It has been around 3 months since I have joined this platform. That is quite a long time to get to know basically anything better. Initial brutal enthusiasm has been substituted for rather knowledgeable opinion. Through the time I’ve had my ups and downs and this post will sum them all up, as well as share the gained experience.

Source

Progress of my contribution

Massive change that has happened since my last summary, which was written after the first month spend on this platform, was launch of the DnS game I was preparing basically since I have joined the platform. As far as I’m concerned, all the players are having fun, as well as some of the guys that do now directly play the game, but regularly up vote it. The Prize pool has grown to 238 SBD, which is just awesome! Plenty of players have already died. And we are nearing the first half of our epic journey.

As I have announced in the previous summary, I have stopped posting my opinions about what should be improved on the site. Since I’m no programmer, I wouldn’t be able to bring any of my opinions to life. I think it was a good decision, because I had more time to work on the game and on my philosophies.

I have also participated in countless contests. Winners of most of them were though decided by user’s vote, therefore I didn’t stand any chance there, since amount of Steemit-friends I have is rather scarce. Most of the participants were able to amass over 50 votes to win, whereas I had like 2. In the only contest where I could have won by judge’s votes and by that earn a 2nd place, guess what, I succeeded. This brings me to another topic. 

Followers

After first month I had something over 100 followers. The growth continued at steady pace and now after 3 months I have 350 followers. In the previous summary I was talking about the slow growth of followers, and why I think it’s a good sign, because the followers would probably be more active ones. Oh how wrong I was. The more followers I have, the less activity (either up votes, or comments) seems to be happening on my posts. My estimation is that from the 350 followers at least 310 are “dead”. That’s one of the saddest things for me on this platform. I’d much rather have 40 followers that are really active than 1000 where none is. Well this is how it is and I can’t do anything but try harder I guess! 

Trail and rewards

Right after the first month here I got adopted by @gavvet trail. Because of that my average reward jumped from 8 bucks to 50. It was a huge blessing. I worked more on the posts and produced less of them to further extend the quality of my posts. Unfortunately HF19 hit soon after that and @gavvet decided that I was over the line. I don’t complain, actually I’m very grateful even for the little bit of support. I’m also not sad that I didn’t squeeze as much as I actually could have during that week. It was because of him that I was further motivated to work harder. By his actions he has shown be that all the work that I’m putting into Steemit has actually been realized by some of the earlier adopters whose votes mean something on this site.

After he’s dropped me I enjoyed a bit of the post HF golden times, but then it’s all dark ages for me. My average post value is about 3 bucks from then, which is under my investment plan. Since I’m spending almost all the free time here I actually invest A LOT, but very few seem to notice and even fewer decide to up vote me regularly. Only up time is when my friend @hr1 takes pity on me and throws his valuable up vote my way. Without him and @vcelier I would probably be lost on this site to be honest. I’m glad that I have found few users that seem to support me and enjoy our mutual discussions. To name some - @sircork, @thatsweeneyguy, @heymattsokol and more. I could say that I try even harder now with a goal to be noticed by at least some users that would regularly engage with me, but I guess that in next 2 months I need to TRY EVEN HARDER. 

Evolution of my understanding of the Steemit platform

Ok this part will be a bit controversial. Keep in mind that this all is only an observation that I try to keep as objective as I can. When I was doing the research about this page, to make a decision whether I shall or shall not participate I have read some of the older blogs. The impression from them was, that the site is full of critical minded people that engage together to undergo some kind of self-improvement. Also that all kinds of artists gather around here to present their work and get decentralized rewards for it. The idea was great – utopic I’d say. There had to be something unsympathetic about the site right? And I have found it. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to turn my back on the platform. I still believe that this platform can value my contribution to the system much more than the “real” bureaucratic system.

I was hoping that that rewarded would be mainly deep thinking, artistry, explanations of things (Cryptocurrency, science, etc.), sharing of helpful life experiences and stuff. To an extent this is right to an extent it is not though.

So far I have come across many accounts that provide very good content and get the pay that they (in my eyes deserve). Just to mention a few I will go with my favourites - @kyriacos, @dreemit, @maneco64, or my probably most favourite @razvanelulmarin.

For example I often disagree with @kyriacos. As I once said to him, I think that he’s rather close-minded person, but that doesn’t mean I think he doesn’t deserve the pay. Actually he makes me think quite a lot and that’s what I seek here anyway.

Then there is @louisbettong, who has had some incredible long deep posts. In the end he’s got like 2 bucks for it and 1,5 was because of my @minnowsupport vote. It saddens me when I see hours spent on very thought out post and this is his reward. This is what needs to be rewarded in my opinion. This is the kind of commitment that would further increase the value of the site.

Now the opposite site. I have been working hard to expose an introduceyourself spammer who has earned over 50 bucks during the first week. Even after I personally contacted the users that has voted for her, they wouldn’t answer (one did actually), thus removing portion of reward pool that should be distributed among those that try to contribute. 

Then we have @daio. First I need to say that I love her work. She’s a very skilled artist and I regularly up vote her posts. Everything though has a limit in my eyes. One of her posts currently has 18 bucks in rewards for this contribution. “Hello, I wish you all a good day! Wait for my new job. Soon I can put it. It will be elephants.“ As I said I think she deserves her rewards for all the nice pictures, but this to me is rather over the threshold. If I were to compare it to my work (if I didn’t receive a single whale vote) this single post containing one selfie and those 3 sentences is currently worth more than my WHOLE WEEK of work. I work over 6 hours per day to keep my game running and to be able to post even some non-game posts. That is about 42 hours of work BEATEN by that. This is not envy, this is not greed – this is just an observation. 

Conclusion

What I have learned is that content to an extent doesn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong. I know that if I didn’t have at least some kind of quality I would never be adopted by @gavvet in first place and people most probably wouldn’t vote for me at all – not even friends (for my friends are also investors and they don’t up vote just about anything, as all investors here should). At the same time though “The introduceyourself spammer” and lot of other posts that receive laughable rewards (like miss 2000bucks, whose post with zillion generic photos isn’t contribution in my eyes either – but I’ll give her the effort…) for no effort whatsoever prove me right. The problem is that all of this depletes the reward pool so much, that those that don’t spam post, but put their time into the creation and into teaching others are the ones who lose at the end. Investors here often don’t care about long-term vision of Steemit. Or maybe they do, but their understanding of contribution is totally opposite to mine, since generic spamming of post is rewarded more than hours spend to try to create value. Also investors don’t take in account whether the user they up vote is actual believer in Steemit (meaning that the user will power up most of what he receives, to further increase the value of the token and not exchange it right away for fiat).

I still like the site. I’m just a bit saddened about what earns rewards here and what does not:). What about you guys/gals? I would like to know what YOU think.  

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