🌴Beginning of a new life. Just another Steemit Success story.🌴

click to enlarge

August 2017. I am sitting in my loft apartment and trying to figure out a way to pay for the servers of my startup BeScouted a photography community which allegedly is being built to help freelancers earn additional income through our casting system which we have developed which is supposed to let them find paid jobs and assignments.

We are building a marketplace without funding, anyone who has ever done that probably know how hopeless this may sound, and it was. I was broke, i mean literally, the only thing i have left is my old and trusty Nikon D3s, a beloved 70-200 VR II lens and server bill i need to pay. At these moments some people break, while the others after reaching the total bottom with nowhere else to go either stay there or they are looking for yet another way out.

I am not an engineer, i am not a techie, rather a guy looking for a solution that i myself and majority of the freelance community has. Earning from photography. I've been hearing about people mining some cryptocurrency and paying their bills with it, so i dig deeper into google and the next step is placing an add for selling the remainder of my gear. With little knowledge i have i have build my first mining rig with the money i salvage from the equipment sale, tangle with the settings for few nights and it's running. Mining me some precious Eth which is selling at 160 - 200 Eur at that time.

That pays the server bills!

And of course puts a humble but proud smile on my face. Little by little i dwell into cryptocurrency world, i loose track of weekdays, hour of the day, my but hurts of sitting at the computer all the time, i feel like i am in some parallel reality of fatigue and sleep deprivation. But i have to find a solution.

Then i stumble upon some website, Steemit.com it's called, and people are getting cryptocurrency for blogging interesting content. Not much of a writer myself, but have load of photos i could share, and that way i might scramble another 100-200 Eur a month and buy a pizza occasionally, pay for the electricity of my mining rig and all Eth sales would go to maintenance of BeScouted.

So i make a #introduceyself post and get an upvote from a whale that grosses about 50 USD after payout.. Wow! I start learning like mad, trying to figure out What SBD is, what the hell is Steem power, curation rewards and all the stuff. Luckily there is a lot of post from the community so many thanks to you guys. Little by little i am getting my rep up, getting some upvotes from bigger fish and it all feels very uplifting. Thanks to @jamtaylor probably the first bigger fish that showed me enormous support and let me rest against that bottom.

And then after learning more and more about steem blockchain itself the idea struck me, why wouldn't i connect BeScouted to Steem blockchain ant let other members of our community benefit from this seemingly unbelievable opportunity. So i have contacted the guy that was helping me with the legacy code after my co-founder tapped out without getting rich fast. And we did an MVP version of BeScouted + Steemit. At this point many thanks go to @heimindanger and @pharesim for the help and tips and their support while connecting those platforms.

I know this is getting TL:DR but i am putting this down for my own purposes either, it would be amazingly interesting to read after some years, so please bare with me or skip to the bottom, or to the upvote, or to resteem button. Or just close this sentimental brochure since i still have something else to put down.

After a while we all heard of SMT's and another amazing opportunity for all developers, startup founders or CEO's of running projects. For this purpose we ran a short campaign to raise some steem power in exchange for out future SMT tokens. It's a long shot, but world in not without kind people. First of all i must mention @creadordelfuturo who has delegated the majority of our delegated SteemPower. Amazing person, nice and kind lady which i was hoping to meet in Tenerife, but life has different plans so we missed each other again, not for long i hope. At least until steemfest 3 i hope.
The other delegations by @dexter-k @bryan-imhoff @shortcut @reinhard-schmid were smaller but that does not make them any less important. As support, and knowing that we are doing the right thing motives us to continue. And again thanks to @pharesim for his follow vote on all @bescouted.com upvotes that we do to promote members and fellow steemians on BeScouted And all the others, as it is virtually impossible to mention everybody sinec the community is growing so rapidly.

The good news.

My new camera and lens.And new temporary place of residence.

Since naturally i have started doing some crypto trading i have managed to buy myself a new camera and break out from my appartment which has become my little prison for more than three years. Right now i am writing this post from Tenerife and soon will be sharing my blog that is shot with Sony A7RII and amaaazing 55 1.8T Sonnar which is the sharpest thing i have ever seen in my entire career not to mention impossibly creamy bokeh. I was always saying that you do not need expensive gear to make a good photograph and i still believe so which is being the reason i did not go crazy on the most expensive gear. But for me.. it is symbolic, i have sold all of my gear with a bleeding heart and thanks to Steemit i could buy it back after four months :) So cheers to all fellow steemians and for your upvotes and support that made it possible. Much much love goes out to you.

better click to enlarge

And this is a crop of the same photo just to show how sharp it is even at f/1.8 handheld..
click to enlarge

And of course that godly bokeh...
click to enlarge

Investment round and further development of BeScouted.

Extremely excited about this as we are at the final stages of securing an investment round. Even though i am not in a position to disclose this information just yet, but the amount is quite substantial and more than enough to run and develop major upgrades on the platform and prepare for the upcoming ICO of our SMT. Expect to see apps for iOS and android to roll out, and a very excited feature to appear in the future which i can not disclose yet either. Sorry for being so mysterious but i believe that facts speak better than promises.

This and many many more thing are happening as i write this and i just can't believe how much things have changed in the last four months.

All thanks to Steemit and ofc in the first place it means all thanks to you guys.

To illustrate how i feel right now would probably be best to share an image i shot yesterday in Tenerife while doing a short walk and working around the new place of my residence.

I am just like that cute dog right now. Anticipating something delicious to come up, but it is still wrapped up in a package:)

Sony A7RII Sony 55mm 1.8 Sonnar @ f/1.8 /1/1260 iso 100

Join BeScouted a premier photography community on Steem blockchain.

David