How Not To Succeed On Steemit: A Non Tutorial
Hi,
Have you been looking for a way to succeed on Steemit? Has anyone on FB or elsewhere offered you any kind of workshop or lessons in Steemit success? Did they ask for money?
Stop.
Image credit: 1588877 on Pixabay
Do not do that. It will lead to nothing good for you OR FOR STEEMIT.
First, read this post by @battleaxe. Do not be one of the people she is writing about.
Yes, Steemit is about blogging for that sweet, sweet money. But it is also about community. Approaching people on discord or in comments or by sending them 0.001 SBD and asking for money or upvotes is a terrible way to take part in building a community.
Stop asking people for a follow or an upvote in exchange for your follow and upvote. Give people a REASON to follow and upvote you.
This is a non tutorial because while there are many worthwhile tutorials to read on tools and ways to do stuff on Steemit, there is no one way for any one to succeed, except for that which doesn't fit in a tutorial: Do good work. Post quality, original content, make friends.
Be a person.
Seriously making friends is key. And seriously, we have lots of sweet people around here @didic
So many cool people! It's so frustrating that so many aren't trying to communicate on a human level and treat other people like potential ATMs.
haha potential ATMs :D!
YES! It's funny, but this really has stopped becoming about money for me. Although I enjoy watching my account value grow (slowly lol) and who doesn't? But it's so much more than that. I'm learning new things, I'm making friends, and most importantly I 'm learning more about myself through my blogging. Solid advice!
Oh, it's definitely also about the money. Frankly, I couldn't justify the time I spend on here otherwise. But the community is such an important part of the experience.
I agree, Steemit is at its best when people make contact and write about what is interesting to them. If it would be only about money a lot of quality will never been seen.
When I started out I almost stopped immediately when I saw all the begging. I didn't want to be a person who needed to do that and thankfully it wasn't needed. It was good to read it isn't what I am supposed to do.
I am happy I gave it a chance and stayed. I have read so much great blogs and I learn a lot. I found even new interests.
Resteemed because yes. So much yes.
Another annoyance: mass tags. I use Ginabot so I get TONS of notifications from people tagging me in posts begging for upvotes. I flag them all to death, as do the other good people tagged.
I used to rarely flag spam posts and comments just because I don't like using my voting power that way, you know? I'd rather use it positively. But things are getting out of hand. Every other post of mine now has a stupid worthless comment that's usually begging for a vote or follow. So now I've changed my tune. I'll be much more quick to flag now.
I want steemit to be a community. I don't want to have to wade through all these users begging for votes while offering nothing of value.
You know @techslut, I beg to differ. My worry is that bloggers are forming a holier than thou attitude with people who are new to steemit. If someone is mass tagging, with a bot, then that deserves a flag, I'll grant you that. I found the original post to be too preachy, cliche, and overdone to deserve an upvote, much a less a resteem.
If someone begs for an upvote, then correct their behavior with a comment and move on.
But IMO, blog posts like this have become too common and overdone and it's starting to get to the point where the complainers are worse than the offenders. Either correct the person with a comment or ignore it, but do we need another blog post complaining about people misusing Steemit? I think not.
It's like the band who has nothing to sing about, so they sing about being famous and stuck in airports all the time.
Yes and no. Are there too many posts like this one on steemit? Yes. Does is stop these votebeggers and scammers? No.
Correcting a behavior once or twice is fine. But how many hours a day am I expected to sit there and explain things to people who really refuse to understand, and reply to bloody bots tagging me because my upvote has value? Oh and then there's the discord votebeggers. I answer, explain, then block if they insist and ignore what I am saying altogether.
This type of spammy user behavior is an annoyance. We're allowed to complain every day, all day. You don't have to upvote or resteem a complaint post if you've seen enough of these. No one will judge you. I sure won't.
P.S. If you think @didic is a "band with nothing to sing about" you obviously haven't looked at his profile.
Well every individual case is its own. But I will remind everyone that the biggest barrier to entry for Steemit is the learning curve. If the site is flooded with “complaint blogs” it creates a negative atmosphere and will demoralize new users, which is worse than the beggars etc.
You know, there’s also a lot of very good “how to succeed on steemit” and “my first month recap and what I Learned” and other helpful posts on steemit. I think maybe you’re a bit too focused on the complain posts and they stick out to you because they annoy you. Which is understandable, and I don’t blame you. But are you actually seeing all the great positive “help and encouragement” ones that pop up regularly too? :)
I don’t think it’s quite as bad or detrimental as you make it out to be.
Besides, with every new wave of steemit users that pass 1 month, 2 months, 3 months etc and are slowly building steam (pun intended) you also have a new wave of steemians who still have the patience to gently remind upvote and resteem beggars that they will not get very far with that behavior (I still do a lot).
I think people like @techslut who are getting flooded with that crap and are sick of explaining the same shit for about the 100th million time to seemingly no avail are completely entitled to draw a harder line at some point. They’ve earned the right to sit back a bit and let others do the gentle explaining.
I think we’re all “paying our dues” helping out and gently explaining stuff to super noobs (like we all once we) on “our way up” the steemit ladder.
Don’t underestimate the amount of patience people still have when they’re still “on the way” to where people like techslut already are.
I believe it’s a cycle and as long as we nurture it, things will stay more or less balanced out. :D
But that’s just my personal opinion :P
Yeah I'm for the positive ones. Those ones are good for steemit.
Great post. You know what Steemit needs more of? Blogs telling people how they are using Steemit wrong. We are only reminded this every third blog that we see. I don't think anyone has complained about this in 3 hours so we needed another post explaining this. Let's keep talking down to new users with posts like this so that they feel shame, rather than just ignoring them. Love the original content and keep it up.
Ignoring new users is better than offering them much needed guidance in steemit etiquette? I beg to differ.
Well we've both stated our points of views. We just see things differently.
You get out of it what you put in. A positive attitude and being consistent helps though ^^
Completely absolutely and totally agree with every word.
Funnily enough, it’s not about the money and it never was, but the rewards and the fact that you “collect rewards for posting” keeps me motivated for the first time to keep producing content. (i was never able to keep up with a blog before although the desire to do so was always there)
But it’s more like a game to me than making profit (I think I paid myself exactly once so far and put everything else in steem power).
Like in Mario party where you have to collect stars. Haha!
I want to keep going because I want those stars and of course I want to “win” but the enjoyment of playing the game comes from playing it with others.
And I have found such amazing people on steemit already, I’d never dared dream of finding such an awesome community of vibrant, diverse, kind, funny and smart people to exchange myself with and grow and learn from. ❤️
Of course there’s the idiots and upvote/follow beggars and all that, but as long as we somehow manage to keep those in check and the greedy folks don’t become the majority of steemit users, I hope we’ll be just fine, and continue to build something truly spectacular on this platform. ❤️
This is such an important topic, and other Steemians must think so to since I've seen it come up on several occasions lately like @battleaxe's post you referenced and a post from @meesterboom. I even wrote about it half an hour ago.
Your last line sums it up perfectly. Just be a person. Be yourself. Write quality content and try to grow your following organically. Stop begging for money and weighing the platform down with worthless contributions.
It is definitely one of the worst ills plaguing the platform, and I'm glad more are speaking out about it.
It seems if the effort and heart behind it is genuine, then rewards will come. Begging and bargaining reduces the beauty of community that appreciate one another and share. Excellent non post and non tutorial.
This is a great post, and the single best piece of advice going around the platform. :) Upvoted!
Thanks! A lot of the credit goes to @battleaxe, both for her original post and for subsequent discussions.