The dead Steemit backyard

For those who are unaware of it, we all have a backyard in Steemit. This backyard is barren and it is sad as it is one of the most powerful feature of Steemit.

(Credit: here)

A little bit of History

I joined Steemit 5.5 months back and it has been a different experience all together for me. To be sincere I don't like writing. I almost never share anything my Facebook and Twitter. I don't have an Instagram account and I don't feel the need for me.

The end of year is approaching and it is time to reflect back on the year. I like posting on science, technology, philosophy and awesome drone videos but we will be taking a break from time to time till the end of year :)

The analysis

First I am going to help you think about how we use Steemit. The first thing that makes us happy when writing a Steemit post is the payout after the 7 days. A good payout motivates us to continue to write posts to get an even bigger payout.

We have all seen that this is not the case. Be it a fish or a whale, the payout differs by almost 100%! So we should be thinking as to what is driving the community. This may sound ridiculous to include whales but if you look carefully, a whale might get a payout of 400 SBD on one post and the next 100 SBD. For a fish, the payout may be 5 SBD on one post and the next is in cents.

(Credit: here)

As Steemians who have just joined, we think that only us have the same problem but it is not so. We all have the same problem except that for whales, their greatest fans are already having lots of power in Steemit. While for those who just started out, their faithful fans have limited power on the platform.

If we follow the analysis even deeper, we have more than a hundred 100 followers but yet if we look statistically, only 1% gives us an upvote and less than 1% comment on our posts. I did the calculations on some accounts, with permission of course, and it is almost the same thing. The average is 1% or less in term of people who follows you!

 Are we to be blame yes of course!

What we are doing

I am also one of those people so don't hate me for that. Once we finish writing a post, the first thing we do is have a quick glance for mistakes and check if all pictures fit in the context. Think of a really cool title to make someone click on it. We open Steemit chat and start pasting our links like mad, while looking mostly at the 2 links above us or usually not.

We open Discord and do basically the same thing as in Steemit chat but this time, checking the rules carefully as we do not want to get banned.

Chat with some people that we know are supporting us and share our links directly with them so that they check our post and hopefully upvote it. 

(Credit: here)

After this, we look at the upvote bots that are available, the price range we are willing to pay and make a decision to use one or several of them. We only know that high value on the post means hot or trending. But seriously? Without this my post has no value? If this is so then what I am writing? What am I looking on this platform? Why write? We all have better things to do than writing. But it is the upvote that keeps us going. The hope for a higher payout and then the hope of a consistent payout.

Anyone who has not done this can flag me to show that I am the odd duck in the Steemit community. In this sense I would also know that I am doing something wrong.

The deadlock

By looking at the numbers, we all have more followers as compared to the number of upvotes we get. This is not a fatality. If we all upvote at 100% and wish to keep our upvote worth to a reasonable amount, we can only upvote around 20 posts per day or maybe less. 

We have hundreds of followers. How do we keep supporting everyone? It is impossible unless you can upvote at less than 100%. But before we reach 500 Steem Power, we are unable to do so. But even then we should think that it takes around 5 minutes to read a post and write a meaningful comment.

(Credit: here)

If we have 100 people we are following that makes 500 minutes and that makes more than 8 hours!!!! Then when do we do our daily activities and when do we write our posts?

We need to be reasonable and understand everyone. But if ever you see the number of your followers increasing, you should be happy but this is not converted to upvotes or comments on your post.

15 people following you and you following them will make you grow faster than anything else provided that those 15 people all share the same interests and posts that each one of them like. This is the sad reality :(

Where is the dead backyard?

If anyone has read this post from the beginning would already be getting a hint. We are creatures that look outwards in life and this reflects even on Steemit. We take the help, rely and beg for support like Steemit chat, Discord and bots.

We have followed so many resteem bots in the hope of other people will see our post. The reality is still less than 1%. This is the sad truth and we pay for such services.

If we do check our feed, it it clogged. When we check our feed, we see more contents from the resteem bots than from our followers. I am not saying that all articles are boring but not all articles are from my interest and feed my curiosity.

In the end we almost stopped looking at our feed and keep looking outward for upvotes. Let's be honest! We think that those following us are already in our pocket but this is sadly not.

(Credit: here)

I have been making memes at the beginning and then stopped. By that time, I may have got 100 followers liking my memes but now no more memes coming.

I posted drone videos atleast once a week and got 1o0 more followers but since I left my home country, I am not able to post any drone video as I was unable to take my drone with me.

Like this, how many posts I have created that got me some followers and then I didn't meet their expectations. This all reflects on the upvotes that we get on our post.

Likewise, our feeds are full of Steemians who wrote a post that we enjoyed and we followed them in the hope of getting another amazing post but in the end, we forget to check our own feed on a regular basis... Including myself :(

Conclusion

Looking outward is one of the biggest flaws that modern humans have acquired. Most of us stopped believing in our inner strength, inner qualities and inner dreams in the thirst of being accepted by the majority and keep increasing that majority.

We are like a lost species that do not have a clue of where it is going. Everyone looks savvy and keeps giving advice everywhere. Yet we are all at the same spot. Unknown following most of our actions and words...

New Year is coming, time to reflect on your past year in our life and also how we use Steemit and what is our purpose on Steemit. I need to ponder on my purpose. Do you?

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Feeling the new year coming too fast, why not play the Steemit Lotto Game on this post: Steemit Lotto Weekly # 10 - Minimum Pot Size 100 STEEM!!!!

Good luck to everyone  😎 

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Don't forget to check if you are a winner every Sunday at around 19 00 (GMT)

(created by @readallaboutit)