My Steemit experience so far (3 months in)!

Introduction

I was incredibly lucky to win a Steemfest contest organized by @zeartul. Which for me was the cherry on the cake of the overwhelming support I've gotten from the community to get me into Steemfest, including some notable donations from @roelandp and @choogirl.

I've been wanting to write a thank you post, but it seems that I just can't seem to find the right words to thank all of you enough. So I have decided to do something slightly different. I will share how I have experienced my three months on Steemit so far. This could be seen as a motivational story for new Steemians out there, it will hold tips for new Steemians and mentions to people who have made my Steemit-experience as incredible as it has been so far.

_{Image by Richard Kastelein}

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Getting to know the platform

I'm not quite sure where I first heard of the Steemit platform. But I remember thinking something along the lines of "I think the idea is amazing, but I have my doubts on how sustainable it is".
I am a person who loves to try out new things, so instead of doing a whole lot of research (I did a bit, but not all that much), I decided to just jump right in and see whatever happened!

The first post I made was a video of when I was traveling for a year. I remember being a little disappointed, that it didn't make any money at all (I wasn't expecting to make a lot, but hey, some would have been nice right, haha)! I know it's a little bit of a cliché-saying here, but still I want to point out it's the monetary aspect that got me interested, but it truly is the community that kept me here!

Looking back at the post now, it's pretty easy to see where I messed up. I was using the following tags: travel, hitchhiking, costarica, usa, dominicanrepublic. Out of all those tags, only one is actually a tag that MIGHT get you noticed (the travel tag). I also had not added any pictures to my post. This immediately brings us to my first two tips for new Steemians.

Tip 1: Make sure you use tags that people actually look at (that fit the content)
Tip 2: Always add an image to your post (thumbnail + more attractive)

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My introduction post

I had noticed that it was quite common to use an introduceyourself-post within the Steemit community. So I wrote up a post, telling the community a little bit about myself. I immediately got flooded with bot-, vote4vote- and follow4follow-comments. I was genuinely wondering if there even was a real community behind this platform. But in that same post, there was a sliver of light in the form of @macchiata, at the time a new Steemian like myself. We were quickly having meaningful conversations through comments on each others posts as we had similar interests. This is where I first felt there might be more to Steemit. This also leads me to -

Tip 3: Get in touch with the people behind content you like

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My introduction to the active community

I can't quite recall how I ended up in the PAL discord group started by @Aggroed. But this is where I really saw the strength of Steemit. It's the community. Honestly, up until this day I have not found such a helpful community anywhere online.

I had been wanting to write a novel for quite a while, and while I thought I was already a decent writer, I got proven wrong so quickly by professional editors like @rhondak who were reading through the start of my novel, (it has already been revised, I no longer hold the original draft, but it didn't look half as good as it does now, trust me). I got a lot of constructive criticism, with the emphasis on constructive. I kept on working on little parts of the novel and the editors kept on giving me meaningful input. My writing skills improved tenfold because of them. For those who would like to read what I've written so far: #whentheroadcalls.

One thing I also did, but I would recommend you to be incredibly cautious with, is directly reaching out to some whales that I noticed were doing projects to help minnows.
WARNING: If you do this, you better make sure your content is 200% amazing, and you give a proper reason as to why you send your content directly to them, else you risk getting flagged for spamming.

This is where things started to change for me as I started to get more visibility and met a bunch of Steemians, I was starting to love the community. It's also how I first got in touch with @blueorgy, but more on that later! In the PAL discord group, I've met a lot of amazing with whom I'm in touch on an almost daily basis, perhaps most notably @choogirl (also more on that later).

Tip 4: search for one of the many active communities on Steemit like PAL discord group

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Giving back to the community

After another two weeks or so, I felt like I wanted to give something back to the community that had helped me so much. I noticed the way the Steemit community works, is through sharing your skills. Just share what you're good at and use it to help the community.

I started to learn programming give or take three years ago, and figured, maybe I could make a webapplication for Steemit. It would be a way to help the community, and a way to grow myself on Steemit as well. Enter Steemit Worldmap.

It all started out with an idea; what if people could put their travel-posts on a worldmap? That would be quite cool! I contacted @blueorgy and pitched the idea. He immediately liked it and wanted to help me out with it. Another week later steemit.chat wasn't working for me and so I send a message through a transaction memo. If you look through my wallet you'll still see it: "Hey, steemit chat seems to be down, any other place to reach you? Found some time and made a lot of progress (on the map idea)! ;)"

At that point I had made the database entry possible and had the first front end of the map up and running (it has changed quite a bit since then). Add one more week and we were up and running.

The userbase started small, but everyone who got aboard, seemed to really love it. @blueorgy and I are still actively improving the Steemit Worldmap.

One of the side-projects that I wanted to start in combination with the Steemit Worldmap is #traveldigest. I pitched this idea to @choogirl in the PAL discord group. She immediately loved the idea, and now we're here with a team of seven people whom are on a daily basis actively looking for the best travel posts being added to the map! After which we put them in a #traveldigest post. This way we can give more visibility to some amazing content creators and to the map itself!
The team: @choogirl, @livinguktaiwan, @anomadsoul, @dean101, @therovingreader, @blueorgy and @martibis

I also upvote the top 3 best posts from the @steemitworldmap account, but at this point this vote is negligible. If you like what we're doing with #traveldigest and the Steemit Worldmap and want to help out, feel free to delegate to @steemitworldmap (a post for this will come up soon)!

Now the Steemit Worldmap holds over 800 markers, and we have a following of 200+ for the #traveldigest which is quite amazing if you ask me!

Tip 5: Give back to the community, if they have helped you.

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Steemfest

We come to the last lap of this lengthy post; I'm guessing most of you have heard about Steemfest. Well, I really wanted to go, to have a good time, meet more Steemians and promote the Steemit Worldmap. But the problem was that I'm currently not in a good financial position. I thought: "well, maybe next year!"

But that itch just didn't go away. And after a week of feeling itchy and reading @anomadsoul's post about hitchhiking to Steemfest, I decided, well, I have to do something about this itch. @anomadsoul and I already work together on the #traveldigest, so I decided to hit him up and ask him if he'd be willing to hitchhike together (we both have some experience in this regard).

I still didn't have a ticket to Steemfest, but whatever, I was hitchhiking to Lisbon with another Steemian and if I could still get a ticket, even better! I shared the plan and participated in various contests. And well, the support I've gotten from all of you guys has been overwhelming.

Thanks to all of you I can not only go to Lisbon, I can attend Steemfest and I can stay in a hostel instead of wildcamping somewhere! Out of all the people who have supported me, four really stood out: @roelandp, @choogirl, @brightongreg, @anomadsoul. Ofcourse now I have to add a fifth: @zeartul, for providing me a ticket to Steemfest.

Tip 6: If the community likes what you have to offer; participate in a contest to win a ticket to Steemfest, haha!

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I hope this was helpful for some, thank you for reading!