Are You Hustling Enough?......What About Me?
I'm never sure if I actually hustle enough. I think part of the reason why I always have this question in my mind is because at times where my effort was absolutely at 100% I know that it wasn't sustainable so when I'm not on that level I start wondering if I'm getting soft. I'm a lot better at gauging my athletic performance as a metric of knowing where I'm at. With business it is a lot harder. Also comparing to other people is a really toxic situation in a lot of ways as well. Just even thinking about this post I started thinking about different entrepreneurs and started making excuses for why they got to where they did. I mean WTF? Some of it might be truth but just me thinking about it I started coming up with excuses of why I'm "behind" them....etc.
Since I live in Tucson I have seen workers from Mexico work super hard. They wouldn't talk they would just work and it was almost like a machine. They took pride in their work and it is often hard to know how much they are getting ahead because they might have to send money home to family members and have other obligations. They are working hard but I don't know how much of it is a smart hustle oftentimes.
The Hardest I Have Worked On Steemit
When I first got on Steemit the price was spiked way up and I was able to get and account and then they had to shut down new accounts for awhile so it was like a walled garden in here. It was still difficult but I was going crazy trying to produce content and of course I was getting frustrated. I worked super hard then and would wake up and instantly jump out of bed and run to the computer and start working on stuff. Same thing last summer. When the price spiked I was trying to go hard and was working on the stuff really hard. Again during the boom in December and January I was working crazy hard.
I can honestly tell you I'm not working as hard right now as I was during those times.
I'm trying to figure out if that is a natural reaction that is good for me or if it hurts me in the long run. It doesn't make sense to spin my wheels but in a lot of regards I think we are seeing a trend that it is getting harder and harder to get STEEM Power. Even around June of 2017 when prices were around $2 or so I was able to put up anything and I would earn an automatic $10. Sounds decent but what if a person is trying to live on it. Let's say you have to make $100 for the day and so you are going to have to bust out 10 posts. There becomes a diminishing returns because you partially blow everyone's voting power doing that. I did it a couple of times but it wasn't sustainable at all. Now with prices around $3.50 I will automatically get around $4 for a post which isn't really that great considering how much my account is worth. That being said I'm hoping to step up my game especially on the live streaming front. I'm seeing other DLivers and YouTubers going live a lot and I honestly need to start just grabbing my phone and start streaming more now that I have it figured out for DLive. Because sometimes I don't feel like I have anything important to say but in reality I know a decent amount about crypto and have a view point that people might appreciate.
Are The People Who Quit Just Not Hustlers Or Are They The Smart Ones?
I have a real hard time mentally with this question for both athletics and for business. If we are talking about Olympic sports it is almost always a path to financial devastation in a country like the United States because athletes oftentimes don't get real solid funding unless they are the top athlete in their event. For a sport like baseball a lot of players are trapped in the minors and it can be a rough road financially unless a person can sign a Triple A contract. With basketball it is the same thing, guys are there one day and gone two weeks later and then they are bouncing around like a ping pong ball that fell off a frat boys beer pong table. It makes it hard for a person to know when to stop playing because they might physically have all the tools and we have all heard the feel good stories of over looked players who get their shot and started ball'n out of control. For an athlete they hope that stories happens to them but most of the time time it doesn't.
So statistically does the person who just quits end up better off by not trying any longer?
Same thing here on the STEEM blockchain. There were a very small handful of content creators that were able to catch a pretty solid ride went he prices came back up in 2017. Most the people quit posting and a lot of people left the platform. There is really no way of knowing if they ended up better by doing that. Let's pretend they used that time to build up some other business and used some of those proceeds to buy a bunch of TRON because JR Business recommended it and then it shot up to $0.28 and they sold. LOL..... it is possible.
Conclusion
Sometimes working hard and working smart can be totally blurry to most including myself. I'm the guy who chipped all the pool tiles out with a hand chisel instead of just buying a pneumatic chisel and saving myself time.
I guess we can say that a person can hustle themselves into being broke if they don't work smart, get too greedy, and don't know when to cut your losses.
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I'm in the same boat. I go back and forth.
Right now I'm feeling like Steemit is a good inroad into crypto. It's one of the few places I consistently get "paid" in crypto.
Even if it's just a bit.
But Steemit is a great example of a hard work trap. We can work too hard on good content and not smart enough in the game aspect.
The best athletes aren't the most physically dominant. They are the ones who have field vision. They are smarter than everyone else, then they work hard. I think that's the relation.
On that note, I think we need to continue to work smart and hard.
Plus keep the door open for a shift into other crypto
Yeah STEEM is a could inroad for sure and there are a lot of great things happening here and it has allowed me to diversify into other cryptos as well.
I was real back and forth about powering down part of the account and then going deeper into EOS. Actually there are tons of coins I want to invest in or double down on. I have my hands in too many cookie jars already probably.
I like that term. "Hard Work Trap"...... for a long time I was calling AdSense a new form of slave labor. LOL
It can certainly be tough and guys like us that want to live free but also know financials pretty well can really go back and forth in our minds all the time.
yea, I've definitely considered powering down a bit and diving deeper on EOS. It's really a tough call.
In reality, EOS is much farther reaching. Where as Steem is perfect for socials, it won't power tons of diverse apps. But the market cap for steem is still relatively small and we can earn rewards holding steem. It's a tough trade to consider. I'm just happy to be more in dpos in general.
Hey buddy great post, you bring up a number of interesting points. In regards to whether Steemit is worth our time, I would say there's going to be like 1%, probably less who are actually able to make an income on here, for the rest of us it's going to be beer money.
Now that's not to say its completely not worth it, I do a lot of things that earn me beer money, typically they are either...
A. something I think I can build up into something larger over time.
or
B. Something that I somewhat enjoy and don't really mind doing so if I'm earning money with it that's just an added bonus.
For Steemit I highly doubt I'm ever going to turn my account into a significant money maker. Whatever time I spend on Steemit earning peanuts could be better spent doing something else that would make more money so I have to ask myself, do I actually enjoy spending time on this platform to the point where I would be doing it even if I wasn't being paid, all bit it small amounts?
I almost view steemit as an MLM program. You know how with MLM programs the program is about selling water filters, but you don't actually make any money selling water filters, you make money by bringing in new people.
Steemit bills itself as a place where you can earn by sharing content, in reality it's more about gamesmanship. Do you know how to use bots? Do you know how to navigate the system, do you know which voting bots pay the most and how much to donate to get the most effective bang for your buck?
Also there's a handful of people at the top making money off everyone below them.
Also like an Amway or whatever else, while its mainly the people at the top making money, there will be breakout stars. With an MLM a new person can come in and if they have a large network, if they are a good salesman, charismatic, likeable, believeable, etc yeah they can rise to the top and do really well but its more the exception than the norm. Same as here on Steemit, we see some new people come on and really make their mark but for every one of them there's hundreds of others whocome on here, create great content, put in a lot of effort and have nothing to show for it.
Steemit used to be a daily part of my life and something I really focused on. I'm not planning on going anywhere, I'm here to stay, however I'm basically going to treat it like some other social networks where when I have time I'll put time into it but I'm not going to push other things aside or go out of my way for it.
I would encourage anyone who's making content for Steemit, DTube, DLive etc to also post it elsewhere maximize the possibilities for success and making money across multiple platforms, its very possible you'll have more success or that your niche will be more well received on another platform.
I have somewhat compared it to MLM as well and heard others do the same. I think more so it is hard for someone to come in and be able to leave their mark on the platform without being sort of the same contingent that came from BitShares. Some of the Witnesses do a ton and then others don't seem to do much but it is almost like they were there by default because they were early investors in BitShares and were witnesses over there. The same thing will likely happen with EOS. There are a handful of people who will essentially end up with a money printing machine and it seems like if you get out ahead of people with your power then you have enough influence to sustain yourself. But that mark is more around 100,000 Steem Power so it is a substantial investment.
I get what you are saying about only 1% making sustainable incomes. I have been watching the situation for awhile and no content creator has gotten rich off here. Like Millions earned which can be viewed a couple of ways. There is enough money flowing around that could have allowed a couple people to get rich but since everyone has a vested interested in the platform then we somewhat all have our own goals where as on YouTube the viewer can be monetized with an ad even if they aren't creating content or leaving comments. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to both sides.
Also if a person puts in a large investment into the platform they are expecting a return so they are going to have to do what they see fit to increase that value.
I'm kind of lucky the post made as much as it did. It is somewhat hit and miss sometimes for sure.
I hustle on multiple projects and steemit is one of the more time consuming with least reward of them all. I consider it as a way of doing my hobby and getting a little something for it. If I was only concerned with profit, Steemit would not be high on the list as compared to other crypto projects.
I hear you on that and plus you know a lot about mining and have been in the game for a long time so sometimes I neglect other stuff I need to be doing. Like I'm Starting up my SmartCash wallet for the first time in 7 weeks at this point to make sure I got my SmartRewards. lol
Thank you Brian. Yeah, I don't think making a full time income of $3k a month or more is really realisitc here at least from just doing straight blogging/vlogging. Although I do see people like @exyle doing pretty damn good.
Of course I think he is a witness and trying to get that $300 a day for top 10. That's why he recently went full time Steemit and quit his other business. That is my speculation
But I look at it as something that I do when my Family is asleep. And I can crank out half way decent Content all day everyday non stop.
So it is relaxing for me. Just looking to get to the point of $10 to $20 a day ( SP and SBD) for doing just straight blogging. Just added stream of income for me
At this point a person has to have substantial power and then be putting in a ton of work to really earn anything close to a full time income. With @exyle he powered up like $90,000 worth at one point and all his content revolved around just talking overwhelmingly postive about STEEM so while I like him and have upvoted him a decent amount through the past year or more I just kind of classify a lot of his content in the circle jerk category. But he seems like a nice guy and people like him and he has enough power to push his own stuff pretty good and then others with power will align with you once you have power.
That is the thing. Once you have power and money on here then other people with power and money want to rub shoulders with you.
I can't fault him necessarily for mainly focusing on STEEM content. That is what other investors continually upvote so it becomes and echo chamber of positive info about STEEM.
Great post, and something I am sure many of us have thought about before.
I think it is important to think about the future value of your posts, say when STEEM is $10+. I mean, whatever you have in STEEM will increase in value then and, as long as you didn't cash it out, you will capture that value.
Never compare yourself to others, that way lies madness!
It's hard, I think that if you are questioning yourself you are doing the right thing... if that makes any sense lol
I get what you are saying.....if you are always double thinking if you should be doing something or not it will really mess with your head.
It is tough to push super hard at things for sustained amount of time without seeing some reward.
The one thing I will say about comparing yourself to that in athletics people just continue to get better and better at a younger age comparing themselves to others. Now with video online you can see what others are doing and suddenly it becomes possible in the persons head and then they figure..... well if they are doing it then I have to as well. Same with action sports. I remember when the first back flip was and the first double backflip on a dirtbike...... then they started doing them on Snowmobiles. It is evolving so fast it is unreal.
Now I'm seeing it all the time on Instagram.
Yeah, physical stuff where you are there in the flesh or can see how it is done is much easier than this invisible online malarkey.
You never know the rules, it is always like other people seem to know the rules better because they are doing better and the thing is. You might never know why. IS it because they are better, maybe... probably not. You just dont know. So I say fuck it. And on here, well, as long as you arent shitposting and you never do then justdo what feels natural and let it work itself out without killing ya :OD
yeah that is true. I think one thing on this platform is that there are a lot of ghost figures that had the real powerful accounts. Bitcoin / Ethereum / Bitshares whales who then diversified over here and ended up with a lot of power. A lot of them are very technically sophiticated so they could have made a ton early on. Like remember @wang ? I just checked that account and he cashed out 150,000 STEEM 7 / 8 months ago. Jeez! But I think he initially earned a ton by running that bot. who knows who it was. Just a Ghost! lol
I remember wang! Man, 150,000 steem! That's wild. Yeah, it's funny if you look at old posts and see who was voting back then. So many faces that are either gone or now delegate to bots. sigh
Yeah it is so true. I sort of figured we would all move together as young whale calves and grow up together to travel the open oceans together. LOL I guess others didn't see it the same way.
Hehe, that would have been nice. I think for long term folk the big hurdle is when you hit the mid sixties as a rep. I found support talked off dramatically and it seemed more focused on newbies
I think so as well. It is odd because I see a few who seemed to achieve a level of support that had some heavy hitters. I also think that if a person gets 100,000 SP or more they are in a really good position to attract other Orcas / whales and bloated dolphins
What's really depressing to me and says a lot about Steemit is you are an establsihed user with a following of over 4,000 people, tons of posts under your belt, (68) reputation score and on a good quality post like this you get one spam comment saying please follow me and upvote me, another thumbs up meme and besides me one legitimate comment do date. Says a lot about the stat of Steemit. I do see this post made you $40 so that's the bright side but still kinda sucks to spend time to start a discussion make a thoughtful post and get essentialy one comment and your a bigger user on here, imagine what that means for the smaller guys who have under 1000 subs and a lower reputation score, they are writing to the abyss
I made another comment! Boom! :OD
Yeah it can feel like writing into the abyss at time. Oddly enough on my last Livestream I did on DLive and YouTube at the same time on two different phones was actually decent information regarding crypto and I ended up losing subs and it didn't get many views or comments. It is like some people got their ass beat so bad with crypto in this last crash that they were pissed to see some video from me talking about it. Hhahah. I don't know. Other YouTubers who talk about crypto were saying the same thing. That they were losing subscribers.
I still haven't been monetized on that channel so I'm mainly only going to Steam to it at the same time I'm doing streams to DLive. That way I'm not putting a ton of extra effort into creating content for there. Then the screencast videos I do I'm going to mainly dump them on YouTube but more focus on the DLive / STEEM audience. I just really wish YouTube would monetize the channel. I would feel so much better about the time I spent putting stuff up there if that was the case.
Funny you said some Youtubers were losing subs over crypto, I don't know that I would say I lost subs but I got enough comments essentially saying we get it, you like crypto, I sure wish you got back to doing business videos, so I finally decided to get back to my roots.
It's kind of funny, that sort of coincided with crypto taking a dump and just losing most peoples interest. For the past several weeks if not even months I've kind of tuned out to crypto partly out of busyness, partly for my mental health and partly because I know I'm not gonna sell at these prices so why even watch it.
I feel bad for some of these crypto Youtubers, most of them came out of nowhere and had a pretty established following, were I imagine making some good money, especially while things were going mainstream adn prices were skyrocketing. Once the markets took a dump I saw views on crypto videos really tank so its always frustrating when you think you got something going and then it comes to a screetching halt, reminds me of hoverboards back in 2015 or something like that.
I know crypto will come back so they will be okay but definitely felt for them as I imagine some got really excited about their progress and then probably saw 80% plus of their audience just tune out to crypto.
Things seem to be getting a bit more exciting again, markets showing some signs of bullishness, i think the rise and support is too much to be another bull trap.
I'm trying to formulate a plan right about now for what my exit points are to take some profits, I want to have a concrete plan and to actually stick to it. I knew I shoulda taken some money off the table at 18k and when things are so crazy its like were going to 25k, were going to 50k and it gets easy to get greedy and sell. Had I sold at 18k I could have taken some insane profits and then bought back in at 7k or there abouts and taken advantage of the next runup but as it stands now waiting to get back to where we were.
Im gonna gradually sell some stuff at like 12k, 15k, 18k and gonna let the rest ride. I have too high a proportion of my savings in crypto so if I can get some of that money off the table Ill be in a better position to jump in on downturns in the future.
I hear ya on having exit strategies and making sure not to be overly greedy. It can be tough sometimes for sure.
I agree with you on there probably being too much support to be another bull trap. I don't think we will hit a lower low at this point below $5,900. I feel 90% certain of that now.
I don't feel too sorry for some of the crypto YouTubers because I felt like they were just talking out of their ass. In my mind the best crypto YouTuber is actually Box Mining which I'm glad to see he is still making content and was able to continue on.
But if you think about it another reason some of the channels were able to even get as big as they did is because they were giving away money that was all benefits of Bitconnect and other stuff like it. It seems like a long time again but Trevon giving away 0.1 BTC was nuts. Hhahahha.
I am surprised so many people got so hyped and then it was like the excitement was shut off like a light. They will all be back when the prices surge really hard again.
STEEM is actually pumping today. Up to $4 which is nice. It's time to produce a lot of content! I also need my EOS investment to really do good.
You bring up a great point about crypto youtubers. It was a bunch of giveaways to build their audiences. One thing I really like about Crypto and even more specficially Steemit and Steem is accountability. If I say I'm giving away 50 Steem, I can't just talk out of my ass and never give the money away. People can check my wallet and see not only that I gave away 50 Steem, but even who I gave it to so I couldn't do a fake giveaway and just give the money to you everytime and have you give it back.
I noticed Dan Dasilva and Tanner J Fox were doing Bitcoin giveaways for a couple weeks and then quickly cancelled it and went back to Paypal giveaways. While I can't say for sure, knowingthat 90% of Youtube giveaways are complete bullshit I wonder if they got away from crypto because its more easy to track if people are actually following through.
It was funny to see every Youtuber jump on crypto as well. I'm far from the foremost expert on crypto myself but had been in the game for quite a while and was introducing it to my audience long before it got super popular. It was funny to see during the December hype Youtubers who just learned about Bitcoin 2 days ago from a Youtube article fumbling to explain it to their audience in an attempt to collect their $10 Coinbase referral.
I think I made my first Bitcoin video at $487, had been involved at that point for about 2 years and back then I think it was a lot ballsier to make a video about crypto. While we still have skeptics today who call it beanie babies and all that nonsense back when I started crypto was taken even less seriously. It really is amazing to see how much the crypto space has grown on youtube and like you said the vast majority were just kinda talking out of their ass and rereading crypto articles from cointelegraph so I guess hard to feel bad for them
Well the crazy thing is I was going to do a channel for crypto stuff back in 2013 but I looked at the amount of views and all that and it didn't make sense to spend all that time on it because the top YouTubers talking about crypto had about 10,000 subs. Again in 2016 I was seeing guys like Trevon, Craig Grant, and Crypt0 talking about crypto and I looked at their views and sub counts and just figured it was a huge waste of time. Then when everything suddenly went nuts those guys ended up being the main resource in a lot of ways. Me and other people were really blown away by that.
I do feel sorry for some of the YouTubers and content creators who were pushing hard to make videos and not gaining and then at some point they end up having to throw in the towel.
I really need to be making daily videos but a lot of times even with what I know I feel like I don't know enough or that it is too much of a repeat of stuff.
This thought is damn deep!!!
Many people quit out of impatience
Other quit steemit because they refused to take hold of the opportunities and possibilities in this blockchain.
I think having a critical evaluation of situations can great help ones decision.
Most peeps make a very hasty decision.
It is indeed better to work smart than to work hard.
For most people treating steemit as a money maker, if they dont actually enjoy the platform, are going to find Steemit to be a huge failure and a waste of time. I don't necessarily even think its about hard work, its about is your niche going to be wel received here, are you going to get the support from teh right people. I had two recent posts which did 120 plus upvotes and 140 plus upvotes and neither earned any money so its not about writing engaging content and connecting with people, its about connecting with the right people ie whales and powerful people on this platform. Not complaining about it but it is the reailty.
You are so right.
The right connections will give you the right results.
It is pretty crazy how fast some people quit. That is one thing I have noticed. I always keep checking back in on platforms. Like Minds, Sola......etc Then once they are a better opportunity I will post there more.
It amazes me too.
Most people over here always feel I have a secret agenda that will benefit me once they sign up on steemit.
They feeling I'm promoting steemit for some instant commission.
And when they are finally on it, they tend to give up on it easily.
I wish I can even get more platforms that works like steemit and Sola.
Those are just the two I know
I sort of got that feeling as well. That people thought it was Multi Level Marketing or something and that I would get paid if they got on here some how. I just don't try to get people on it anymore. Whoever ends up here then cool!
I understand your feeling.
Crappy multi level marketing has indeed made people lost hope in making money online
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