What I Have Learned During My First 60 Days On Steemit.com
Hello everyone! I'd like to give you all a little insight into my experiences on Steemit and what I've learned over the last 60 days. But first a little backstory as to how I heard about the site...
Backstory...
It was late July and I was sitting at home trading stocks with the finance channel (CNBC) blaring to help keep me up to date on the world's latest breaking news that might affect the markets. Only, something different was mentioned today. One of the founders of Steemit.com (don't remember if it was @ned or @dantheman) came on the show and was talking about a revolutionary social media platform that was going to pay its users for the content they contributed...
I thought now here is a novel idea... paying people for the work they do... I need to look into this.
I signed up a couple minutes later and had my first post ready and submitted within hours. The rest of that day I researched and read everything I could about Steemit and cryptocurrency in general. I had no previous experience in cryptocurrency but I was pretty experienced in financial markets in general and had heard a great deal about Bitcoin over the years. I felt like this was finally something I had been looking for... something I had been waiting for... and it didn't even cost me a dime to sign up! Just my time!
As I dived deeper into the platform these are some of the things I have learned over the past 2 months:
1. Things they are a-changin
Since the day I signed up a lot of things have changed. There was no reputation number next to each poster's name, a lot of the posts being submitted didn't have pictures, the chat rooms were not used much, there was no reblog feature, the entire profile and back office for each user looked much different, and introductory posts were guaranteed money makers!
However, since that time... the one constant has been change. Although, that is not necessarily a bad thing. The site is currently still in beta testing mode while upgrades and changes are tinkered with before the hard launch takes place. What the site looks like today could be very different than what it looks like a few years from now...
2. It is not for those after the quick buck
(Do you see what I did there?)
Not sure if you have been around long, but when I signed up there were a couple quasi celebrities signing up and bragging about the thousands of dollars they were making with very little effort on their part. It was enough to make the little guy sick. Thankfully that has died down quite a bit since then. For most people they will need to put in the time building an audience before they ever see any real rewards. So, anyone looking to make a quick cash grab, unless you are Kim Kardashian, this site is probably not for you...
3. The price of steem trends down... for now
Take a look for yourself. The chart shows it all. There are several reasons for this but I won't really go into the specifics of it here. Just know that there are ideas being thrown around to better support the currency, also any long term investor in steemit shouldn't be worried about the day to day fluctuations in the price of Steem. I have only been around for the last 2 months so I have basically only experienced a down trend, but take a look at that chart before this downtrend...The price had exploded skyward thousands of percent and now is simply retracing that moonshot. As of today, the price has not even retraced all of those gains, if that gives you any kind of idea how big of a move up was...
4. Through hard work and persistence you can earn real money
Once you decide what areas you are the most knowledgeable in and what areas you would like to blog about, you can go about cultivating an audience. It took me almost a month before I ever saw a post go over $1. There is no telling when that will happen for each user, but if you keep working at it, it will happen. I invested no money to start with and I joined after the initial pump, yet today I still could take out a couple hundred dollars of real money any time I want. That is not bad considering I would be doing similar things on other social media sites only with no monetary gain. The main takeaway is... don't give up!
5. Don't try to game the system or you will find yourself on the outside looking in rather quickly
Don't get suckered into the jealousy trap of seeing how much others are making and think that you need to take shortcuts in order to get to where they are. Several posters have tried this either by plagiarizing, taking advantage of other's kindness, or by using technology to improve their standing... in most cases it came back and bit them in the butt. They were flagged, reputation destroyed, and now are either hidden or off the site all together. Don't let that be you...
6. Steemit is a popularity contest, but so is life
As mentioned previously, there are certain users that have an inherent advantage over other users. The ones that are already popular outside of the site and have a strong reputation for one reason or another are able to hit the ground running when they sign up for Steemit. Most people don't have that luxury, so they have to build up their brand the hard way. The more people that you can bring from outside the site the easier it will be for you to build a reputation and ultimately make money on Steemit.
7. The length of time spent crafting a post has no correlation to rewards earned
Unfortunately, there is no correlation between time spent creating a post and rewards earned on said post. Especially when you first start out. If the best post in the world is written, yet no one reads it, is it really the best post in the world? You have to market yourself and your post! You also have to give the people what they want. Meaning, you need to spend some time learning what kind of posts do well and what ones do not. Then, as you build an audience your rewards will get a lot closer to matching the effort put into each post...
8. Project Curie is a life saver
Even taking into account all the advice mentioned above, I still would have had only a couple posts go over $1 in value if it weren't for Project Curie @curie. A fellow author found me and showed me the light, @kevinwong. If not for him and @donkeypong I would have never found Project Curie and probably would have left the site out of discouragement by now.
What is Project Curie you might be wondering?
It is a collective of authors and whales who have pooled their resources with the sole purpose of finding great posts buried in the rubble and ultimately help less seen authors get off the ground. Project Curie votes for content they deem has wrongfully been ignored by the larger community. Then after rewarding authors for their work and shining a light on them, the hope is that the authors can better build their own brand and create a self funding blog on their own. Thus contributing to the overall diversity of the site.
9. Mankind is more selfless than I originally thought
To go along with what I posted above, there are several groups out there that have solely been created to help the smaller authors get noticed. These groups don't get monetary rewards out of this process yet they are donating their own time and their own resources. It truly is a selfless act! Without groups like these, the new guys signing up would have a very difficult task ahead of them to ever make any money on the site.
10. You get out of it what you put into it
Like most things in life, the more you put into it, the more you will ultimately get out of it. If you spend the time cultivating an audience, networking with other users, creating good content, interacting with the community, and ultimately just putting in the hard work, you will reap rewards from this site.
The question belongs to you... will you put in the sweat equity to ultimately see the fruits of your labor?
Live well my friends!
Image Sources:
1. http://thehiveblog.com/arco-avenue-gets-a-facelift/
2. http://alex-aldridge.deviantart.com/art/A-Quick-Buck-529872347
3. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/
4. http://www.successpraxis.com/the-benefits-of-hard-work/
7. https://johnscottstories.com/2012/10/16/gaming-the-system/
9. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481181541414193573/
Follow: @jrcornel
Awesome Post! What an amazing rollercoaster ride it has been. For myself, I was so tired of facebook and when I heard about steemit, I didn't hesitate.
I knew it was going to be a hard climb. Weeks of no votes or no votes with Steem Power backing them, can break a lesser man. The best moment was seeing @blocktrades at the top of the upvote list on my introducemyself. It was like the day I got my first bmx bike as a kid.
I still take my time to open my blog to see where my post is. Its usually around a few cents and that is way better than zero.
Haha yes it can! It almost broke me several times!
I have never had @blocktrades vote on any of my posts (maybe we can get him to vote this one?;)) but I get what you mean... I felt that way when I had my first dolphin vote for me :)
@jrcornel, you got a good foundation like @lifeisawesome to support you. You're going places.
Thank you! I hope so! :)
Thank you for the post.
Thank you for reading and commenting on it! Without the community the posts wouldn't mean much! :)
Very interesting @jrcornel today I just read some articles from @curie , but I followed them after your post!
PS: That ant is Superman I tell you!
Haha really? That is great! Curie will help get your posts noticed! Just keep putting out good content and the rewards will come.
Having just been introduced to steemit only a few days ago this has been a very helpful article. Thank you!
You got it! Let me know if you have any questions :)
Upvtoted! This is great content. I'm resteeming it as well!
Thank you! I really liked your post about bots and AI that you put out last week... it even inspired me to write a post on the subject the other day :)
Great reflections on lessons learned so far. Project Curie is something I'm just learning about now. It's comforting to know that such initiatives exist, and they actually have a big incentive to do what they do because it helps increase the network effect of the site, which is ultimately what will snowball to increase the overall popularity of Steemit. I'm following @curie now and will make an effort to check out some of the highlighted authors.
Your Steem price chart really puts things in perspective. Looking at just the downtrend, one can become alarmed, but when you pull back to look at the whole thing and not just the last couple months, then it becomes clear what's happening. Classic retracement pattern as you say, and a good chance to buy more Steem on the way down as we get closer to pre-pump price levels.
Bingo. Can you imagine what the site will be like with double the user base? 10X the user base? I mean if we keep building, getting things ironed out there is no reason on a hard launch that the site doesn't absolutely explode. You could be looking at $10+ steem or something like that...
Haha, I try not to indulge too much in speculative wishful thinking, but here's hoping!
Haha I don't either... I just got excited for a moment. There certainly is massive potential here. It is just going to have to be on us and the founders to see that potential realized...
This has been very similar to my own experience on Steemit. You speak the truth, @jrcornel. :)
Thank you! Can't wait to see what happens as the site grows...
awesome experience
Thank you! It looks like yours has been pretty awesome as well!
I'll be celebrating 60 days on Steemit in two more days and I've pretty much got the same experience. It took a lot of work, commenting, and socializing to get to where I am, but at the end of the day, I know that consistency has always been king. I didn't come in with a huge following and certainly only one of my friends signed on after I shared my excitement. They haven't been active since. But hey, it's not for everyone. Thanks for sharing your experience and giving new people a real view of the Steem experience.
I admit that the articles I've researched and taken hours to write don't do as well as some of my photographs and art, but I will continue to put out the content that I love because I don't want to be pigeon-holed into one aspect of my creativity. It's frustrating sometimes, but who am I to complain?
I hear you! There are several factors that go into deciding how much a post will ultimately earn... unfortunately time spent is only one of those factors... As you get a larger following they tend to balance out a little better, but it will never be a 1 to 1 correlation.
@jrcornel Great post with a lot of truths and nice pics to go with! Cheers
Thank you very much! It came from the heart :)
Good to have you on board!
Thank you! It's good to be on board! :) Right now there are what? Just over 10k users correct? Can you imagine would could happen to the price of steem if say the site gets 100k users or 1M users on a hard launch of the site? I mean people are complaining about the price but it is still in beta testing mode... the time to be complaining about the price is years after the hard launch... am I right? :)
Yeah, it took bitcoin four years to finally hit critical mass and take off... and steem is much easier for the masses to start using.
True. I think we can make it even more user friendly than it currently is as well...