Is it More Important to be a Good Writer or to be Poplular on Steemit? Are They Synonymous?
Golden greetings and silver salutations! I would like to think out loud today...or think quietly while writing. So brace yourself for some of my random musings.
First off, I love Steemit. I used to enjoy writing, but I stopped. I always assumed that no one wanted to read my writing, then along comes this little platform. Now I am writing again and it is becoming lucrative. I was a journalism major in college for a bit, and now a little bit of me feels like a professional writer and that I succeeded in that field.
Side note, if you wonder why I changed majors, writing is fun on your own time. Being forced to write numerous long stories and articles that you do not care about can drain your love for writing. I was on the newspaper staff and between that and homework, I was writing, editing, and researching countless hours.
Ok, sorry for the tangent, I am back on track now. I was reading a post from someone I follow and because it was enjoyable, I upvoted it. Then I noticed something peculiar:
This post was worth $40, was 40+ minutes old, and had only one view (which I assume was me). I thought that this individual may have been a whale or bought some votes. Nope, their account was comparable to mine and there was no delegation. I looked at the votes and 2 of them were worth over $15. I thought, wow, no matter the level of the quality of the post, each and every one of their recent posts was worth over $30. I have never had a post worth $30, and they could post a gif and receive over $30.
So this is where my subject line comes into play. Is it more important to be a good writer or popular? Does being a good writer lead to popularity? I feel sometimes that it is more important to be in organizations and active on Discord than it is to churn out quality content. I am a member of two great organizations, #steemsilvergold and #thealliance. I do not fault their existence and love that they offer additional engagement with a community.
Though if you want to monetarily succeed on this platform, you only need one thing... to be on people's curation / voting trails. These organizations allow you to meet people, and if you like them enough, you may put them on your trail. The screenshot I showed above is not an uncommon thing to encounter. Look at the recent high profile voting war that just went on in Steemit. Wars like this are terrible for the platform as a whole and I feel would deter new users. In a perfect world, I think we should not allow auto upvoting and let manual voting determine the best content. But this Steemit world is new and exciting and imperfect as hell.
Now am I a hypocrite? Absolutely! Seriously, I would love to be on your voter trail, even though I question their purpose. I understand that we want to support our friends. For example, I want every single person in the #steemsilvergold community to make lots of money on their posts, so they can buy more coins, so they can write more posts about them (and repeat ad infinitum).
As for me, I accept that my posts are of varying quality. Yet anytime I write I will have a baseline of what my post will be worth, about $3. Then some random upvotes will usually take me to the $5 range. Seriously, why is some crap that I wrote in twenty minutes worthy of being worth anything? Also, a part of me feels that it is unfair to myself and the community, that the ones I spent hours on, and am proud to have written, are worth just as much as my other quick posts.
I am done rambling...except for one thing that I purposely saved for last. Does anyone ever read the entire post? I tend to leave questions for the reader at the end of my posts. I have seen many other writers do likewise, yet they are rarely answered, even by those that take the time to write a comment. Do you find this to be the case? I'll know if you read this full post, based on your comment : )
Ok, rambling officially done. It is time for lunch. I want to write another post later. It won't take nearly as long to write (I have removed, replaced, and reworded the crap out of this post), but it will be worth the same! Feel free to prove me wrong. Oh, and please do not think I am bitter...I really do LOVE Steemit!
TL:DR I said a lot of rambling stuff. It would just be easier to add me to your curation / voter trail and you may just want to throw me a resteem for good measure.
LoL! You're TL;DR is awesome.
Also, I always read the entire post... well, unless I lose interest and click away.
I totally agree.
And strangely enough,I would rather people READ and appreciate my posts instead of just upvoting at 2%. 😏I work hard on each and every one. NONE have taken me less than an hour. I always make a cover image (that perfectly fits into the feed) and make sure all my footers and helpful info are up to date. Even if I'm just singing (not the best content), I make sure my post is a little substantial. 😀
But then, it WOULD be super nice to get rewarded for my time and diligent work 😉... but does it matter if NO ONE sees it?
I mean, yes, cause then I have money (energy) to spend elsewhere.
Still, I'm on the fence about it.
I really like the community support and interaction and totally understand trails... a little... Okay, I still like the idea of EACH VOTE being manually cast, but that's just me. 😏
I've not joined any trails, but I think I'm ON a few (which I'm SUPER thankful for).
I try to just get to the pages of the people who comment and support me and really READ what they've got to say.
And to your MAIN query: I think you need both. You could be the BEST of the BEST, but if you scream in a forest with no one around, will you be heard? And if you are JUST popular, you totally can be an imbecile! LOL! However, I think this platform is trying (as a whole) to move away from that. But ya can't stop stupid, you can only try to educate. 😉
The money?
A definite incentive. 🤑
The community?
Why I keep coming back. 😍
@carrieallen - First off, this may be the most well written comment I have encountered. I wrote this post when I was feeling a bit disenfranchised with this platform. I do have my moments like that.
I love writing TL:DRs. They can be the most humorous part of the entire post.
Well, I am now following both you and your hubby and look forward to reading more wart poetry ☺
LOL!
How was I ever to know that little wart poem would make me so popular? 😅
I totally understand feeling disenfranchised here. We all go through it.
Just a few days ago I snapped a little at some spammy folks. 😏
And a few days before that, I was all like, "Screw this! I'm out!". But then I calmed down, felt my feelings and got on with my life. 😉
As far as I can tell, Steemit IS pretty fair. Ya just gotta work for it. And even if you're totally amazing, some people that suck will do better than you. I can't quite figure out WHY that is, except that it must be something to do with how THEY (those doing better) see themselves.
We gotta believe we, too, are worth it. And REALLY mean it. 😍
I too enjoy the TL;DRs. Plus, if my posts are long... and they tend to be.... It's nice to have a little short version to see what's going on.
Holla if you need any help on Markdown or formatting (I'm kinda a boss at that😎).
Me too, I'd love to be on a voting trail like that. Most of my blogs are crap to average (at best), so yes it does pay to be popular. I've never upvoted a post with out reading g it first and I always give my votes to blogs that catch my eye and interest me.
Welsh, well thank you for reading...and for commenting!
And for upvoting.... Lol
You definitely need to be popular or engaging in here. I Jane to say I am guilty of using auto voters and not going back and reading regularly enough.
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This is the problem that the platform is big and also related to money. People just vote and don't read (for sure not everybody).
I would also like to have reading followers. It needs time to find the right minded people. :-)
I try to read, but I also simultaneously understand the mentality of wanting to support the people you like.
You are right, I'm sure, because there are many posts with one vote, worth a bunch, and really no content. I'm not a good writer, but I can post recipes, woodworking and shiny stuff. And that's OK, but I have noticed one thing, If I use up some SBD for a boost bot vote, my posts get a whole bunch more votes after and no more comments, lol, people just vote on higher up trending posts.
It would be nice to get those big hammer votes every time hey?
Funny, precise and true. I come across some posts and its so long. Funny thing is i see a lot of comments too and i cant help but wonder. Lol neither do i have any 30$ post too, maybe im still new. I think i still need help in totally understanding curation. But, i think theres some kind of powerful attraction that comes with a well crafted title. Like yours, the title got me here. Well, i think steem power decides how heavy upvote will be. I stand to be corrected, love this post, resteemed
I think end of the day, being good writer matters ..
Hay buddy read that you where a journalist major, if you like writing and that, you should check out lunyr when your free and maybe sign up, they similer to wiki and they about free knowledge but you get paid for what you post aswell, their ico is doing really well, it hasn’t launched yet but give it a look out if you haven’t, if you don’t find that writing boring aswell lol
Thanks, Meilo. I doubt I'll be writing anywhere but Steemit for a while. My day job takes up too much time and I already spend lots of time here.
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