Don't put ALL Your Eggs In The Steemit Basket

in #steemit8 years ago

Steemit is going to succeed.. Right? Or will it fail?

After spending about 2-2.5 months so far blogging, Steemit has become my whole life. I spend most of my day reading posts, Writing my own. And overall just enjoying this platform. But something has been bothering me in the back of my head.

I'm a strong believer of this platform ITS GOING GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL! When someone talks poorly about it I feel like punching them in the face. Or when they claim it's a "scam" . I get really angry and stick up for Steemit like crazy.

But as I have been working online for over a year now, Recently just becoming fully self employed. Overtime I have watched platforms where a good chunk of my income came in, Fail.

Without warning I'd lose a chunk of income

permanently GONE!

That won't happen to Steemit

Right?

I used to make thousands a month on another platform. Literally overnight they changed a couple rules, I woke up to the horrid realization that, that income is GONE! I would expect to survive off of a couple thousand less than I'm used to.

  • Tweaks in rules or the system can affect your income.
  • Platforms failing can affect your income.
  • You SHOULD NEVER RELY ON ONE PLATFORM

How to avoid this?

You can't save a whole business or platform. You have to learn how to

Adapt

James Altucher has said a million times, "Diversify your income" Have "multiple Streams of income"

What does that actually mean

THAT YOUR INCOME IS COMPLETELY DIVERSIFIED. That you could lose 1-2 of them OVERNIGHT and still float just fine.
That means your platforms also have to be diversified.

If you publish books on Amazon, For example. You'll want paperback and digital. That is two sources of income.
But what happens if something happens to AMAZON!?
Wheres your income?
0% You lose BOTH sources overnight. I guess this could be said about a lot of things. But it's safe to say,

  • People will still buy books no matter what.

How can you diversify?

  • Consider doing more products. A paid newsletter, Affiliate marketing, T shirts, Courses, Coaching,
    BUT DONT DO EVERYTHING JUST ON AMAZON!

    Sell your stuff on other sites, That way if Amazon has problems you still have money.

What About Investing?

Everyone talks about "not putting all your eggs into one basket"
What does that mean with investing?

Don't invest ALL OF YOUR money in one stock.
Don't invest all of your money in stock in general.
Don't invest in stock, With the company you work for. If the company goes down, you lose your JOB AND YOUR STOCK!

What? How are you supposed to invest then?


It's up to you, To decide what kind of investment you want to make overall. But having your portfolio diversified would look something like this.

  • Stocks
  • Peer to peer lending
  • Mutual funds
  • Others

Having a somewhat balanced portfolio ensures you cannot lose your money overnight

What does this have to do with Steemit?

Steemit is new! And it's risky, As much as I don't want to admit it.
It may not take off like we think it will. We have NO IDEA!

But I don't spend any money on Steemit!

All of us on Steemit are investing something.We are either investing one thing or both things, You can't avoid it.

  1. Time
    The time it takes us to curate, and write posts. It gets time consuming. With that time you spent writing a post, Reading content, You could of worked on your novel, You could have spent time with your kids. Sure you made "money" and I encourage everyone to power up, but at the same time. If something happens to Steemit, you'll lose all of that time you invested. All of it wasted in a way. Sure you may of gained knowledge, And insight. But be mindful of how much time you spend on the site.

  2. Money
    Some of us are investing money, It's not required. It's not even necessary. I personally invested my own 400.00 when I first started, I figured the small boost in Steem power would help me out, and I feel like it did. I later took the money out + More, Once I felt like I was in a comfortable position on the site.

I know I'm not the only one investing crazy amounts of hours of my own time on this site. I assume the majority of us choose to invest time instead of our own money, But we need to keep in mind that the time we spend may not pay off in the long run. I realized that my decision to stay on Steemit all day everyday, maybe a touch excessive. I need to focus on my art more, Just in case Something happens, and of course I can do more art posts on Steemit. But I was just thinking about how I put everything in my life on hold for Steemit and I'm not looking at the big picture as much. If my coloring books aren't selling well and my other income sources are struggling, I won't have a business to fall back on if Steemit has issues. Same with those other income sources though.

Like I've said before, Life is about balance, Steemit included.

I'm not hating on Steemit in anyway. I Just know we can't get too addicted and we need to remember the big picture and our other passions. Investing in multiple streams of income is necessary.

If you have a store, you wouldn't sell only watermelons would you? You'd sell a variety, You'd DIVERSIFY your merchandise.

Sort:  

It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket. - Elon Musk

good article :) hope everyone follows it.

Nice quote :)

Diversifying your accounts too? :)

Yup :) I think I might use my other account for a different type of articles. I'm trying to keep things organized. I wish They had a way to organize our blog. It just feels messy to me.

I think its great. It was perfect spotting it on this post about diversifying.

Agreed, some filtering etc would go a long way.

Elon Musk? You mean the guy with like like 20 businesses and projects going on at any given time?

Illusion of control is gonna be a problem if you follow that advice. Elon Musk would be especially aware of that given he makes cars with autopilot.

Yes but even Elon Musk can't fully control his own baskets lol.

That's why he diversified in Tesla, Space-X and SolarCity :D

Some of the comments are baffling to me. People are focused on the specific example as opposed to the point. Amazon probably won't go out of business, but the point is diversification people!

EXAMPLE - I have a day job, own rental real estate, have a portfolio of dividend paying stocks. Multiple sources of income folks. If the job goes bye bye (which can happen anytime working as a consultant on contract) then atleast I still have some smaller income coming in.

Never let ONE THING decide your financial fate is the best advice I can give to anyone and everyone!

EXACTLY! Your diversification sounds smart!
You can build up your side stuff that way you'll be good to go :) And of course it takes a while.

The more I read (yes, really read) your articles, the more "diversified" I see you are as well, not just your portfolio! I 100% agree, and while I've made a $25 Coinbase transaction to go towards Steem, I own much more in Silver that I'm not cashing anytime soon (except for food, water, bullets, if "the ship hits the sand.") Grear advice btw, my marketing guru close friend always warns his people to diversify, as he too has seen fortunes lost just because the Cickbank or PayPal gods decided on a whim that a rule (that did not exist) was broken. Yes, it's easy to lose everything, especially in today's faceless digital economy. For that matter, altho he teaches email marketing primarily, his core income product is a $99mo print newsletter! Similar to what you recommend keeping as just one "stream" of income. Good article.

Okay I don't know if this is spam, but I just posted a "pro" buy-Steem article and it's low price getting lower, and why I'm okay with that. https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ibringawareness/don-t-panic-re-whales-dumping-steem-dollars-crashing-and-why-the-future-of-steemit-is-worth-betting-on-all-this-in-non-technical
Say so and I will delete it immediately(!), and I've already added a link to your/THIS article as well INSIDE the article's text at bottom (not the comments), to editorially help balance out my article's content. (I've also linked to your Shirt post recently, if that helps my case/our relationship ;) I'm just unsure what the etiquette is here, haha, and we're all still working it out anyways. That'll prolly vary from person to person. I'll pay close attention to comments to make sure I know how you feel tho! Best, Guy

Thank you :) I checked it out! I think it's okay to post links as long as you aren't posting them 1000 x a day, and you are adding something to the discussion.

Yes on-topic links are fine.

Also it helps to use Markdown to hide the links - put square brackets around the title followed immediately by round brackets around the link - just experiment with it when you are typing in comments.

so instead of: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ibringawareness/don-t-panic-re-whales-dumping-steem-dollars-crashing-and-why-the-future-of-steemit-is-worth-betting-on-all-this-in-non-technical

you would have: here is my link

Give it a go it's really easy.

Firstly no one should be buying Steem with unreal money. Unreal money is money that your borrowed from a loan shark; or got via your advance cash line from your credit card.

Currently I must totally disagree with some people. People who have an understanding of the Art of Writing, Presenting and Social Media should be using ' discretionary funds ' to buy into Steemit. Currently I think Steem has some further to fall and then will slowly start to regain strength. But I am not betting the farm on it, but I am trying to find US$500 to buy some more steemland real estate.

Personally I suck at writing, but I am getting slightly better, in fact I post blog articles about a college level education in Steemit. Why ? not because I know much about online Social Media, but I wish people to understand learning to blog takes time, energy and commitment; it will not happen overnight. This is not a get rich quick scheme.

If you think you have the skills to make it in the Steemuniverse you should take some money that you were going to spend on a waxing, manicure and hot rock massage and put it into your shares portfolio. If that money was earmarked for food or rent etc. then it is not available, but of course water and electricity are luxuries so of course you can use that money.

You get the idea, after all is it essential you have your car brakes serviced this month ? Seriously you can let things like that slide another few weeks right? Steemit is important to diversifying your income. Sure Steemit can fail; after all the US Fed Reserve bank failed years ago and today simply exists because the government just keeps on printing more and more fiat currency . . .

Its a brave new world, the old rules or loyalty, honesty and integrity are just words in a dictionary now. After hearing the guy who helped the old lady up after she fell is a hero; I searched long and diligently to find my own hero, finally I realized he arrives every two weeks with my welfare check.

Now it is your chance to seek out your hero in today's new world, will you try and believe in Steemit enough to make Steem your hero ?

What choices will oyu make for your own future pathway and what role do oyu want in Steemit's road to ruin or path to success; now oyu get to make your own decisions and even to communicate them freely to others, you could even choose to use a platform like Steemit as your communication medium : )

/ hugz ; )

P.S. Just to clarify; I am not unemployed, nor am I on welfare. That was just an artistic licence story I mentioned above. So, no I am not on any assistance program, I am just "unemployable" : )

I love this! and even if you can't write you can share your other stuff, LIke art or photography! I agree people should use discretionary income only. When I invested my couple hundred, I had that money in my account. I didn't need to take it off a credit card or anything, But it was extra money I had leftover from paying bills.

I am from Australia; a lot of people over there took out personal loans when the stock market was doing well years ago.

They would use their dividend checks to have date nights away at hotels etc sometimes, but whatever they did with their money. Many chose not to repay those personal loans . . .

As you can probably guess the stock market had a correction and those people then lost the extra income and were no committed financially. I was just putting these ideas out there so people can see all the risks involved; sort of like a public service announcement : )

/ hugz ; )

Very good post. I think we forget that steemit is a very new site. It's grown quite a bit in that time. But there are no guarantees. We don't know what the final version will look like. If your post is lucky to be upvoted by people with a lot of SP, you can make a nice amount of money. But that may happen every 1 out of 20 posts. I have nonfiction kindle and Createspace books, websites with ad revenues and other ways to make money. If my posts start to consistently make money, I'll keep posting here. But if they don't, I'll put my energy into other money makers like Fiction :)

So true! I forget it's in Beta still :)
I love that you said 1 out of 20 I feel like thats how it goes with me. I've tried my hardest to detect patterns but I've been unsuccessful. It's like a lottery.

Thats how I feel too. I'll put as much energy in Steemit as it's worth it.

It really is a lottery. I see so many great posts by others that didn't get support from people with SP. They go nowhere. That's why spreading your eggs in different baskets is key imo.

Good tip, but Steemit is far from being Amazom. And I doubt Amazon will go out of business in our lifetime but you never know their stock is at $771 a share and their market cap is over $300 Billion. So until Steemit market cap reaches $300 Billion I would not compare it to Amazon. This is like comparing Jims family Resturant to Buffalo Wild Wing or McDonald's. We have to get to that point first and then we will see.

YES!! Myspace haha. That happened super quick too. It's like in one week it did a 360 and everyone was leaving.

What I got from her point is that a platform can change the rules for the people using it -- and Amazon has sure done that over the years. Recent changes for Kindle books hit some authors and publishers hard, really reducing their income. But it has helped other authors. And the Facebook changes that reduced exposure of posts really affected people's connections to their followers and friends there, so folks had to change what they do or move to other platforms, too. It is nice to have stable platforms out there, but their stability is not our stability (unless we are stockholders, I guess). PS: I liked seeing your image with your comment.

YES! @haphazard-hstead understood what I meant. I wasn't saying that Amazon is anywhere near Steemit, I was just using an example. Because Amazon is a big part of my income. And I know a lot of people who use only Amazon for their income. It's dangerous.

Part of Amazon's changes actually dropped my income. So I know by experience. And It changed overnight so I had no time to prepare. Luckily I had my job at that moment. Otherwise I would have been screwed over.

I couldn't agree with you more @kaylinart , I do trust this platform will succeed completely but as you said you should never put your eggs in one basket at least not if you are not a professional investor cause as Warren Buffet said once you should actually put all your eggs in one basket but watch that basket closely, anyway that only applies to high profile investors like him.

Exactly! He knows what he's doing better than we do, He also has more he can lose LOL.

@kaylinart nice article. Certain things in life is ment to be. Money is not everything nor money is richer than life. We all take our gamble each day, each hour, each second of our day to day bases. If we have life money will come. No one can take our destiny. So don't let anxiety bother you. You are doing a wonderful job just focus on it. Take care of today and tomorrow will automatically be taken care of.

it's funny to me that you say living off a few thousands it's a big deal because in Romania, if you make ONE THOUSAND you are doing pretty good, the average monthly salary is like 300e.

That's certainly good advice and one of the reasons we need to be not only content creators but also watchers of the platform and to try as we might, to ACTIVELY influence its direction. If it falls on deaf ears, so be it...but we tried.

If you stand by and hope for the powers that be to steer it in the "right" direction, then we have no one but ourselves to blame that we didn't to more :)

Exactly! We control where the platform goes!
That is amazing I'm not sure what 300 compared to USD is. But it sounds like the cost of living is much lower there.

That's just what I'm doing in Romania now!

You are absolutely right Kaylinart, but where to find strength and power for diversity? How can one work "with all his soul" in many platforms? That is the question besides the safety.

Don't repost the exact same stuff on every site thats not good either. You can re-purpose content, Into kindle books etc.

  • I post on Steemit progression photos of my art, I make money,
    -I use that art for coloring books, I make money.
    I reuse that same art for
  • T shirt designs, And other uses. I make money off that too.
    -Once I stop selling a lot of coloring books, I can then take those images, and publish them as stock photo vector art, Again I make money.

Here's another example.

  • I write a blog post about "nutrition". I make money.
  • I eventually write a kindle book about nutrition, I make money.
  • I turn that kindle book into paperback, I make money.
  • I take that blog post, And turn in into a nutrition video, I make money monetizing with ads.
  • I take that blog post, and add affiliate links to products I feel relate to the product, I make money when people click my link and purchase products.

Maybe if you are just re-posting the same stuff on every site?

Maybe... But what about indexation? Who will win of that?

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