Lessons from 37 days on Steemit

Word Count: 1,183 | Est. Reading Time: 4:18 min | Readability Rating: B

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Hey Everyone,

I wanted to write down a few observations from my first 37 days on Steemit. I love the platform, and while I am slowly gathering momentum, it's still really only been a few days, and I figure that writing out what I've learned will help myself and others who are new to the platform.

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1. Consistency

The amount of votes or rewards a person makes per post will vary, but the rewards are cumulative. And so by posting consistently, the returns even out. I've found this principle to be true on legacy social media platforms, and even in the media. You can put a lot of heart and soul into one post but hardly receive any kind of response to it, but then you can post something that took a half-an-hour to write and it ends up going viral.

This can be both mystifying and somewhat frustrating, especially if you're working hard to create original and valuable work. But the thing to keep in mind is that intrinsic value and market value are two different things. Just because something means a lot to you doesn't meant that other people will find it valuable. I don't say this to be discouraging, but rather for the opposite. By staying consistent, we can not only work through any low points and trouble spots, but we can push ourselves creatively to do amazing things.

I know that in my own work on Steemit, being consistent means that I am regularly able to redeem curation and author rewards. And even if the payout is not huge, every little bit means something and adds up over time. I don't even think of it as work, but more as an opportunity to explore and build value in a new platform that is having life-changing benefits to the people who use it.

So be consistent. The money is a by-product of adding value to the lives of others through our interactions on the platform.

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2. Original work

Thankfully the community does a good job of policing plagiarism and spam on here. But, because of the nature of the platform, it's not perfect. I think what happens is that people hear that they can make money with Steemit, and if they're not in the business of original content creation, they think they can make a quick buck. And while they might make a few cents here and there, it's not a pathway to riches in the same way that it might be on some of the other legacy platforms. As @jaynie wrote the other day, Steemit is not a 'get-rich-quick scheme.'

@stellabell's post from about month ago about how we are 'mining STEEM with our minds' is insightful because it not only applies to Steemit, but to value creation on the Internet in general. Her post had an incredible influence on how I decided to make use of this platform, but it helped me to articulate what I've already known about any creative work. While much of human civilization has been built through physical toil, the age of abundance that we are entering in through the democratization of artificial intelligence is forcing us to explore and define the future of work. If you're on Steemit, then chances are you've already been thinking about this, but it goes beyond just money.

As an American, I've had the chance to see first hand how many of my society's greatest exports are cultural, i.e., they belong to the economy of the imagination. Yes, there are the physical efforts required to materialize these ideas, but they begin with the ideas first and foremost. Even Steve Jobs, when he unveiled the iPhone, promoted it as a tool for the imagination. The smartphone already existed prior to the iPhone, and it was in use by businessman and politicians all across the world. But the iPhone was for made everyone, and that is what made it so successful.

By focusing on the creation of original work, we are breathing life into our dreams. And this is so important. You and I can read the same information but interpret it quite differently, and this is expressed through our writings, art, videos, music, etc. There is a trend of thinking in certain corners of the Internet that there are too many opinions, and that social media has failed. I don't believe that. I think that the incentives right now favor the energizing of a few strong opinions, and they disincentivize original thought. If anything, we need more opinions, more imagination.

We need more original work. And Steemit is a perfect platform for that.

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3. A work-in-progress.

Steemit is still a work-in-progress, as is this entire crypto economy. And that is exciting to me. I do believe that this movement is working for the good of the world, and I am thankful to have found it. If @ned's release of the new whitepaper on Smart Media Tokens is any indication of how essential the community of users is to the success of this platform, then we are in a strong place going forward. His active solicitation of community feedback is what I want in a CEO.

One of the more frustrating things about being a user on other legacy platforms, besides the fact that I am being mined for my emotions, is that users often don't feel heard by the creators of the platform. Facebook adds more bells-and-whistles to keep people on the platform while ignoring what attracted people to it in the first place - that it was a place for people to connect with the people that mattered to them, not brands. Twitter users demand a safer and more positive user experience that also allows them the simple feature of an edit button, but instead, Twitter decides that superficial changes such as promoting television shows and increasing the character limit are what users are really demanding. And finally, YouTube - once a platform that promoted and defended free speech, has become the very thing it sought to oppose while also devaluing vital revenue streams for the content creators that built the platform into what it is today.

Meanwhile, because Steemit is still in beta, I can blog about an issue, and hop on Github and raise an issue I found with the platform, and get a response from the developers. I feel heard and that my opinion on here is valued. I'm not just a product being sold to advertisers.

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If you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it in the comments below.

As always, thank you for reading,

Josh

Image is sourced from Pixabay and is in the Public Domain. Image is hyperlinked and clicks through to source page.

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View History

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View Steemit blockchain activity/edit history | View draft edit history on Github

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Josh Peterson is a 2016 Robert Novak Journalism Program Fellow and a writer living in Denver, CO. Follow Josh on Steemit and Twitter. Keybase for secure chat. PGP Fingerprint: 4507 3000 1A40 2691 DAB8 ED65 A3EA 3629 73FD B7FF

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.