The Steemit Adventure: 36 Days In
The Steemit Advantage
I've been wanting to start a blog for a while now. I work full time, just bought a house this year, and am raising an 11 month old with my girlfriend, so I haven't found a ton of free time this last year. I came close to starting up a blog on Wix, then almost started blogging on Medium, but a few things stopped me:
- Blogging takes a crapload of time
- At the time I was out of my league blogging on my chosen topic: spirituality
- Returns are low starting out
Then I found steemit...
The Difference
Want to know the difference between steemit and standard blogging or posting on sites like medium or reddit or other blogging platforms?
Immediate results.
That's right, other platforms are almost as awesome, but they don't motivate bloggers and content providers. How many musicians or video show creators are stoked about Youtube's payout system? How many bloggers are finding great success on their own or posting on Medium? If you are one of them let me know in the comments below, I'd love to hear your amazing experience working with any other platform and getting the payment you deserve, give me the strats I need and maybe I'll start using those sites as well as steemit. Because ya, you can just copy paste your content here and get extra $$$. With steemit you get paid with your intro post, you get paid for a single quality comment, you get paid for quality content, you get NOTICED here for your contributions.
And the fluff gets tossed aside, shit posters eventually get flagged or bored. Sure, we have some kinks to work out with running our very own system here, but those downsides are to be expected in a beta product. The real key here is potential and growth...
36 days In
At 36 days old, I have accumulated over 355 steem. At the current estimated value, which seems pretty low to me, that's over $1500. That's crazy. If I had been blogging on my own I'd be lucky to see $15 in that time frame. Sure I got a bit lucky, I got noticed by a few people who decided to support me. I got a whale to upvote me on a single comment. I got followers from being promoted by @taskmaster4450 throughout my time here and @khaleelkazi during his #tkc. Most of this gain in momentum was because I was engaging people.
For my first week or two all I did was write comments and an intro post. When I write a comment I try to add to the conversation or at least ask a question related to the post. Hopefully I can engage the author or other posters enough to keep the conversation going, to add depth. This type of commenting is the reason why I had a comment that payed out over $60(in the steem payout system.) One small, 3 paragraph comment made me more than any post I've ever made. But the thing is, that was one comment out of over 500 that I've made in 35 days. If you want to succeed here, you've got to put in the work. And unless you get extremely lucky that means a lot of work.
The nice thing is, it doesn't feel like work because steem is basically a video game...
Steem: MMO
Steem is basically a giant, social video game. You get payed, followed, upvoted, resteemed, based on your ability to socially interact. It doesn't matter if you're interacting by producing content, adding to other people's content, starting discussions, talking to people, winning contests, playing games, adding to steemit... it's all part of "the game."
I see some people getting payed huge amounts for great articles. I see people getting payed solid amounts for well written comments. I see people getting handsome rewards for their additions to the steemit platform. I see people getting payed for posting content they produced on other websites.
The great thing is, you get to choose your own steemit adventure. You get to pick what you add to the platform, you get to see where your talents can be put to use. Everyone has a role here, everyone has something to add to the world, steemit is the place we get to share our unique talents, our deep thoughts, our ideas, our art, our love.
So get to it, start now, do as much as you can. Put the work in now while steemit is small and reap the rewards later. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your enemies, tell everyone to join up and be part of this.
What do you guys think, do you see any game elements in steemit, do you see any advantages of steemit over other social media? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks @jakeybrown! Helpful to hear your story since I've become hooked by both the idea and potential of SteemIt, but have found the beginning to be slow going. I've got a few ideas for a blog series on investing strategy (esp. non-crypto markets), but I'm worried my posts might get buried amidst everything.
Any advice for continuing to pick up followers and more fully integrate into the community?
Honestly, the way I see it is that you will get buried until you build followers. That's why I waited to start posting frequently until I knew it was worth my while. @taskmaster4450 picked me up for his 1kSP program because he noticed how I was posting quality comments.
So basically my advice is:
Hope these help, any other questions just ask.
Wow, this is incredibly helpful. Really appreciate the time and feedback. Will get started on these and see where things go. Thanks @jakeybrown!
Indeed @bigtx31, extremely helpful response and post @jakeybrown. Really appreciate the sound advice as a noob.
Thanks for these words. I really needed to hear them because today i was feeling somewhat disenchanted. Admittedly I only joined a week or so ago, and all my guns were blazing, I too love writing and reflecting on life, spirituality is really big in my life. The idea of being able to generate income from what I love was a huge draw to steemit.
But my lack of response or reward dulled my enthusiasm. I was begging to see it as a platform where you simply shout the loudest and for as long as you can before being heard, and there is an element to that.
But as you rightly say, this doesn't stop you for engaging whole-heartedly and just keep expressing what you feel to express. To comment honestly, and not just for the sake of it.
So a real big thanks to you for reminding me of why I found this site so enticing in the first place.
No problem, thanks for the kind words! I know how it could be frustrating getting started. Any increase in steem is a healthy advantage in voting. That's why I feel comments are so underrated. It's the only way to get noticed at first, unless you are active in other avenues like steemit chat, discord channels or utopian. I've been meaning to check our your blog but haev been busy with travel, going to shortly
My passion for reading and writing shot up instantly ever since I found Steemit. I am very thankful for those who build this platform and encouraged us to be innovative.
I am not as successful as you but I can see the dollars and cents trickling into my account and my followers grow day by day. Great article to motivate the newbies! Upvoted!
Thanks, and nice! I'm right there with ya, I write way more consistently now than I used to. Growth is always good, keep it up
Very good post and update @jakeybrown.
People need to remember this is a social media platform and all rules of social media apply.
One is not going to get upvotes without interaction. That takes some time. Yes there is also an element of luck to it but one's luck increases with consist posting, thoughtful commenting and interaction with others.
If one does not come here with a big following from another social media site, it takes time to build it. I am here about 5 months and crossed 2200 followers...it took a lot of time and effort on here.
But it is worth it...at the end of the day it isnt what I take out of the steem blockchain but what I can put into it.
Absolutely, consist posting and commenting is huge, it nets you more of everything because of the exposure. Only when we have more mass adoption will we have people be able to come over and immediately have a following. Right now it's about dedicating a little time and adding what you can
wow, you did pretty well for 36 days. I've been here for 6 months and I don't see similar success story. Well, I have must been posting loads of crap then.....haha.
I think he said 36 Days! Not weeks
Hye must have meant 36 days haha, 36 weeks is like 9 months
opps my bad. Yea, 36 days. That's a pretty good achievement.
Quality posts help, I have had a bit of luck finding people who have supported me and helped me along the way. Keep at it, try your best to add to the platform and you will see success, try to model yourself after successful people here, the way they post, comment, and interact in the community, but add your own uniqueness too!
Any blogging takes a crap load of time which is part of reason I haven’t been posting, plus I don’t feel my subject matter Is of interest to others on here but I’m planning a new post or two to test my theory
I really don't think posting is important until you have some followers, a good intro post will ususally get some looks, but after that it's easy to get lost in the countless posts rolling in unless you have some followers, comments are key, I just follow people who post things I like to comment on, probably half my steem has come from comments