Swimming in the Minnow Pool
Steemit is tuff to get any traction when you're first starting out. You spend all that time working on a post that you think is really good and the reward you get is only a handful of people taking time to look at it and even fewer giving you an upvote. It can be easy to slip into the attitude of "why do I even try?". Seems like post after post your not making any progress. Hopefully, I can give a few places to look to help you see your progress.
The easiest place to look for progress is your wallet. It's also the worst place to look if your looking for something to show your progress. Post after post you either get no reward or something so small that it's hard to justify the effort. The only sign for improvement you may want to look at on your main steemit page is the number of followers you have.
First take a look at is your personal awards from Steemit Board. Simply enter your username and your progress on steemit will be shown. Total there are 15 awards that can be obtained but realistically only about 8 of them apply to us minnows. You can even display your awards in your posts:
From left to right these awards are for comments you've received, upvotes you've given, actual posts you have made, comments you've given, upvotes you've received, and posting every day for a week. Of these 7 awards, you directly have control over 5 of them. Even though you can't control if others comment on your posts or give you an upvote, the more you give the more you will receive. So, comment and upvote your fellow minnows. If there is something you think they left out of their post, ask them about it and if they respond to your question, upvote the reply also.
Another place to look to see that what your doing is making a difference is steemd.com. Once you create an account and log in to see your statistics there are two things here can help you with your wanting to see improvement. The first is your reputation. On my blog page I can see that my reputation is 37 (it's in parentheses after my name), here though I can see that it's really 37.1. The extra digit in the number helps you see how your doing on this upstream swim from the minnow pool.
The other thing to look at is VESTS. VESTS are still confusing to me, and to a lot of people from looking at some of the "explanations" that have been posted on steemit. One post that I did find helpful was Understanding Vests and the Steem Power Illusion by @yabapmatt.
When you write a posts or curate, you actually gain VESTS that is presented to the average user as Steem Power. The post above also made the point that the number of steem per million VESTS (MVESTS) gradually increases over time. In the time since @yabapmatt wrote the post (2 months) the ratio has increased from 487.36 Steem per MVESTS to 489.082. So it does increase over time.
This gradual increase in the ratio means that the VESTS we have today will be worth more steem power in the future. So keep writing, keep voting, and keep commenting and look for your improvement. Most of us current minnows will never become whales, but maybe one day we will at least be some of the biggest minnows in the minnow pool.
Well, I will give some of this a try! I have had the same ups and downs with Steemit.
I did think there was more to this than 'just look at the picture '. Yet, not sure what I expected either.
Not even aspiring to be a whale. Can't decide some days if I want to work at this, keep it as a hobby or turn it off.
Guess if we wrote about cryptos or Bitcoin we could be whales.
Now it has just become a personal challenge, fun and a hobby.
And will keep trying, too.
One secret is that if you see someone being successful, take a look at their wallet and see what they are doing.
It really doesn't help that most of the people explaining how Steemit works are programmers. They are all probably great programmers, but for the most part they are horrible teachers. Take a look at post by @yabapmatt. So far he is the only programmer that seems to have the skill to take the technical details and translate them from a programmer's language to English. I read several of his post and was impressed enough to vote for him as a witness and he's my only vote so far.
One secret is that if you see someone being successful, take a look at their wallet and see what they are doing.
It really doesn't help that most of the people explaining how Steemit works are programmers. They are all probably great programmers, but for the most part they are horrible teachers.