The obligatory 1 year on Steem milestone blog post!

Yep! That's right! After a year of constant posting and interacting with the blockchain I am now a proud hodler of around 1810 Steem Power. Not bad for someone who didn't invest any real money in here nor someone who started with no friends or influence on the platform. When I first started here I was literally only a small unnoticeable plankton who often times get ignored when I try to interact with the dolphins/orcas/whales of Steem's big blue sea.

Admit it! Whenever you get a reply/comment from someone with a low reputation we often times mistook them as a 'random' comment, or worse a spam, a troll or someone's alt account looking for trouble. As for me, I try to reply comments at night and then I forgot all about it and end up replying days after. I do dig up replies though and try to reply to them all. Thanks guys! XD

But now I have a rep along the 60's so most often than not, people now take me a little seriously and most people think I know what I'm talking about when sometimes I am just ranting out random things. XDv

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MY STRATEGY

Well some of you might probably be wondering what I did differently to you guys, especially those who are still struggling to survive on Steem. Were my posts really that "of quality" to get this amount of SP or did I use too much bidbots to promote my posts and try to game the system?

Well the answer is NO! Since 5 months ago, I've stopped the use of bidbots to promote my blog posts. As a matter of fact I even did a little blog post all about it here: Have I finally given up on powering my account? The reason why I'm no longer using bidbots.

What's somewhat surprising to see though is that if you look at the table above, the month after I've stopped using bidbots I have accumulated almost double the increase in my Steem Power. Provided that the reason for this might have something to do with the declining value of Steem/SBD in the market, but the point is: It doesn't matter if I use a bidbot or not. If dolphins/orcas/whales like me then they will upvote it. If they don't know me or I'm not their follower then they won't.

And so after realizing that, I've just stopped promoting my posts lol My posts were kind of quality back then though considering I am still getting some upvotes from those posts even today from users who are new to the platform. (I used to post about Steem Tool reviews, tutorials and all what to know about the Steem platform.)

Anyway, my strategy after that was to maximize the upvotes from different Steem Platforms. I've read many planktons/minnows complaining about how little the upvotes from @esteemapp are or from @steempress-io or from @steemhunt but in all honesty, back then, most of us have to settle for the measly @busy.org upvote since it was the only platform that gives out upvotes. So people who are getting around $0.7 -$1.2 daily from ESteem should be far more grateful since I can still remember some of my 500 word blog posts months ago to be earning only less than a dollar.

And here's a little breakdown as to how much I've gotten and how much I've already posted via those platforms (shown here are only the upvoted blog posts; comments are excluded). And yeah! I switched back to Busy.org even though their upvotes are still measly. XDv

My other strategy was to delegate half of my SP to a community that supports decent content creators like myself. In order for one to support other content creators, one must first have a decent support first. And so for months I've tried to increase my daily guaranteed upvotes using those amazing Steem communities.

So far, they have been really very helpful on my blog posts as seen here on how much they've already contributed on my blog posts:

At least now, I wouldn't be that much disappointed anymore after I write a 1000 word blog post article like this one since I know that I am always guaranteed a $1-$2 dollar daily. In theory I could post a picture of our cat daily and still get a guaranteed $1-$2 but I won't do that. I maybe not an amazing content creator but I pride myself for consistency. I always try to publish at least one post a day and the rewards from those posts albeit 'little', but when you look at it monthly or even now yearly, it's just enough to give one satisfaction. XD

Last but not the least, I want to give thanks to the top people who supported me and my blog posts:

@neoxian (aka Mr Dragon) who single handedly had already given me around $518.65 worth of upvote. Wow Thanks Mr Dragon! Very much appreciate all the support. :)

After 5 months of constant posting I've finally found myself an orca/whale supporter. The lesson here is consistency pays. I didn't stop posting when my payouts where 'disappointing', I continued to write and write until I found someone who can give my blogs a decent support. So Thanks again Neo.

Also thanks to @techslut, my first ever friend and supporter here. I know I've already said this countless of times before but if it wasn't for you I probably would not stick with this platform this long. So Thanks once again! :)

Also thanks to @dimimp and @nathanmars, both of which gave me a decent SP delegation for some time in the past. The delegations you guys shared also played a huge part in me increasing this much SP, reputation and possibly even the increase in my follower count. So Thanks again guys! XD

Also thanks to @filotasriza3, @ascheriit, @culgin, @costanza, @fullcoverbetting, @minersean and others for the constant support and engagement on some of my blogs.

A shout out too to the people in Neoxian's Discord Server to which is the only place I hang out: @xawi, @ifeoluwa88, @burlarj, @rehan12, @udezee, @mango-juice and others (will edit this one later XD)

And last but not the least to the platform that probably made all this possible and to one I highly encourage to check out: Musing.io. Thanks @jonching et al.