Hi Steemians,

I am incredibly happy to have completed 6 months on Steemit. I applied applied for my Steemit account on 3rd June this year and I got approval email soon as well. The @esteemapp shows my joining date as 5th June, 2017. Which means I have successfully spent 6 months on Steemit already. For the best part of these 6 months, I remained active on Steemit and I cannot be more thankful for it!

I'm a happy person to have achieved this incredible feat.

This post is not just a celebration post. I have lined up some encouraging achievements to share with my fellow Steemians so that my journey can inspire new, as well as struggling people. It's going to short and crisp.

6 Achievements

In these 6 months, I have experienced wonderful Steem moments all the way. I am going to list down 6 achievements to encourage you to work harder and do well on Steemit.

1. 58.558 Reputation:- That's the reputation score I have right now. If you follow @arcange Steemit Statistics closely, you'll know that there are less than 800 people who are at 58 reputation. The number of people who are above me in reputation score is less than 4000.

2. 200+ Posts & 2500+ Comments:- This is one of the keys to my steady but consistent rise on Steemit. I have been posting blogs regularly and have been writing hundreds of comments of good value. It's not easy to remain consistent but it's totally worth it.

3. $200+ Post:- On a single post, the maximum reward I have received till now is $225.31. It happened 6 months ago when I was totally new to Steemit. Two days later, one of my posts went beyond $200 again but finalized on $184.84 due to price fluctuation.

4. 1300+ Followers:- I take pride in knowing that more than 90 % of my followers are organically acquired, meaning they chose to follow me for the work I have done. The numbers are increasing with each passing day and I don't plan to stop working hard either.

5. 1000+ Steem:- I made a special update post a few days ago upon achieving my target of having at least 1000 Steem (Steem+SP) in my account by end of this year. I was able to achieve the target one month before the deadline. I now have a target to have 1000 SP in my account excluding any power ups. The best thing is that, barring some, all of this Steem came from Proof of Brain. I used my brain to create content, and Steemians used their brains to judge it as deserving of their valuable upvotes.

6. Amazing Connections:- I am mentioning this at the last but it is the number one achievement in my opinion. I cannot quantify it but it's the most valuable. I couldn't have gotten to know and talk to a lot of people if not for Steemit. @SirCork is a friend since my week one. @AusBitBank is an amazing support from that first big post of mine till now. I used to admire @jerrybanfield when his courses used to pop up in my Facebook feeds due to my massive inclination towards online learning. I can talk to him now and learn from him and he's amazing. @JBN is not just a colleague anymore. He's a Steemian that I can share with and talk to anytime about Steemit. There are countless more and this post will become too big if I keep going on.

There may be, and are, many more things worth highlighting but it's not a popularity contest. I just want you to have a look at what I have done and may be we can talk about our progresses in the comments and help each other in the areas of our strength.

6 Lessons for Steemians

Over these months, I have observed and shared a lot of personal insights and experiences. I have created many guides and tutorials as well which have since helped literally thousands of people to do better on Steemit. I am going to combine my experience in these six lessons that I hope will help you do better on Steemit.

1. Seek First to Learn, Then to Earn

The phrase is inspired by the habits number five in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which says:-

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Seeking first to learn how Steemit works and why successful people are successful translates to seeking first to understand. You're on a new platform which is based on a blockchain and rewards in cryptocurrency. Please understand its system first.

Don't learn so that you can manipulate the system (you can't do that), but learn so that you can offer what the community expects from you; value, contribution and engagement.

2. There are NO Shortcuts!

There are simply zero shortcuts that work. You'll either be frustrated and leave or be caught and punished with flags. Many people think they'll collude with friends and make a group who vote each other all the time. They do not realize that even a group of 100 people will only give you $0.10 at max if they all have no Steem Power.

• Upvote for upvote does not work even if you get 100 votes because these people who are voting on your posts have zero vote value.

• Follow for follow is another shortcut most rookies are mistaken about. You cannot get any support from such followers because most, I'd say all, of them are losers just like you. Harsh but true.

The only way to success is the way in which you do some valuable work and people reward you for providing that value. Avoid the shortcut thinking.

3. Consistently Contribute

If there's one word to summarize all the advice that experienced Steemians will give to you, it's contribute. What is a contribution? Anything that is valuable to the community. A thing which helps people know you, take a decision, make an improvement, enhance their knowledge, or do anything that people deem valuable.

And you have to do that on a consistent basis. People should know you for doing valuable things on Steemit for a long time.

4. Prioritize Relationships over Rewards

Take any account. Let's take @kus-knee. Visit his profile and open his latest post. Read it and then write a detailed commentary on that post. Also follow him. Then visit his profile every other day to see if he has posted something new. Read and comment. Repeat.

You'll slowly become familiar to him and you'll be able to know him better too from his posts and writing style. It will become a relationship of its own. Whenever he will see your post in his feed or comment on his post, he will be inclined to reply and even upvote it. Because you put in effort to make that connection.

I cannot talk enough about how relationships have helped me on Steemit. I have a genuine desire to make good connections from the day one and I have hundreds of them now on Steemit. So many people have made an undeclared connection with me too by consistently appearing in my comments. I try to upvote and reply to them on priority.

If you focus on building relationships, rewards will multiply. Try it.

5. Always Reply to Comments

That's one thing I have been doing regularly. I may have missed some due to commitments but I come back to replies tab and reply them all. The person who comments on your posts is a reader; not necessarily keen to be your follower. But when you reply and keep the conversation going, he or she tends to check you out and follow you if you fit the expectations.

You will see an amazing increase in the number of your followers when you make an earnest effort to reply to all comments in a way that is seen as valuable. I resteemed a @jerrybanfield post on the subject. Check that out for further evidence.

PS:- Upvoting valuable comments on your posts is a habit that you can borrow from me and you will see amazing effects of it too.

6. Do Not Spam, Beg or Plagiarize

Short comments like 'good post' are spam. Comments saying 'I followed you. You follow me and upvote my posts' are spam. Comments not relevant to the topic of the post are spam. Comments containing links, and that too irrelevant to to the post, are spam. Do not spam.

Do not beg. Just because you're new or struggling to understand how to get rewards, you should not resort to begging as a way to get some rewards for no work. Work hard. Learn. Put in effort. Show patience. You will get rewards.

What's not yours is not yours. What others wrote is theirs. Do not post content that is stolen from another author. Do not try to scam the system by spinning. You will be caught and you will be punished.

Note:- All gifs are from Giphy and are used to make the post interesting.

Conclusion

Steemit works but only if you are ready to make it work. I have spent 6 months and I am so happy. I wish I had joined in July 2016 rather than June 2017 but I am thankful that I joined. There are millions who are still wasting time of Facebook like I used to do before.

On completion of half an year, I wanted to share something to inspire Steemians and guide them to success. I hope you found this post to be useful. Please consider upvoting and resteeming.