Why Exactly Are You on Steemit?
I don’t know about you but I’m here to make money. Plain and simple.
When I first came here and saw the dollar signs at the bottom of the posts, I knew I was in the right place. I was in content creator heaven. Not only can I have eyeballs on my content but I can also make the money back from promoting the posts.
I can also make a profit from the money I spent on promotion. I make 18% from the SBD I spend on minnowbooster. That’s not something to laugh at. I spend 100 SBD on minnowbooster and make 118 SBD/SP the next week. If we do a little math (18 x $4 = 72 USD), that’s a decent return for my investment of both time and money.
By paying to promote my posts, I also get access to the hot or trending pages and this attracts more views. Those views result in more upvotes (more money), more followers (more money eventually), and more reblogs (also, more money). Caveat emptor: you have to post useful or at least entertaining content to make this work. Otherwise you might get flagged to oblivion.
As a bonus, whatever I create stays on the blockchain forever. Unlike squidoo, your content will be there forever. Even if steemit ceases to exist, your content will still be there and you’ll still be able to access them with a little technical know-how.
Best. Platform. Ever.
Nothing’s Wrong with Wanting to Make Money
What do all steemians have in common? It doesn’t matter if you’re a whale, an orca, a dolphin, a minnow or a plankton like me. We all want to make money. We just have different ways of going around it.
If you’re a big player, you’ll want to make the biggest return on your SP with minimum effort. That’s why you’ll see a lot of whales delegating to upvote bots. Some self-upvote without remorse.
If you’re someone with some extra money to invest, you’ll probably do what I’m doing and pay for the bots to promote your posts and make money while doing so.
But what if you don’t have money to invest? You post as many comments as you can on the highest pay-out posts you can.
I’m not judging. We all try to make most of what’s available to us.
We Can’t Change People by Telling Them to Change
Show. Don’t tell.
No amount of convincing will ever change the mind of people. The more you tell them they’re wrong, the more they’ll be more convinced that they are right. It’s human nature.
A more powerful way of influencing people is by being an example. I’m trying to convince steemians to create quality content and promote them using minnowbooster to make money. And I do just that.
I don’t spend time trying to flag every bad content I see. Because I know it’s impossible to do.
“I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.”
– Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
Instead, I try to focus my energy on creating something useful or at least entertaining. Here’s what the Blue Paper has to say about the content we should be creating:
“The users who produce content are adding value to the network by creating material that will drive new users to the platform, as well as keep the existing users engaged and entertained. This aids in distributing the currency to a wider set of users and increases the network effect. The users that take time to evaluate and vote on content are playing an important role in distributing the currency to the users who are adding the most value.”
Two things to remember when writing content:
- Content should drive new users to the platform
- Existing users must be engaged and entertained
I’m sure bickering is entertaining for some people. But I doubt if it will drive new users to the platform.
If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
We’ve established that we all here want to make money and we all have different ways of doing it. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it badly. Whatever ‘it’ means for you.
For Minnows
If you’re a minnow with no resources, the best way to make money is by commenting on posts. How do you do it the right way? First, comment only on posts you really care about and have something to add to. “Great post” simply won’t cut it. Try to add value to the conversation or don’t comment at all.
For Those with Money to Spend
Please don’t post a few paragraphs and spend all your available SBD/SP on promoting them. That’s not good for steemit and ultimately not good for you. Remember, your posts must drive new users to the platform or at least be engaging or entertaining.
For the Whales
Theoretically, whales will curate the best posts. They have the most to gain or lose if steemit succeeds or not. But if you have a couple million SP in your account, curating content must be the last thing on your mind.
Delegating to bots is okay. Just choose the ones that really try to make steemit better. Minnowbooster is the best as far as I’m concerned.
It also wouldn’t hurt if you whales upvote good content now and then. Some of you already do and I commend you for doing that.
Honestly, I don’t expect any of you to listen. That’s okay. I’ll just continue doing my business and do what I do the best that I can.
The main reason is that Steemit gives me the reason to post
And that reason, in all likelihood, is money. :)
I love this post!
There are a lot of reasons to be here. And as you said, It's perfectly okay to be here for the money. Money is always a great motivator for us to do things. Because we all have bills to pay.
Just think of all the art that never would have been created if they weren't offered payment for their work. I feel like we would of missed out on a lot of great stuff without those patreons.
The Tree of Life, or Etz haChayim (עץ החיים) has upvoted you with divine emanations of G-ds creation itself ex nihilo. We reveal Light by transforming our Desire to Receive for Ourselves to a Desire to Receive for Others. I am part of the Curators Guild (Sephiroth), through which Ein Sof (The Infinite) reveals Itself!
@pleasestop
I am no good writer, dont have much money.. how can I survive?
You don't seem to be doing so badly.
But that's a good point. You have to develop the skills. It can be done. I'm not a native English speaker myself but I think I write better than a lot of those who are born English speakers.
I didn't have money on here when I started but I figured it is a pay to win game. (Life is pay to win anyway.) So I invested money and it's become easier to generate income from my posts since then.
videos my friend, videos
copied videos wont generate anything good.. I think some of my kids video would be entertaining..
yes certainly not copied videos, original content
Your STEEM may be 20% more valuable within a couple of weeks
https://steemit.com/steem/@davebrewer/steem-price-will-go-for-a-pump-in-next-7-days-price-will-increase-by-20
but if youre right then its a manipulated value, so is it really trustworthy and "investable" as you say?
p.s. financial wonk, kudos.
You are correct. If the price is being manipulated then you have to be concerned that when the manipulation stops, the price will go on a different trajectory. Perhaps that still gives room to speculate while the manipulation is in progress?
get in while the gettins' good
I need to take a little time soon to really understand bots, rested I gotta, leasing votes, delegating, etc. I think I have posted decent content and have 500 or so followers, but I want to make more money so that I can really reinvest in the platform.
or cut and run with the BTC while you still can
I like what you're saying, this space is definitely a great way to make money. But I will say, I follow a bunch of people, and even with that, it's pretty disheartening to scroll my feed and see nothing but Bitcoin market recaps, calls for Witness votes, and posts with just a Youtube video linked. This site will only survive with people making clever content, funny posts, witty satire, or actual original journalism.
I guess the irony is that, those are the posts that will make the money... that and crypto recaps... because let's be serious... that shit is popular here :)
See guys? It's not that hard to add something intelligent to the discussion.
this however, is an excellent example of what not to do
I read this after posting my comment, yeah, ditto.
Facts
Facts
Facts
You spoke my mind here. Let's cut the pretense and work on contributing quality to our mutual investment (Steemit). Everyone loves money.
Resteemed!
Nice post, I think everyone regardless of what they say are here to make money. If not they could just go to Youtube, facebook or any other social media platform. While those sites censor you if they don't like what you create, If you don't care about making money then it won't really matter and you won't be posting things that will flag you, there ARE was of posting without triggering the censors so, yeah I think everyone here is wanting to make money. But that doesn't mean that they do not want to create good content. But it is all about the benjis.
I like this article for being so honest and frank. We all want to make money. I remember engaging in endless youtube and forum comment wars during my college days. I didn't get paid monetarily by that but the satisfaction of 'winning' a comment war was super-rewarding.
And then I realised there are paid-to-post forums/platforms like ForumCoin, myLot and Steemit. Well, no more exciting comment wars but the exchanges of ideas are still rewarding.
This is the kind of comment I'm talking about.
You mean my comment??
I meant steemit users should comment like you did.
Thanks!