1 year on Steemit !

Exactly 1 year ago I joined Steemit with the intention just to test this platform out so I could better understand the Steem Blockchain. With the start of the Belgian Jupiler League and the betting season I had some content to write about that in the first place would help myself stay focussed.

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I never expected to still be here after a year when I joined, but I quickly got addicted and started seeing it all as a video game I highly enjoyed playing and wanted had to beat similar to Poker or Sports Betting. I never really cared that much about the short term potential earnings and wanted to make this into something more long term that could potentially provide me a bit of stable income to counter some of the uncertainty I face mostly relying on a very variable income with potential losses from Sports Betting. So I continued making posts on a consistent daily basis with a mindset to always improve, learn better to understand how everything works and most importantly make some friends. I took a look back back at all 383 posts I published so far and made a timeline...

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I stared with a small introduction post that got 0.17$ post earnings which really got me exited even though it is nothing. Just the idea that is was actually possible to earn something here was enough. All the posts after my introduction got 0.00$ post earnings, but I did not mind because they had a function for myself. Keeping a blog as a Sports Bettor can be highly valuable on it's own.

While the content of the posts was quite solid, I had no exposure whatsoever on Steemit also because I was one of the only Sports Bettors on this platform and it was understandable that nobody really cared. I really enjoy series of posts so I started making weekly results roundups and a weekly post with reposts on every played match again mainly for myself since doing these in an honest way really helped to stay sharp. Near the end of the month I bought some Steem Power which gave me a 0.03$ upvote basically just to be able to get my posts above 0.00$ payout range knowing I was going to be here for the longer run.

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Since exposure is pretty much key on Steemit I needed to give people a reason to follow me which was one of the reasons I started the EPL Betting Contest. I figured that spending 5$ each week on prize money would cost me 190$ to run it an entire season and get me some goodwill and exposure in return. On top I was able to fund most of it with the prize money I was able to win from other great contests. I also started writing more betting related articles and got my first whale upvote (3.67$) from @jaki01 who has a background in betting and posted a asian handicap quiz contest which I won a week before.

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I started to understand that for now, content that is more Steemit Community driven would do a lot better. Since I highly enjoyed playing along in Sports Contests on Steemit and needed a way to promote my own I started a series listing all sports related contests on Steemit. This was an excellent way to network and it brought about my first real Whale Upvote (8.71$) from @ats-david who was one of the contest hosts in the list. I also started making some posts about Steemit itself and started reporting on Sports Betting Blockchain projects because those subjects really thrived on this platform. Hosting the EPL Betting Contest in a consistent way and adding a jackpot system also got me some big support (6.18$) from @acidyo which really helped to boost the prize pool.

I also started to understand how important good thumbnails are and started to make my own which always takes a bit of time but is a huge improvement compared to always using the same boring picture when I just started. This also instantly gives a message to readers that you are willing to do effort and take it all serious increasing the chance to get some upvotes.

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I discovered the nitrogen sports BTC sportsbook and this gave me an excellent way to use some of my BTC holding and post some bets in the most transparent way possible while potentially earning some affiliate money (~0.0021BTC it earned me so far). I also got my first Flag from Steemcleaners for using the #introduceyourself tag in a post I made each time I had powered up doing an upvote giveaway which was pretty lame and could have just been done by giving a warning since I did not know I was doing anything wrong.

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Most of my focus was on my weekly posting routine and I picked up some more consistent whale support from @flameburst on my posts. My EPL contest was getting scammed quite hard which was really frustrating since policing things cost me more time compared to actually running the contest. I Added a rule that a 0.01$ upvote was needed to participate which instantly gave scammers no chance but came at a cost of being less friendly to new Steemit members. I also reached my goal of 5000 STEEM POWER mostly cost average buying my way in around 0.80$-1.00$ steem price.

One of the things I also realised is that a Sports Betting Community would be needed for me to grow so I started doing efforts in that regard by making articles, welcoming new members and starting an initiative to supports Sports betting content which quickly turned out not to be abuse free and scalable.

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By month 6 I started to realise that most regular post earnings indirectly had to come from my own Steem Power and that small regular votes were far more valuable to me compared to having to hope for the occasional whale upvote. I joined @make-a-whale thanks tp @abh12345 who introduced me to it along with @qurator while getting some @steembasicincome shares. All these initiatives highly helped to build more regular post earning and I really appreciate them despite their flaws.

I did not want to give up on growing some kind of sports betting community here on Steemit and I started a monthly curation posts aimed towards giving promesing sports betting related content creators regular upvotes.

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The Sports Betting Curation posts really showed to be very effective to bring sports bettors on this platform together and inspired @beat-the-bookies to create us a Discord Server and So the SBC (Steemit Betting Community) was created. Along with @stimp1024, @acelad & @fullcoverbetting we spend a lot of time to make Steemit a much more friendly platform for everyone who brings sports betting related content. There is still a lot of work to be done and it can be extremely frustrating at times but I'm confident we will continue to grow.

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With the regular season being over and a drive to improve my overall health I wanted to use steemit as a way to track my progress and stay sharp similar to how I used it for my betting activity. I did not want to push this kind of content to any of my followers so I created my @byebyehamburgers blog and made a repost here every 10 days. It was a good experiment to learn what it takes to start from zero again without any exposure or Steem Power and get to know the Health Community on Steemit. I learned a lot from that experience and know that everyone who has the good mindset can easily grow their daily post earnings to 1$+. I also made a series about Upvotes On Steemit as a step by step guide for starting accounts on what they can do to grow. Also the health improvements have really made a difference doing this 100 day challenge.

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I continued most of my regular posts and had been thinking about and idea of a support group that gives out daily upvotes in a scalable way which made me come up with a statistical model that could provide just that in a fair way and started to make plans to make it come to life.

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I spend most of the time promoting and improving the SBC trying to spread some awareness to help members improve their overall posts. Most of those post took forever to make and it felt really unrewarding at times knowing that posting something that takes 10 minutes to make would have very similar post earnings. The world Cup & Wimbledon also took place which brought an excellent opportunity to bring back some actual bets and join the SBC League

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This last month I spend most of my time actually creating the Upvote Shares (@upvoteshares) support project. It was one of those things that took up a huge amount of time setting everything up , testing it out and making all the long posts that were needed but it was really worth it because it has now started successfully and I'm quite satisfied with the results and what the project provides even though it still needs to get a lot more exposure which will be on my to do list.

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So today my second year on Steemit starts and I'm quite confident i will be still here 1 year from now making another Steemit Birthday post! My intention is to continue trying to give what I can and help grow this platform forward along with myself. I would like to do it in a somewhat more time efficient way, but I'm afraid I will fail at that seeing how much time I put in making this post again. Anyway, big thanks to everyone for the support so far ! I am looking forward to what Steemit will bring us the next 365 Days !