The Pitfalls of Low Earnings From A New User's Perspective

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As I sit here this morning, I find myself frustrated.

I am relatively new to the Steemit platform, and have only contributed a handful of my works, but catch myself asking the question, "Will Steemit be relevant in 5 years time"?

I have to admit, it is extremely frustrating to spend 2-3 hours constructing a post, ensuring that the formatting is displayed correctly, all sources are cited, and the body of work is presentable, only to get in return for all of that effort, 3 views, and one up-vote worth a whopping $.03 for my troubles.

I have sifted through the mountain of self-help postings concerning "How to be successful on Steemit", only to notice that the subject that sells on here is exactly that, anything Steemit related.

This place is turning into a virtual "circle-jerk" of investors talking about their investment versus what it was intended to be; a place to share new ideas or the day's happenings, where up-votes become a form of gratuity for your troubles, and effort.

I know that it takes time to build a following, and that it takes energy and effort to attract the "whales" who have the power to up-vote and make your account worth your time and effort to continue contributing. The only problem with that paradigm is with the current site design, finding the subject matter that you are interested in is next to impossible, or at least, extremely tasking.

It is like the virtual lottery being played anytime you post something on here. If you don't get up-votes in the first 5 minutes, well then the chances of you receiving any form of payout for your time and effort are diminished substantially. The postings force the "new" posts section of the site to scroll rapidly and within seconds, a post that was just added, is now buried under a mountain of other posts, all vying for attention from those posters who are not actively posting their own content.

Do you really think this site is going to continue to attract new users if word gets out that "you have the better chance of hitting the lottery then you do with hitting it big on Steemit"?

My Recommendations

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First and foremost, the site needs some sort of topic listing and categorization that is user friendly. You can base which topics to include off of the percentage of tags being used for the subject matter, or make a list of commonly used category listings. As a user, I don't want to have to refresh every minute or so, to find the topic I am looking for on the "new" posts tab, so a self-scrolling function would be greatly appreciated.

The search function is great if you have a topic that matches the post title exactly, but if not, then good luck. You can only hope that there is a tag for the subject matter you are searching out. Once again, a noted problem with finding the tag is that it contains a scrolling list of posts, and does not seem to have any rhyme or reason associated with how they are listed.

I recommend adding a "pinned" function to each category (top 10 posts per category), using a metric based on page views mixed with earnings, versus whatever is being used currently. Really, I have no idea what is currently being used as the criteria for how posts within tags are listed. I have seen the pinning function used quite effectively on other sites, and so long as there is an expiration, or metric to bump off stale postings, and replace with trending postings, the concept should help drive new contributors to desire for the "pin" versus playing the lottery system that is currently in place.

The rest of the content under the pin should scroll from newest to oldest, and one could go even further to allow for sub-tags within each category tag to further differentiate the offerings. For instance, if I am a conspiracy theorist, but want to read on 9/11, I want to see the ease of use where I choose from a drop-down menu and select conspiracies, when highlighted, a new listing of sub-categories appears, and I would like to choose from those offerings.

Lastly, I would do away with the public display of how much a particular post made monetarily. This is driving post "clicks" and is detracting from new users who are attempting to become apart of the community. I see some benefits from showing off how much you made from a post, but really, I want to read subject matter which matters to me, not just stuff that other users have paid top dollar to show appreciation for.

Maybe I am just being overly-dramatic? Really, I see it like this. If I am getting frustrated with spending 2-3 hours on a post, and only receiving $.03 from my time and effort, who else is going to feel the same way?

Come on Steemit, you can fix these minor issues to allow for this site to continue growing. The idea is to keep an audience, not just bring in new users with a low-attrition rate...

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