There seem to be a lot of people giving up on Steemit lately, discouraged by the low value of cryptos at the moment. Here are my still-rather-a-noob thoughts on why you shouldn't give up. I am not a crypto expert, though I try and learn all that I can. This is just based on what I have seen in my time at Steemit.

image from blogspot

One:

You know all those people with 60something plus reps? Go to their main blog page and see when they joined Steemit. Unless they bought their way to whaledom, they've been here a while, and your account doesn't grow by opening it and then abandoning it. They kept going - and, btw, if you didn't know it yet, the price of Steem and Steem dollars was historically MUCH LOWER than those highs we saw in December and January. They kept at it when SBD was pegged to a dollar and Steem was LESS than a dollar. Now they are powerful whales.

If you want long-term success, you need sticktuitiveness (not my original word, but I can't remember who coined it). If you want instant gratification, well, I dunno, play a video game. Can you build a following on ANY social media platform in a month? A real one? If you're not already a celebrity? No. It's the same on Steemit. It takes time to find your tribe. Meanwhile, you are socking away small amounts of Steem Power, making yourself more powerful on the site, and increasing your reputation (unless you spam people, in which case, fuck you 😘).

Two:

Even if you are only getting pennies per post and right now Steem and SBD are low, if you can HODL, and they go back up, suddenly those pennies become dollars.

If you trade those SBDs for various other cryptos, and THOSE go to the moon, suddenly they become worth much more as well.

I too am way below the poverty line. I understand that some of us have immediate needs that weren't being met until Steemit and then they were and now you worry that they won't be again. I get it that you can't HODL every penny. But I try and HODL as much as possible, and at the very least, I consider the Steem Power untouchable and never power down, so even if I use the SBDs for life needs, I am still growing. Think of it like if you had a job and you arranged it so that every paycheck, $50 went into your retirement account. The idea being that if you never see the money in your bank account, you think of it as not existing and don't spend it, whereas if it was there, you'd simply not budget as well and use it up somehow. Think of Steem Power like your retirement account. If there is a real emergency, like, you need it to pay rent or you'd be homeless, you can always cash out. But you don't unless it's really dire. I'm used to being impoverished. I can hold out a while. Yup, it would be super nice to get a laptop, or an ebicycle, both of which would make my life a lot easier. But I haven't had them until now ...I can wait a while longer.

Three:

When you get paid on Steemit, the system bases your payment based on the real price of Steem, but imagines that SBDs are still worth a dollar - this is why the breakdown has been more SBD than Steem. When Steem value is low, you are getting more Steem per payout (we've even been getting some liquid Steem now, see other posts that explain why like this one: https://steemit.com/steemit/@spiritualmax/answering-why-am-i-getting-liquid-steem-from-author-rewards ...by @spiritualmax). So the basic outcome of this is, you power up faster. Your Steem Power gives no fucks what the dollar value of Steem is, it cares how many Steem you have locked down in SP. If you have 400 SP, you have 400 SP, whether Steem is $1 US or $6. Amassing as much as you can while it's low will help you more than only getting a pittance when it's high. Again, it's short term-long term thinking. If you are thinking of one Steem as two dollars, you wish it was six dollars again. But if you think of Steem as more like shares of a stock, now you're maybe getting three shares instead of one share like you did when it was worth more. Here's what I mean:

Let's go back yo your imaginary retirement account. When you auto-deposit that $50, you are buying shares of a mutual fund, at whatever price they are at the time. So in January you put $50 toward Steem Mutual Fund, and you got .5 shares of stock. In February you put in $50, and you got .75 shares. Now your $50 gets you a full share.

When you retire (or cash out), you hopefully have amassed lots of shares of stock which you can sell when the market is high again. If you were only getting half a share of stock every month, you'll have less stock to sell come retirement. But those dips in the market where your $50 bought more stock help you down the line, because now you have lots more shares to sell.

The reason why so many baby boomers were wrecked in 2008 (regarding their retirement accounts, not prople who lost their homes because of the foreclosure crisis) was because they were ready to retire just then, when stock prices crashed. If they were able to say, oh, bad timing, I'll keep working until the market recovers and THEN retire ...they're probably okay now, because the market did indeed rebound. They're probably BETTER OFF now if they did that, because if they kept working and kept buying stocks when their prices were really low, now they had a lot more to sell.

Cryptos are like the stock market in that it's volitile, and ergo, a long term game. If you ever read financial advice, they say if you are younger, you can invest in riskier, and potentially far more profitable, stocks, because you have decades until you need to retire and can ride out the market booms and busts. But if you are opening a new retirement account when you're 50, they might recommend you invest in more conservative things like big funds of established stocks or bonds, because if you retire when a 2008 crash hits ...you're fucked.

So, just think, yay! I'm getting more Steem Power! In the long run, you're benefiting!

Four:

Do you get paid on Facebook or Twitter? Maybe those thousand followers hit those dopamine receptors in your brain, but on those sites, YOU are the product, and the Zuckerbergs of the space are the ones profiting off you. Now I'm not gonna say I have closed my Facebook, because that's where a lot of friends are and that's how we keep in touch. But I spend a lot less time there, and a lot more time here now. Here I am investing in my future, and pennies are dropping into MY account instead of Zucc's. Sounds good to me, if you're gonna shoot the shit online anyway...

And there you have it, my reasons to keep at it even when the market sucks. When we're all dolphins with high reps and new red fish complain how "lucky" we are, we'll laugh, and laugh. Good times. 😁

That Red Fish your momma always warned you about

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