STEEMIT TIPS- Circlejerks, "elbowing," and spitting in the sea: essential challenges of life cycle growth on steemit

Growing up is hard to do. You start as a minnow trying to find one person to say "Hey, your content doesn't suck!" You shift to a dolphin really trying to lay your unique brand. You end as a whale trying to figure out how to curate and how to lead.

Being a minnow is hard work

First, you don't know what you're doing. The learning curve on steemit isn't insurmountable, but it isn't easy. Getting even basic writing tools down a la Word or Word Press is a challenge in the available editor. If you're not technical then it's going to take a few weeks, which as a minnow is going to extend the lengthy times that you're going to spend writing hour long posts for pennies that barely anyone views. That's what I'm calling spitting in the sea.

You have content to share, but the audience is awash in content. You provide minimal benefit to others on a selfish level as your vote isn't worth much and your ability to resteem and make an impact is negligible too. It's not easy finding your way on here as @dbzfan4awhile expresses quite well.

I see a lot of these kinds of comments as I've focused energy on the Minnow Support Project. I saw them first hand too. 1 month ago I was a minnow still spitting in the ocean.

Your minnow challenge is to get noticed, find an audience, develop a voice, and gain the technical knowledge necessary to make visually appealing posts. It's a big hump.

Toss your elbows out and carve your niche as a dolphin

The dolphin stage I'm currently in seems to be a lot about branding and growth. I'm trying to take my message to the next level. I want peace, abundance, and liberty, but I also want people to respond to that and interact with it. I want to talk about truther related commentary, but I want it to be palitable. So, my brand on here which seems to be working ok is straight talking funny guy. It's also educator, helper, and supporter as I take on initially self imposed responsibility for this place as a witness that have since blossomed to vote induced obligations.

My vote is still only worth $0.05 at full power. So, my upvotes aren't really making a financial difference. What I can do is talk to people here, on discord, and on steemit chat in order to help make introductions and meet new people. Those kinds of connections have value and help onboard new people and grow user accounts already in place. I can also resteem. Now that I have 1050 followers I'm in the top 120 accounts on steemit by followers. I've watched posts I've resteemed go up by $40-50 and watched them get a whole new host of followers.

To me, it's the follower count that's the most important. I make enough salary from work that I can pay my bills and use this place as a savings account. I love my upvotes, but each upvote is temporary. Each follower is a long term gain. So, at this stage I think of my work as trying to elbow my way out of the crowd with some unique stories and help.

Growth, branding, marketing, marketshare... steemit blogging is a business, and thinking in those terms can help you reach more people.

Whaling is largely about curation

If you listen to the whales they'll talk about challenges curating. That's a big thing them. Curation is steemit mining, and if you have a lot of Steem Power then you have a shit ton of steemit hashpower. A big chunk of your goal is to maximize that, but how you maximize it can bring about pretty large consequences.

One of the fastest ways to curate is to think of it as mining, rely on bots, and upvote friends and fellow whales with big strong votes. It's a pretty fast way to get a followback doing the same thing. As a consequence you end up with a circle jerk. You see a literal shit post with 1 image and no text earn $600. That's part strong networking, but it kills everyone else who is working their ass off to get $0.07. But for the whale it's a fast way to thank a friend for their support on their shitposts. It's good business to keep your white glove customers happy. It seems like a pretty small kickback for a person that made it, but probably had to go through the steps like everyone else... they're just already on the good side of it.

That said, as soon as you start circle jerking you start catching flack. Honestly it seems as soon as you start whaling you catch all kinds of people. First off, you'll probbaly get a letter from me asking for a witness vote. Second you'll probably get 8000 people asking you "hey can you check out my post? You don't need to upvote, but just give it a look." Third, you're catching shit for the bots you're almost certainly running.

Curation guilds are gonna be the future of this place. Whales supporting unique types of content they want to see. As the price of steem goes up and the reward for doing this goes up so will the group work/collusion/community. There's too much money not too. You can make $1000 per week just upvoting posts as a whale. Toss in a few shit posts and you easily break $100k a year. There's a lot of incentive.

So, what's the tip?

Here's the essential problems:
Minnow: Getting noticed
Dolphin: Building a brand
Whale: Curation

If you can help people solve those problems you're gonna have a nice pay day.

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Please vote for me for Witness!

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You can find me hanging out on steemspeak, a discord channel that many steemers use to text and talk to each other- https://discord.gg/qjpRj7w

You can find me in Whaleshares- https://discord.gg/GykFB6S
or my new channel PALnet- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
I can also be found on steemchat as @aggroed. If you have a post to share give me a good sentence or two of why you think I’ll like it.

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There are 8 dead witness accounts above mine.