I blogged on Steemit for a week and on Medium for 40 days - here are the results
I always had a lot of imagination (too much, some would say), and I never really knew what to do with it. That's one of the main reason I hardly get stuck when writing articles or when trying to find new topics to talk about. Finding ideas is not a problem for me, but execution is.
Because executing my ideas is hard for me, I always had problems both in school and in my personal life. Teachers were impressed with my imagination, but not with my execution. This may be the main reason I always had really bad grades.
This is one of the reasons I decided I should freelance. I always felt like traditional work is destroying my imagination, or is at least blocking it. I live in a village, and around 10 years ago, when my grandfather was alive and both my grandfather and grandmother were healthy, we had a lot of work to do around here, and I was helping them.
Whenever I did any of the work they told me to do, I wasn't able to use my imagination. I was so focused on working and using my body to lift heavy things, that my brain couldn't concentrate on anything. Sometimes it was nice not to think about anything, but that wasn't always the case.
So, I chose freelancing, hoping to be able to use my imagination better. And it worked, for a while, and in some cases. First, it worked when I did not need any kind of money. When I was 14 years old I got really interested in graphic design and video editing, and I started learning about those things until I was able to create something myself.
I started copying things I saw in tutorials online, and managed to create small things like this:
and this:
and this:
It was fun, and it was nice to receive feedback for those designs, but when I grew older, I realized nothing like that will really get me money, and money is what I needed, so I started doing something different.
I tried multiple things, from YouTube, to selling stock design packages on Graphic River, from trying to keep a personal blog, but nothing worked as expected. A month or so ago I discovered Medium, and it seemed like a really nice idea. Write a lot of posts, get a lot of followers, tell them about a few nice products to buy using affiliate links, get some money from that, build some products yourself, sell them the products, and make money.
Since I had no other option, and I needed money fast, I decided to do that. So I started writing posts on Medium every single day, for about 40 days, and I did not get a lot of results.
A week ago I heard about Steemit, and since I was in a tough position, I decided to give it a try. I made an account, I waited around 5 days to get approved, and when I did, I started posting a few articles.
I was more than sure I won't get anything on this website as I did not get anything on Medium. I was wrong. In just a few days of posting, I got more rewards than I got in more than a month of using both Medium and Graphic River.
I posted over 40 articles on Medium and over 20 on Steemit, in only a week. This is the number of followers I got on Medium, after over 40 days of work, compared to the number of followers I got on Steemit after only one week of posting:
A big difference ha? I know.
In only one week of posting on Steemit I got 30 followers, while getting only 6 on Medium. I don't say I'm not grateful for them, but it's obvious which website is trying to get your content to more and more people.
But let's not focus on that. Followers are very important for everyone, but most of the people reading this really care about one important thing - money. How much money did I make from Steemit and how much money I made from Medium?
Well, I did not receive all the rewards from all the articles on Steemit, because it did not yet pass a week since I posted them, but here's what it says I got, from my 4 most popular articles:
That's almost $500!!! In a week!!! I never, in my life, made that amount of money in such a short amount of time. I'm barely making around $150 a month on Graphic River, and I spent almost one year working there only to get that! What the hell!?
Okay, now here's the amount of money I made on Medium in more than 40 days of publishing:
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In case you're wondering why the image is not loaded yet, well, it's because there is no image. I made absolutely $0 from Medium since I started, and I posted over 40 articles.
I spent entire hours writing all kind of posts for Medium, for 40 damn days, and I made $0. How is that possible? I would show you how much I made from Graphic River, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to. What I can say is that I maybe made around $1000 in a few months.
My goal, right now, is to get the thing I wanted to get for years, and I never could - a really good computer. I never had one, and my parents never had the money to get me a really new and good computer when I was little.
I was always forced to play old games, to use old software and to wait too much for each page to load on my browser. While I'm writing this, my computer sounds like It's gonna take off into the sky, because besides text, I also have a few images on this post, which means my computer is struggling to handle all that.
I tried for so much time to get a computer, and apparently working a week on Steemit got me closer to my dream than working for years on anything else. It's hard for me to describe the feeling I get whenever I realize this, and it's hard for me to thank anyone who upvoted my posts, because I don't think I would ever be able to thank them enough.
Once I'll learn how to get all the money I made on Steemit on PayPal, and I can see that all my work has paid off, and I can get a computer, I don't think there's a way for me to get back to anything else than Steemit. I don't think I could work for Graphic River or Medium again.
If I can get the computer I so much desire from just posting on Steemit... well, I don't know what I would do. I guess I'll dedicate big part of my time to improving this community and offering as many things to it as possible.
Anyway, this is the end of the article. I just showed you what I made on Medium in 40 days compared to what I made on Steemit in a week. If you're reading this and you're not yet part of the Steemit community, please don't wait any longer and sign up right now.
There's a chance for you to fulfill your dream while creating the content you like and interacting with amazing people. Steemit offers you the chance to actually do something with your work, and I can't find any reason why you would spend time on other social media and blogging platforms.
I'll try to make updates like this in the future, compare Steemit with different websites, and show you guys what else I can get with this website.
I did not say this in any post yet, and I will in future posts, but since I'm here right now, I will take the opportunity to say - thank you to everyone who upvoted my posts, who got me closer and closer to achieving my dreams, to everyone who commented, to everyone who followed me and to everyone who even considered reading something I made. I promise I'll try to provide as much content as I can and invest as much time on the Steemit community as possible :)
Very cool...followed.
Thank you very much :)
You're artwork is great! It's a shame people can't eat art or yours would be flying off the shelves. I love the girl with the red veins... and the light bulb with fish. My Steemit articles aren't doing very well. Any pointers would be appreciated.
Thank you a lot for your comment!
There are a few methods I used when writing articles that I think helped me get that amount of money:
Be ready to write a 1000 words article and spend two hours working on it, or more, even tho you're not sure you'll even get more than $0.20 from it. If you keep doing that, you will, eventually, make money.
Learn one thing really well. I tried programming in the past, but I don't know it very well, so I don't talk about it. I know things about content creation, life, and how to work better. I talk about that most of the time. You need to have something you know very well, and share what you know with people.
Maybe the most important advice anyone could give you about content creation - always focus more on quality than quantity. A person with 5 really good articles is always more valuable than a person with 50 mediocre articles. If you always focus on quality, not quantity, you'll get more rewards.
Thank you very much for your comment and keep posting on Steemit, you never know when one of your articles will do great, and it's hard to even describe how that feels, to wake up one morning and see one of your articles made you $50 or more :)
Best of luck!
Thank you so much for your lengthy reply! That would be amazing to find out I made something. : )) 5 great articles... That gives me something to consider. : ))
Nice post. Makes me love steemit even more. Good luck getting a new computer and doing great things.
Thank you very much :)
Congratulations! Happy for your success on Steem! Good artists need their breaks! :) Keep on steeming. Following you too.
Thank you very much for your comment and for following me! :)
You're very much welcome! I admire your skill and artistry
just read this good piece, and followed (new here)
Thank you :)
Here is how you can convert your Steem Dollars into other cryptocurrencies and then sell them for a fiat currency like Euros or USD.
Excellent post. I was wondering what the difference between Medium and Steemit was and you answered my questions. It's apparent that Steemit is way better than Medium in terms of monetization. Thank you for your article.
Glad you liked the article!
Steemit is indeed better than Medium in terms of monetization, but that can also represent a disadvantage when it comes to spam.
If you look on Medium you'll see a lot more quality content and a lot less spam, because everyone knows you can't really make any money commenting, liking or posting useless content. That means that if someone leaves a comment, it's because they probably liked the article or want to express their point of view. They don't do it just to get something in return. Same with "likes" (claps on Medium) and creation of content.
The good thing about Steemit is that the community is really interested in getting rid of the spam and they flag people who do whatever they can to get a few cents a day.
Both websites have advantages and disadvantages. What matters is which place helps the author get rewarded for his hard work best, and that's always subjective.
I enjoyed reading your comparison. Good article!
Thank you :)
Hi there! Cool post! I was wondering how much are your earnings as today? And now! Followed!
Hi, thank you! :)
When it comes to how much I make with the articles I write, I can't say it's a lot, just a few cents every day. That's not bothering me at all tho, it's only been almost a year since I started, and other websites require you to spend even more time before forming a community and getting any money out of what you do.
However, most of what I make (or made, better said) was from the transactions on the Internal market. Short version of the story - I've been spending around 4 months on the Internal market, buying SBD with Steem and then buying Steem with SBD in order to increase what I made in the first few months of writing (around 300 Steem that was worth around $300).
The process behind it it's fairly simple - I needed Steem, so that was my only goal. I was selling Steem for SBD when the price was high, for example $2, and I was buying Steem with that SBD when the price was low, fr example $1.
In this case, if I had 300 Steem and the price was at $2, I could sell that Steem for 600 SBD, and when the price goes down to $1, I could buy 600 Steem with the SBD I have.
Of course this doesn't always happens and the prices I was trading at were much lower, in order to not risk too much, but you get how it works.
In those 4 months I went from 300 Steem to over 1000, and when the price of Steem went up, I found myself having over $3000 in just a few days. Then I purchased a computer I wanted for a long time, kept some money as Bitcoin, in case the price will go up again, and now I am left with around 20 Steem.
I will start trading again to increase the amount of money I have, but I just don't feel like spending hours and hours on the internal market of Steemit again. For now I want to do something else, but in the future I'll definitely do it.
If you're wondering how much you could make on this website if you'd start publishing, well, it really depends on you and your strategy. I started for one reason - I wanted a computer, and I achieved that goal by writing and trading. I didn't invest in anything else and I didn't care so much about improving my profile.
You could approach things in a different way, for example, write articles and even trade, then invest all your Steem into Steem Power, which means you'll have more influence, your upvotes will be worth more and you'll be able to upvote your articles and give money to yourself if no one does it.
There are many ways to make money on this website, but it takes a lot of work. I was really lucky when I first started, so that's that. You can also make money on Medium, but, again, it's gonna require a lot of work, and I don't really feel motivated to do that until they implement PayPal payments.
You can make money anywhere as long as you're willing to work really hard. Steemit is promoted by some people as a way to make money really fast, but more than often, those people have a lot of followers and a lot of Steem Power to get a bunch of money in a short period of time.
For us, the people who aren't in their position is a little harder, but anyone can be in their position after a lot of work.