How people make big bucks on Steem and why nobody can get a scam label to stick
First off, let's discuss how Steem works. Currently it's in the introductory stage where distribution is pretty lopsided. Whatever you post doesn't really matter if it doesn't attract the attention of something like 100 big holders. It's theorized the wealth will spread over time (seems likely), but that part is irrelevant for now.
What matters is, today, if you wish to earn something from this site, consider yourself a freelance employee of that ever expanding group of people - of which I am now a part of due to having a few successful posts myself. If that group of people believes your content is going to enhance the value of their Steem Power, which is essentially shares of the platform you can get either by buying them or posting popular content, then your content will be rewarded and you will eventually join the same club.
Some people will complain and say, this doesn't legit; this sounds like a multi-level marketing scam or Ponzi. I have a lot of experience in cryptocurrecy + trading and have never once seen a Ponzi scam where you can make a lot of money without investing a cent.
You could attempt to claim your labor is investment, but in this form of reasoning, you'd also be making the claim that anyone who has a job with a boss is being exploited in a Ponzi. So if everyone on earth is being exploited in a Ponzi, at least you can do this one without even getting out of bed in the morning. Or you can post on Reddit or Twitter to enrich the CEOs while you get nothing?
Now that we've gotten that reasoning out of the way, there's also the fact that you can entirely ignore that profit dynamic, post whatever horrible blogs you want about why you think Nicolas Cage is the best actor on earth, and Steem hosts that content for you for free. You can choose to go either way: for profit, or for fun, maybe both if you get lucky. At the end of the day, Steem is providing you a free service even if you provide nothing in return.
The next subject is providing value. This is going to disappoint some people, but If you actually were good at providing value, there's a good chance you would already have some type of super successful business or investments. You'd already be rich and wouldn't care if anyone voted for you or not (unless you were extremely vain). Although, you can still just be a low income fisherman or something and it's possible a lot of people will find that interesting.
Value tends to be subjective for everyone. You can either try to swing for the largest demographic possible, or excel at some niche role. For instance, my first post here was a decent success - $2400 for a long analysis of the silver market and why it's an undervalued asset with a high upside:
Since everyone on the planet wants money (wide demographic), and I have a decent track record in the Bitcoin markets (a niche role), it was a good way to strike off all the check marks at once of providing value.
If you're a woman only posting pictures of yourself, just about every woman can and does do that. So while that strategy might work for a while, it will definitely implode if you're not the best at the dog show. Feel free to try it since it does seem to have some success. If it fails, you can then go learn a more legitimate knowledge or skill instead of disgracing your parents online.
Since this site is run like a business, the standard corporate tricks do work: adopting political correctness to widen the revenue stream even if you don't give a damn about political correctness, or targeting specific demographic blocks.
This makes it sound very depressing, like you have to sell out, cater to the lowest common denominator, or adopt bizzare, corporate psychological manipulation and tricks, but you really don't. My personal votes are bigger than a minnow, smaller than a whale, but growing, and you can see why I sometimes vote for people. I thought, hey, this person is a good Steemit contributor, and I own some of this Steemit whatever shares, so if I vote for her, she will keep working and increase the value of my Steemit whatever things:
Which brings us to the next subject, the starving artist. Me and the baker girl had a succesful post, but if you click the next link, you'll see someone posting with crazy good art skills and tutorials that got nothing:
My theory with art and music is, the more enjoyable something is to do, the less likely you are to get paid unless you're at the top of the totem pole. That one is pretty good, though. Will people like that get paid on here? We will see. I have a feeling that most people who fulfill a niche or broad role well enough will.
I think pretty much anyone can earn on here you just got to be dedicated and put in the efforts to produce something of value :)
Absolutely, but as for now, you also have to have a bit of luck to actually make money. It doesn't matter if you get 60 upvotes from people without power, you won't earn much from that (like this post, 66 votes and $1.48). So there's a lot of great content that doesn't get paid. Of course, like pointed out in the article, this will likely correct it self in time when the values are more evenly distributed among the steemeans.
In the mean time people should continue to make quality posts. If they get upvotes they know they're on the right track, and sooner or later the "right persons" upvotes and the money follows :)
If he had drawn something steem-related, he'd probably put the same time and effort yet his payment would be 1000$+.
I've seen a surprising lack of Pokemon related content on here. I thought there'd be billion dollar Pokemon posts everywhere haha.
lol... we are too busy with steem to catch pokemons :P
Value attracts value. It's in the best interest of us all to produce and curate quality content. We have a platform here that lets us be heard and even rewards us for putting out content.
Think of the things we could create here in a year's time.
The ironic part is, Youtube will likely be subsidizing this site while it cuts into their business model.
Lot of people are not saying it is a scam. But many do compare this platform with lottery system.
I have seen some great content as well as much lame content getting rewarded handsomely. It will be interesting to see how system corrects itself.
The platform which runs on content sharing without having a lot of valuable and exclusive content may not succeed. I am optimistic that system will realign and start towards self correction.
And yes, I do understand value is subjective.
But, when times comes to estimate value, it will be done on kind of people this platform has and kind of content which is really hard to find elsewhere.
Time will tell us. I am grateful to be a part of this experiment. I really want the experiment to bear fruitful result.
I would like to have a little share of that. I also want it to taste the best in the world.
Yea, how it will look down the road is the interesting part, and a pretty crazy psychological experiment. It will either work like a business where people upvote things that are beneficial to the shareholders, which there should be literally tons of, since anyone providing resources to the site will be one, or it will be a giant reenactment of the movie Idiocracy.
Indeed
I'm going to start producing dance music freestyle on my blog when the follower button starts working you've inspired me to become a vlogger. Like djing but Im mixing in tracks as I make them. Sounds cool right? It is.
Great article, and thank you for mentioning my art tutorial, I really appreciate it :)
I actually hate good 2d artists. I started getting decent at 3d, but then I was like, if really good 2d artists put in the time to learn they can beat me so there's no point. Then I decided I was taking the long way to earn money and should just go to the source and get in the money business itself (trading, investing, etc)
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 10.8 and reading ease of 64%. This puts the writing level on par with Michael Crichton and Mitt Romney.