Steemit being sold off to current CEO, Justin Sun. From what I understand, original community stake holders - called witnesses, created a coding structure called a "Hard Fork," which somehow diverted some capital of a large value, into a place where Justin Sun couldn't touch it. That place is still integrated with the Steemit Ecosystem, essentially being the same thing - but also apart with their own currency, curation circles and communities.
I am neutral choosing to err on the side of Steemit, because I am a creature of habit and I don't like to change when I am already accustomed to something that works for me. These statements are not meant to interfere or get involved with the current political situation between Hive and Steemit. The ongoing conflict may be what is retaining STEEM from gaining value while other cryptocurrencies are seeing massive increases.
My outlook is positive that eventually Hive and Steemit will settle their differences, or at the very least continue to coexist as peacefully as possible. The Diary Game has seen a much bigger circulation of curation rewards and value retaining practices like Powering Up (retaining your value on the system in a "savings" situation where the APR % interest is higher because you are instead investing in the platform.
This is in no way meant to be an expert approach to the Steemit platform, only my personal perspective based on experience. If I am misunderstanding, please comment to help me gain a deeper insight to the workings of creating capital on Steemit through high quality content curation and community involvement.
Future Goals
Obviously, I am still a small fish in this ocean. I have a lot to learn still. But, here I am swimming and picking up a few observations, and slowly growing. Reaching 1,000 SP was a big accomplishment for me, and equates out to $250 - 300 depending on value fluctuation.
My next milestone is 5,000 while still pulling out a percentage for other cryptocurrency investments or exchange it through online platforms until I have it in Dollars or Pesos. This requires between 3 and 4 steps to make the steem coins into currency in your home country. But, it IS possible to do.
Part of my presence here is about generating capital, but part is about creating a different sort of capital - an audience that I can transfer to my websites: OpenMindedTraveler.com, PereiraCityGuide.com or CoffeeAxisTravel.com, to grow my current audience. Over time I will review privacy products and travel accessories which have made my life easier. At that point I will leverage Amazon Affiliate links and my own Digital products.
Where there is a will, there is a way. (Ancient American Wisdom)
Note: Poloniex Exchange is NOT available to US Citizens/Residents. Don't ask me why, I learned it from my own experience trying to buy bitcoin, and being rejected - then having to research the "why." Soon, I will be taking that step. When I do I will write a follow-up topic to tell you about my experience actually doing it.
Follow me and enjoy my adventures in Colombia with #TheDiaryGame, hosted by @Steemitblog HERE: https://steemit.com/@openmindedtravel
Coffee Axis Culture Tourism and Expat Lifestyles Meets Wit and Wordpress! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/openmindedtraveler/
Hello @openmindedtravel, it is noted that you have gained experience on the platform and was able to obtain a good capital, thank you for sharing the experiences gained, I am sure that will serve as a guide for many of us.
So long, my friend!
I am here to help! #SteemOn
Hello friend, excellent publication, I like very much your way of thinking about it, I think that little by little we have acquired experience in this platform, nobody is born learned and has to do it day after day. Greetings!
Thanks @franyeligonzalez, the important thing is to never stop growing. Steemit is like fine wine, an acquired taste.
In Steem I think it's also good to invest, not in the short term. like what great people have done, giving a high level of trust to steem #spud4teem.
Loved @kiwiscanflay @xpilar
Hello! We are living in times where we MUST have a long and short term strategy to survive. I haven't quite done the #spud4steem contest, but it is high on my TO Do list.
So nice, it is good you have fought your way to make certain achievement and you can encourage others to do the same, greatly appreciate the tips too.
Thanks for reading!
Steemit is one large ecosystem where investors, writers/content creators, curators, community developers, software developers, and many more. I have been learning about the steemit world for four years now and i must say that it has been a wonderful experience.
Un grandioso post. Te felicito. Estaba leyendo sobre la criptomoneda bitcoin y me topé con este ecosistema y su comunidad tan espectacular. 🤩 Soy nueva usuaria y leyendo un poco ya estoy aplicando algunos de los buenos consejos empezando con buen pie. Envío saludos pues desde el vecino país, Venezuela. Abrazo 🤗
Hola, gracias por haber leído mis ideas sobre Steemit. Todo es un proceso de aprendizaje y ambición, no? Muchos abrazos de Colombia! No te pierdes fe, hay futuro aqui. #SteemOn
indentured servitude is voluntary conformity.
jealousy leads towards a form of value judgement.
this is the antipothy of freedom.
conformity delussion becomes a foundation of tribal groupthink.
i refer to chapter 50 of the T'ao de ching.
We live in times of gossip and judgement - even when well-meant. And, we only suffer by our own fault. I agree with you. People like us have lone-wolf mentalities. Being a little bit outside of the pack doesn't scare us. Greetings and hugs from Colombia!
Hello @openmindedtravel
You mention interesting points within this financial ecosystem. Here we can learn a lot, reading other posts, sharing information, meeting many more people. This is a good site.
I totally agree that the division or hard fork affected a lot on these sides.
I still don't know if it will recover, I hope it will, but I don't know. I'm still waiting.
It's okay if you're biased and only public in steemit, you have the right to do so, to make your decision
2020 has been a roller coaster ride, for Steemit too! Still, it warms my heart to know that so many people around the world are participating and generating their own capital.
Dear @openmindedtravel
Interesting choice of topic. Solid read. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Creating more value ... if only this would be everyones mindset, right?
ps. you've asked about our opinion on bidbots. And in my view - using them may attract attention of some cleaners/downvoters. So it's a risky thing to do. The only advantage I see is the fact, that your post may end up in trending page and attract few more views. That's about it.
Personally I do not use bidbots since HF23 took place.
What were reasons for which it crashed and burned?
That's a huge goal. I don't know anyone here who reached such an earnings, without investing tons of money and powering up in the first place.
It will be difficult to achieve, especially if you're planning to be withdrawing - large stakeholders do not like to support users who are "sucking out resources from steem/hive".
Enjoy your day, upvoted already :)
Yours, Piotr
Thanks Piotr. I really appreciate the feedback! I know I still have so much to learn.
I think the biggest reason is that while my content was good (as always), I had no audience, or way of reaching an audience that would read me. The Diary Game opened that door by allowing me to get involved with other shakers and movers on the platform.
My goal isn't to earn $1,000 USD on Steemit alone - only in total with all my other entrepreneurial activities which are diverse and spread across many different topics including real estate, lifestyle consulting, tourism, English teaching, photography, website building - I do it all. But, I do believe that even if I was pulling $100 per month off of Steemit while always growing my SP, the platform would become more viable for me. My goal is to create and retain capital on the platform, while also pulling out capital to do other things with.