7 Things Steemit is NOT
- A Charity
Steemit is not a charity. You are not entitled to rewards because you are poor or are new. This is not a place from where the rich give, and the poor take, no, it is where poor or rich, you give or take, depending on how your content is valued by individuals, rich or poor! This is especially important for newbies/planktons and minnows that start lamenting about how unfair the system is because their posts are not rewarded.
Charity Box, by Steven Depolo, flickr.com Creative Commons CCO
Realize, everyone, Plankton, Minnow, Dolphin, Orca and Whale, everyone….wants and works to earn. Ideally, as a non – whale, your existential challenge is to be rewarded, pending, if like me, you are too broke to power up, the accumulation of your own steem power and therefore capacity to reward others.
But meanwhile, what is your rightful claim to rewards? Well, none so strong or dependent on you! If you can’t invest in steem power - by the way now is the right time to do so as the value is really low – then invest in time that keeps the platform active, in content that adds value to it. That is your first and only claim.
And please, so long as it is not rewarded, don’t lament but instead work harder and improve. Don’t qualify your own works as deserving to be rewarded; quality content is like beauty, it lies in the eyes of the beholder, others, not yourself. So get down and create quality content, interest, woo someone enough to earn a reward.
- An Employment
Go simple, and stop spending 24 hours on a post. Those utopian -style posts pay just fine I know, but if you are going to write a utopian-like post, make sure it fits their bill so you get rewarded; else, you will get frustrated.
The most frustration we suffer comes from spending a whole day refining and fine-tuning, deep thinking and doing all sorts of mind stretching work to come up with a killer post, after which we post and despite refreshing the page every after 2 seconds, it still reads a paltry $0.02 from @hr1 or some other random bot upvoter.
Employment by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
That gets you all worked up and frustrated, you start to picture other better maybe more profitable things you might have done with your time and effort, and whoop, you get angry! The reason is that you are treating steemit like some sort of employment, which is what it is not.
Try this - and this is actually advice I got from a very likeable fellow @felixxx –instead of going on Google to search out some complicated topic to write about, and burning your internet and brain calories thinking, write simple every stuff, let it come from your inside, which means you don’t have to over think, over research and burn all those internet bundles….write as a by the way, about simple things, about life, people, places around you
What such an approach does is ensure that you are less emotionally invested in your works and the rewards they get. And yet on the brighter note, such simple, quick reads about life and events are indeed what interest most people out there, and you might just as well indeed earn more.
- Your personal Cow to milk
Please have sense of community. Steemit is not your personal cow to milk however you like. Granted, the system has some cracks, some exploitable rules, but it doesn’t mean you should, because if anything, it is not only you who sees those cracks, but imagine for a moment if everyone, others with more SP than you by the way, also decided to exploit, and post 10 articles a day and self-upvote! Then what?
by larsninoy, on Pixabay CCO Creative Commons
This is especially good advice for the Whales, don’t just upvote yourself, check out and encourage others, We are a community here to live not to smuggle SBD’s and quit. Some of you are busy posting 10+ posts a day and self-voting them, and only them! You seem in a hurry to milk everything your stake can possibly enable you to without recourse to the general impact on the health of the platform.
I know you have invested big – before you begin to ask who I am to question or dictate on how much the Whale you are can milk – but you see, there is a limit to which you can milk a cow without feeding it, before the milk runs dry, and you have nothing.
So please, have some conscience, embrace community and work to enhance rather than destroy its health. It doesn’t matter how much you think you have invested in this cow, without feeding it – which entails feeding the calves! – this cow will die, and then all of us shall be deprived of milk!
- A begging bowl
Now don’t confuse asking for help, with begging. Steemit is a great community where we get to know each other and basically share and help each other in our daily life challenges, financial, moral, and academic etc.
Begging, by 3dman_eu on PixabayCCO Creative Commons
We can, and should always ask and give help in those regards, but that doesn’t mean you should send wallet messages to @ned or any whale for that matter, telling him all your family and/or community problems and how he can, and should with a snap of his finger take them all away.
- A broken family
I hear some people asking some others who made them the ‘police man’ of steemit. Those who are castigated apparently take much interest in the quality of content life, by for example flagging posts whose rewards they disagree with….but did you know that these is actually acceptable?
Max PixelCCO Creative Commons
I mean, there are no specific written rules, but where community is, there is code and conduct, written or not written that is subconsciously grown and cultured. So don’t go about posting rubbish and pushing it up to trending and when flagged, start barking ‘who made you the police man?’ This is not a broken family where you get to do whatever you want without recourse to the general health of everyone else. Just get your act together and reflect on your actions and re-image yourself…
Next time someone disagrees with you because you are self-upvoting too much, pushing shit posts up trending page, plagiarizing…and you get yourself barking: who made you the policeman of steemit? Well, have the courtesy to ask yourself: Who made you the villain of steemit!?
- A library
The only business that takes place in a library is reading and writing! But whereas steemit is a content based platform, there is, just so you know, more to it that meets the eye, that is, if you wish to build a life here! Live your comfort zone.
by Pexelson Pixabay CCO Creative Commons
Go out of your blog and join some chat rooms, find a niche in some discord channel and meet others, connect and interact. What do you have to lose? Nothing. But there is a lot to gain. Chat rooms are a powerful place to make acquaintances that, just so you know, in deed translate to support on your posts.
Besides writing and reading, please join some discord of your interest and have some breath air beyond the book!
- Dying
Well, some of you are too frustrated with @ned, apparently there is so much, this and that, which you would love to see fixed, and the nut is there busy doing nothing!
Well, if steemit was your responsibility, would you idly sit by and watch it perish? I mean, this is a pioneer project of its kind, for heaven sake, would any architect behind it be that dumb to idly sit by and watch it burn away? I guess that answers you.
![Dying Lion.R.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Dying_Lion.R.jpg)
By M.chohanCC BY 3.0, Link
So stop lamenting and crucifying @ned and steemit.inc and give them some breather! You cannot love steemit more than @ned! So trust he and his team are up to something. Sure make some recommendations here and there, but don’t shove it all up there throat like they are some imbeciles doing nothing. Do you know @ned stands to lose the most, investment but above else, his Reputation if steemit tomorrow fails?
Do you think he is busy working to soil his own reputation as the man who oversaw a failed project? C’mon get serious and cut some slack for @ned.
And one more thing, just in case you think steemit is irredeemable and you have better ideas how it should and should not be, why not try coming up with something of your own? Competition is good for consumers after all, no!? So cheer up my friend, steeemit is not dying.
But its value is dropping, you say! Well, if you are too worried about the value, then again I suggest you spend more time on Facebook! It pays more.
Anyway, satire aside, So long as SBD value does not drop to -1, it is still the best project of its kind out there. And you better stick around. I mean, if it drops to $0, it is still on the same level as Facebook and other social media platforms….i know no other that pays!
So stop worrying about the SBD value drop, I would want to encourage you that it will rise again sooner – because it will, but I guess you already know that, or have at least read it elsewhere. So stop yapping and steem on! Come back to me when the value of SBD drops to below $0, then maybe I will give you an ear and we can compare how without a reward incentive, steemit compares to other social media platforms.
Until then, I find no other platform to compare it with, even if it went to Coma! A lion is a lion, he always has the final say, and steemit will, when this crypto bleeding finally dries up.
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUWMWCtcj7MoLW2jdruvew1U8hu1LApdXKqxz8kP8hqST/DQmUWMWCtcj7MoLW2jdruvew1U8hu1LApdXKqxz8kP8hqST.png)
HAPPY STEEMING!
And by the way,speaking of stepping off your writing ad reading, why don't you join us in the @asapers discord for some break time! Here is the link https://discord.gg/
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmUWMWCtcj7MoLW2jdruvew1U8hu1LApdXKqxz8kP8hqST/DQmUWMWCtcj7MoLW2jdruvew1U8hu1LApdXKqxz8kP8hqST.png)
Follow the @asapers for exposure and curaton benefits
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdzaG3zsv9BSTLoKTCG19FEtCM9QkzR1xbHsgYQhQnRFi/Asapers.gif)
If you are too busy for that, then at least follow the official @asapers account so that your quality works by default qualify to be curated.
But, but.... I thought I would get rich from cryptocurrency on steemit. LoL. I especially like the mis-spell and can't wait until I get to "okra" status so I won't smell like a fish or have to worry about getting eaten by a whale.
Hahahah...thanks for drawing my attention to that! Don't worry, just keep steeming on and it will all come together, wealth, fame..a good life lol...Anyways thanks for reading.
I've put all my tokens in on the XRP coin so maybe one day in a few years I'll be OK or a couple thousand spent on a crypto-education if they fail. Either way life is good
The best explanation of what steemit is all about! I soooo love it! Newbies, set your expectations from all these seven factors! It's not a quick-get-rich scheme! Thanks for sharing this really good post!
Glad you found this useful @fycee. Thaks for reading.
It's not only useful but this is one of the vital info to know aside from the technical aspects as a newbie here.
True. I think that most who stress about rewards - and i too occasionally doby the way! lol.....but the point is, most professionalize their writing, and just about think everything about steemit is writing, posting, and being rewarded. a
There is more than just that. And one has got to step out of their blog rooms and into compound, into the community...
I absolutely agree that's why I try to try other condensers that really fit the things that I like and comfortable with. Also if we enjoy the things that we do in this platform and actually engaged with fellow steemians with a few meaningful chitchats then we'll not get bored here.
Well put @mirrors! The things you said is an eye-opener for us. There was a time before when I always go bitching around because the posts I spent an overnight working with didn't even make it to 0.05 SBD. It made me so frustrated and angry I even thought of quitting. But then, if I spend my time on other social media platforms without getting anything from them, why not stick around to steemit? Maybe I just need a new perspective. That's when I started to join communities and also made posts that were from the heart. Posts that talk about my passion. And that's when things took a turn.
Thanks for this reminder!
You say it all too well. Its a lesson, something many do well to learn. So long as you only write and about subjects outside your passions, the emotional investment on perceived rewards, after the long hours, is very high, disappointment, and thoughts of quitting are certain.
But like you in your experience, and not only you, me, included, by the way, and many out there, the experience becomes more interesting and less stressful once we climb down those high hopes and focus on daily events,people, life and paces, on our passions.
I mean, i write about my travels, because i love to travel. No stress. it all comes out easy. I spend little hours. Rewarded or not, i keep the satisfaction that i told of it, simple.
Thanks for affirming my thoughts, @filnette
nice post
Good that you point this out, @mirrors, specially numbers 3, 4 and 6. (Number Number 6, bullseye! I'm lazy to visit Discord; I know I must change that).
BTW, it's the first time I see this @asapers. Thanks for that; I'll see what I find about it.
Thanks @marlyncabrera. @asapers is a great community to belong to. You will love it, certainly.
What a great post @mirrors, some fantastic point there. I love the analogys and hard facts. Some people dont want to listen but those are the ones that think Steemit is something its not. I have resteemed as I think more people need to read this. Will do the same with the @asapers account. Again, awesome read!
The hopes and expectations with which we each come in, i know can be high and many....i personally had my own, not so different, by the way.
But some time around, and i realize there is more than than just 'taking', and that the best experience around here, once the earning motive is calmed, is in giving and sharing.
I got down to writing this following some Plankton post which i read and the author had given an 'ultimatum else he quits! hahah.
Anyway i am glad my thoughts here somewhat resonate with many. Thanks @insideoutlet
I am sure many will get a much clearer picture of Steemit after they read this. Have resteemed through @asapers now too, sorry for the delay :)
fantastic post mirrors.
lots of stuff that really needed saying.
Thanks @shai-hulud. Do you realize this is your first comment on any of my works or did i miss previous! lol..i notice first times and things! Very happy.
Otherwise I hope the second man is not offering too much competition!
I think your right that just may be the first time and now this is the second.
I know I should be way more active with all my comments but Im actually terrible at the social media part of steemit in fact social media fullstop.
Hahahah...that is okay. Thanks.
Please please please follow me
I folow you and then what? Think thrice before spam commenting. Here are some useful posts on good comment behavior.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/a-complete-guide-for-newcomers-and-minnows-to-avoid-a-possible-spam-and-to-write-good-comments
https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatamidoing/it-s-a-great-time-for-new-users-to-earn-sbd-by-leaving-good-comments
Excellent post 👍👍. I always like to follow you😍😍
Thanks for reading @sharif99.
Thank you for addressing this topic. I admit that at one point I found annoying the posts where others vented about their Steemit low rewards and announced their intentions of leaving. Therefore I stopped reading their blogs.
I loved how you broke it down and discussed point by point most of the issues.
I wish I had more time on my hands for Discord. You are right about it! Some communities have the feeling of steeping on a gold mine. My only frustration would be that I don't have enough time to explore them more and connect with others.