You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: The Deadpost Initiative - Week 6 - Share your most undervalued work (SBD prize) + week 5 winners
This is my entry an old post about if income should be the motivation for steemit
https://steemit.com/discussion/@isteemithard/money-talks-but-should-money-be-the-motivation-discussion
I've spoken extensively on this. I totally agree but this is just a problem with money as a motivating factor, it tends to attract people with less than pure motives and even skews the motives of those who may have otherwise been pure (i for example have compromised my ideals many times in order to remain relevant on steemit and to compensate for the fact that I'm not yet a whale). I didn't want to make this a contest but how many people do you think would participate and read everyone's posts if I didn't?
I won't say "that's just he world we live in" as if there is nothing we can do about it, but sincerity and community are fighting an uphill battle against profit and personal interest. Many of us are under the illusion that steemit is different from what we are used to and it's really not all that different. I'm still going to do whatever I can for community, but regretably it seems I'll be able to make a much greater impact if I get rich first.
Trying to find a balance now, a way to be me and somehow reach people in a language that they speak (money, popularity) even though I find myself a bit outside of my element.
Anyways, you have an ally here.
Actually, your idea of this contest is brilliant. I too have been struggling with my own contest and find it extremely difficult to get people to engage and stay engaged. If I make the contest rules too demanding, everyone flees. If the rules are too lax, it doesn't create good content. The only way to keep people AND create good content is to offer large value prizes. In order to be able to offer large value prizes, one needs to HAVE a good income. Its a vicious circle unless one starts off with a lot of SP or has very influential friends that will help out.
I was thinking that I should start frequenting your contest but I don't have that many old posts of interest. Many of my posts are either my daily game or my weekly contests and I don't think those would be appropriate entries to your contest. I would be thrilled to have another regular participant in my own contest and games. One by one, a community of like-minded folks is formed.
External motives are always going to be problematic owing to human greed. Whether it be money, cryptos, facebook likes or stickers and stamps I give my students as a reward, the point is that they force you into doing something others want for you.
We must understand that steemit should be a place where everyone can leave a mark by their content, not their rep level and digits in their wallets. Surely, we all love the rewards, but we must try and produce worthy content as well. Posts that tell some people things or get ideas further. Growing should not be a term considering only one's account value, but their minds too.
I started out hard charging to try and make friends and either build or join a village, but I found out that doing so was possible but that it was going to take a lot of time and perseverance. I was spending hours each day reading, curating and commenting, with very few fellow Steemians even acknowledging my existence.
What was the biggest problem? It was probably because I didn't have enough voting power to make myself significant. So what I settled for was balancing the work that it takes to meet Steemians that I have enough in common with to become friends, and building up my Steem Power so that I could be more effective and relevant. I decided to make Steem one of my long term investments and really dig into this platform and learn how to use it for both my own benefit and the benefit of others.
I've discovered that it's not just that everyone is trying to kiss ass, we are encouraged to spread ourselves too thin. You might get someone to read and upvote your post by reading and upvoting theirs (about 30-60% of the time) but they're not going to continuously read your posts unless you become best friends on here and we can't do that with everyone. We are all just spread way too thin with way too much going on on our feeds. We need to keep looking for new friends and followers otherwise people stop reading our stuff. The deadpost thing was started cause I believe the palm is oversaturated due to this drive to succeed here. Who posts quality content twice a day out of their own inspiration to do so? its much easier for those who share photographs, not belittling their work, but people don't have time for reading sometimes.
Anyway I stick around because I see a lot of great people still using the platform, but I think it's a bunch of great people working against themselves as the culture of the platform is just more more more faster faster faster bigger bigger bigger
I get you now for sure! I worked for hours with very little experience on Steemit (So I made mistakes) on the blog that I listed here for this contest, and I couldn't handle the fact that it was going to just die after a few days. I found that it was much easier to post photos and short blogs, at least until I could build up a following, than to work for a day or two on one large blog. So that is what I'm doing right now, just short easier blogs and trying to post them consistently every day. With that and reading/curating as many blogs a day as possible I'm finally meeting people and making friends.
You are absolutely right about being spread too thin also. I can no longer handle my feed, so I'm selecting out a few authors at a time to curate and interact with, especially those that reach out to me on my own blog. About once a month I plan to go through and purge my list, removing those names that are already too overwhelmed or not interested in becoming friends. After the purge I will add in a few new names to my list. I'll do this until I reach my own limit and can no longer keep up with my list on a regular basis.
I'm not even looking at wallets for my list, hopefully I'll end up with a mixture of fat wallets and those who are starting small that can grow with me. At least that is my current strategy, but it is subject to change because I am learning new things and methods every day.
I have met a few authors on here that write impressive material and work very hard, but because of extreme ideological differences I feel that it is better not to try and be friends and interact with them on a regular basis. On other forums I have at times entered into huge debates with people holding drastically different philosophies, political views or religious ideologies than myself, but as of right now I'm not looking for that kind of relationship here.
Very nice to read about your strategy!
@ecoinstant You sir are definitely on my list and have been for some time. I have enjoyed the content that you add very much. 🙂
That is much appreciated. I'm still figuring out what I'm doing but meeting people has been the most rewarding part so far.
So true. I just do my thing, and seem to float between writing a few different types of blogs. It seems that sometimes I lose followers, maybe for straying off topic, but I am here for me, and my own learning and writing and documentation. Slowly, overtime, I am recognizing more and more usernames that I am becoming friends with, so much so that I will search them manually if I haven't seen them in my feed for awhile. I try to remember - I have 11 years of facebook - and only 4 months on steemit - patience is a virture (although you bring up some pretty valid vices in your original response).
Income could be a motivator in some cases of steemit, I think that is the purpose as there are many different ways of using steemit for generating an income, one way I will be demonstrating with a new page We will start for a rural community in our area. The word 'money', is maybe a bit misleading, but it can be converted into money, the opportunities steemit and similar networks on the blockchain have brought are endless, and it does make it possible for anyone to start making some money, more with a bit of hard work, just by interacting with the online world...
If we remember- even pennies > facebook
I believe that if people are lured into coming to this platform with dollar signs in their eyes, they will quickly become discouraged and leave. There is NOTHING worse for steem's image than a disgruntled person. They will spread the word about everything they perceive is WRONG with Steem and bad news travels fast. It is far better to encourage people to come for any of the other reasons and then have them be pleasantly surprised at earning a bit of extra income as a bonus! I agree with the OP's ideas and therefore voted for the post.
Unless they already have money to invest into SP ;-P
Nice blog, you make a lot of good points!