Why I’m Reinventing Myself on Steemit after just 1 month as a Steemian

Introduction

My introduction to Steemit has been a steep learning curve. I started posting for the first time as a fiction writer about a month ago. I’m sure, like many others, I wanted to become a full-time Steemian, but at present finances dictate that I must keep my day job which at present is high pressure. This means that I am forced to grab a spare moment here and there for Steemit since I have to work overtime from home for the day job. In fact, last week I worked the whole way through the weekend as well as the week. That made finding time for writing Steemit posts, commenting and upvoting difficult.

It has also meant that I have not progressed and am still a Steemit baby as far as working out the procedures is concerned. I received some rewards but have yet to work out where they came from. I don’t know how to resteem yet and I keep hearing about bots but don’t know what it’s all about etc...etc...etc...

The Blooper

However, I think the biggest blooper I made was my choice of category to post in. I chose fiction. My strategy was to write fiction which followed on from my own truth seeking research and incorporated my learning into the post by using the characters in the stories to present the concepts as their own research. Importantly, also, of course, I planned to cite any work I’d quoted or alluded to at the end of the post.

I still think it’s a great idea. The problem is the time frame needed to produce such fiction. The pieces I’ve done so far were very close to my heart, so I chose to put a lot of time and effort into them and I tended to go a little ape shit with images, having put around 10 into my last post.

Timing my Steemit post prep

Two weeks ago, I read a Steemit post that bemoaned the fact that it takes up to 2 hours to write an entry for Steemit and I laughed.

Here are the timings for compiling my last Steemit post.

Research 5 hours
Image search 4 hours
First draft writing 7 hours
Amendment of first draft 4 hours
Uploading to Steemit and formatting 30 mins

Grand Total 20 hours 30 mins

The Final Straw

Naturally working more than full-time for my day job and putting in these extra hours (nearly 3 full working days done in evenings and early hours of morning,) for just 1 Steemit post a week has left me burnt out. I got some nice rewards for my second fiction piece which I’m very grateful for but I haven’t had the time to comment and upvote as much as I would have wished and I know these two activities are vital to being successful on Steemit.

The final straw, though, was when I received $0.02 for the post I spent 20 hours and 30 minutes putting together. It clearly indicates that the business model I had chosen was not a feasible one

My analysis of what went wrong

Mulling it over, it’s likely that there needs to be a better balance between compiling posts on one hand and commenting, upvoting and promoting via other social media on the other. With the model I was using, I only had time for compiling the post.

Firstly let me say I’m not feeling sorry for myself and I’m definitely not blaming the system. It’s simply that, no doubt like other Steemians, my initial strategy on the platform looks unlikely to be sustainable or to pay dividends.

Building a Successful Following on Steemit

What I have learned is that it seems that in order to build a decent following on Steemit, you need to do the following;

1. Firstly you need to publish frequently, (preferably daily at least.)
2. Secondly you need to frequently upvote and make value adding comments on others’ posts.
3. Thirdly you need to promote yourself outside of Steemit

I welcome comments regarding my above analysis. Naturally, if I continue to write fiction from scratch, I can’t do all of the above with my current lifestyle and business model.

How other authors manage it

I have seen other authors who are publishing excerpts from their previously published novels which is great and very achievable until they run out of chapters to post. Clearly that’s a business model that works and it probably takes them a lot less time than other posters to upload already written and re-drafted excerpts to Steemit.

Though I have previous fiction works, including at least one novel, none matches my Steemit persona and, as such, I would not choose to post them. This means that, I am not in the same position as others are. I must write from scratch and additionally do research before posting.

Just one other thing

I came to Steemit, not only because I want to earn a living outside of the system which seeks to destroy those with alternative views, such as myself. I also came because I wanted to work with others who are looking for a way to establish a more equitable system and a more level playing field for the people of the world. I am not affiliated to any political group or any other partisan group that has been set up to divide and conquer. I value all people across all the artificial dividing lines.

There is just one thing that I stand firmly against and that is Luciferianism. The Luciferians are those that claim that secret knowledge makes them superior to the rest of us and yes they are the ones who sacrifice children and babies in order to gain, in their minds, access to this knowledge. The bankers who have impoverished human populations around the word, many of our politicians, huge chunks of the media and the multinationals are said to be all members of this cult.

I understand that Steemit is a self regulatory system where the members vote freely on posts and there is no central control. I am all for that. However, I have a noticed in a small number of posts, all seeing eyes and other symbolism both within the written body of posts and in images that denotes Luciferianism. I do hope that Steemit is not going to be yet another co opted enterprise that ends up promoting what it originally set out to defeat.

Wrap Up

O.K, so this post probably took me less than 2 hours to put together. Thus, I could conceivably post several times a week on Steemit if I changed the category under which I was posting. This is exactly what I’m planning to do. I will go away and do my homework, a little better than I did before, and I will experiment for a while with posting in different categories. It's likely that my posting will be sporadic for a while, as I work out the best way to go. Have no fear, though, I will be back with a vengeance. In the meantime, I look forward to reading all of your wonderful posts. The future is ours. Let’s soldier on Steemians!