There is No Secret. You Can Succeed on Steemit Just Like Anyone Else
In my recent post 101 Followers, 513 Posts, 143 Followed, Reputation 55, and 7 Weeks Later... @anns asked me to share the "secret" of my accomplishments so far. Comparing my "success" with others may not be significant. But I am my "own enemy" and I battle against myself.
PHOTO CREDIT: DEVIANTART.COM
Looking back barely 8 weeks ago I was a hopeful individual thinking to make it big in Steemit.com. I'd like to consider myself "an early adopter" (and you can argue with that if you will). I don't have much. But I have made significant changes in my life when I started "steeming".
I started writing like crazy like I've never written before.
PHOTO CREDIT: PINTEREST.COM
I dug up old and new photos and posted them, I wrote about myself and shared some intimate details I otherwise will only share with friends. I wrote a parody on a song, built some series of posts like Steemitiquette, Alexa Rankings, and shout outs for my fellow minnows. And a bunch of other things I thought the community could benefit from.
In other words, I did what I could to be of value to the community. I do believe this is what Steemit expects from all of its members.
So, to answer @anns, this was my reply on the original post. I thought this might reverberate as I repost it here.
There is no secret.
Just be yourself (cliche, I know).
Write what you know and be passionate about it.
Write, write, write. Then write some more.
Be ready to fail a million times over.
But be brave and strong enough to get back up.
Be mindful of what's happening.
But be cautious of what might happen.
Leave your comfort zone even for a time.
But don't forget where you are coming from.
Persist when you need persistence.
Insist when you believe you are right.
Respect others whoever they may be.
But keep your character pure and true at all times.
Finally, believe that you can be whoever, whatever you can be.
Just be yourself when it's the best that you can be.
P.S.
@kus-knee (The Old Dog) added two more very wise advice:
- focus on helping others by adding value with your comments.
- strive to produce quality posts.
Thank you @kus-knee.
Steem On! We can be successful.
We are always at our best when we are ourselves...
Have a great day @cjclaro
:D
True that, @codymac40 . Thanks for dropping by. Have a great one, too!
I like these kinds of posts that are sorta like coaching for us steemians. We all know this thing is big, and it takes over your life, like no other. It is a skinnerian box, without anyone being on the outside controlling it, or no single other person, that is. Encouraging engagement is how it is designed, and it rewards for this engagement. Rewards are there to be had, you just gotta keep at what you love, and this and what other people want to see overlaps, and you keep working on the things that work. By giving us rewards for doing this, it also can fund us to continue to do these things. It's a negentropic loop.
I'm always awed by your responses @l0k1. Such great mind and thinker. And you have said it well: "you just gotta keep at what you love". People fall along the way because of frustrations and disappointments. They need to be encouraged.
I must say there was once a time when I said, "What am I doing here? I can not compete with these guys! I am not even a writer. I have little to zero knowledge about trading cryptocurrencies or anarchy, and all these big stuff whales are talking about! I am wasting my time here."
But I told myself that if I were to quit every time things don't go my way, then I will be lost at every turn. I struggled whether I should stay and keep writing and sharing stuff or just throw in the towel. And this struggle is not only happening in Steemit but also in practically every aspect of my life right now.
I chose to STAY. I choose to FIGHT. Because I know that the only way to fail in just about anything is to NOT TRY and DO NOTHING. And I hope this post will help those who are struggling as I had struggled in the past.
Exactly. And from time to time I see things outside Steem like Tone Vays recent recanting of the non-points of the 'Steem is a Ponzi' weasel-cry. They don't understand how Steem's rewards are allocated by stake weighted democracy, the currency is designed to be inflationary in order to fund the rewards and long term Steem Power asset, and even now the promoted items system, even burns Steem. I think that there is some parts driving this the fact that it is hard to nail down all the viable mechanisms for keeping inflation in check, but the ways in which this surplus can be used to encourage engagement, is very clever. The more you keep people's front tab and main dwelling place in cyberspace inside Steem, the more ways that this environment can meet needs people have. We don't have email or instant messaging inside Steem yet, but I personally aim towards adding this feature, and very soon the platform itself will have something equivalent to a stock market for small businesses bound into the Steem infrastructure, and I also have ideas for how to create special types of pages for arranging sales.
Producing good content, and having it upranked, and its producers rewarded, is a phenomenal boost for the profile of Steem as a whole. A whole lot of struggling bloggers by taking a small portion out of the inflation of Steem tokens, have now got real, paying jobs. And one of these jobs, as I am demonstrating, can be idea generation for advancing the whole platform, to eventually make it unneccessary to step outside the Steemosphere to do anything on the internet. I really believe that Steem could eventually form the basis of a new internet layer, that has every new technology integrated into it and I honestly believe it is going to take over the world.
It is still in a very rapid, infant-like development phase. Because people within it can talk about how to develop it, and be inducted into the process, this is massively accelerating the process.
This is where free expressions really shine and become beneficial to the community. We are not inhibited by some sort of ideologies or bureaucracies that tone down our ideas. I agree with you that we are on the verge of taking Steem and Steemit to a whole new level in a very fast-paced development processes. Being in Steemit allows everyone to air out ideas critical to a dramatic innovation the "Steemosphere". Creating jobs we have not heard of 2, 3, or 5 years ago is what I am very excited about.
Steemit is already championing the realm of real-time paid blogging, a feature that really drew me in. I believe messaging is one vital component of a social network and that would be interesting how it's gonna turn out. I am thinking it has to surpass any other messaging functionality at the moment, maybe "monetize-able" in some way.
A Marketplace is one huge project I am also excited about where we can do business within Steemit using SD or STEEM as currencies. There will be more and the only thing I'm afraid of is that I might not be able to catch up! ;-)
I couldn't agree more. Steemit is history in the making. And I am glad to be a part of it. Never been happier as a guinea pig in this humongous breakthrough in social media and internet as a whole.
Well, if it all pans out how I see it panning out, I think you'll find your Steems appreciate in value as more people start using it as a place to park their money, to invest their money, and to find like minds to share information with. These features will all improve, I mean, is it just me, or do you think it is possible to say that Steemit Beta is the most massive focus group every created in history? Over 70,000 accounts registered. At least half are actively participating. That's pretty impressive for a development team to have such a massive pool of willing guinea pigs. @dantheman and @ned are truly geniuses for getting this thing up and running.
Thanks for the tips, these posts are helpful and motivating for newcomers.
@mlialen
You are welcome. I'm glad I can help out the new members because I was once a newbie myself. It was a challenge really. But we press onward. Followed. I'd like to know your successes, too. ;-)
Well another secret is financial capital to raise your Steem Power to lessen the chances of getting upvotes-without-money. And that is the ugly truth.
You are not totally wrong in that aspect. People who have the capital are more likely to succeed in this domain where money is very essential. But not having the capital should not deter us from the success we are trying to attain. It may take a while, growing organically, to reach there. But like they say, it's the journey that really matters. What we learn along the way far more exceeds than the pot of gold. But then again, it's just me.
Followed. Let me hear how you're doing in Steemit. ;-) I can see you have a long way to raising up your reputation.
Join us in our #steemsquad initiative. Follow @steemsquad and join our chatroom https://steemit.chat/channel/steemsquadpromo and promote your work there. Just make sure you use the #steemsquad tag in your posts so members can see them.
In about a month, I managed to earn about $100 worth of Steem, and I put in another $130, 100 went to boost my SP. I am sure that I will attract more votes with future posts, especially ones about my software development project. With that, it's a little more indirect how it earns. I am at an intermediate stage between announcement and the pool is still a little muddy because I have got so many things to integrate into the design, but I am going to strive to work a little more systematically on the #steemportal, I mean, to at least have some rudimentary interface that works, displays posts, and shows off something a bit more concrete, and I think that will yield more upvoted posts discussing the advances. This is my steem business model.
Considering my financial situation, it is a little bit brave, maybe foolish, but then I couldn't be doing anywhere near as much work on this if I had a regular day job. For the moment, the rent is covered and I have internet access and I can get all the food I need to keep on going. I am still really waiting for a reasonably big injection of capital so I can get into somewhat more comfortable situation to become a little bit more productive and focused. I am considering how I can get loan funding, but the difficulty is that there is a fairly big cost obstacle in administration for me to get it through conventional means (bank credit) and the same obstacles stand in my way for acquiring seed capital through online means. Right now I basically have to crack a multi-hundred (dollar) voted post, and get my cash holdings above the next month's expected expenses.
But I'm sure I can do it.
I have no doubts about you @l0k1. If we keep climbing up, no matter how small the steps we take, we eventually will get to the top, maybe find some bigger boulders to step on here and there and boost our way up.
I, too, am researching and working hard on my posts to at least increase readership and eventually increase upvotes. In my two months, I got only 2 posts that I can say really made me a decent sum of money. But I keep a positive perspective.
Thank you for the encouraging words. I have already followed @steemsquad. I already have 2 earlier blog posts with more than 300 words which I plan to re-publish as edited re-issues that didn't get proper number of upvotes because of faulty tags and #steemsquad did not yet exist at that time.
I thought it was not allowed to post your work at https://steemit.chat/channel/steemsquadpromo?
I saw your post in the promo chatroom. I have upvoted and promoted your post, too.
Thank you. Sorry for the late reply. I was busy and navigating around Steemit is a bitch to master.
I will post it for you as soon as it is published.
I just made a new one. Please post as you promised.
Thanks a lot for your support.
@steempowerwhale 🐳
🌞 upvoting your lifetime dreams!