Steemit Strategy: To Share or Not To Share?

I joined Steemit on approximately 22 June 2017. Originally I had one driving motivation...get noticed for my brilliance and make money. Like pretty much everybody that joins this platform, I wanted to put out quality content, share some of my stories, and hopefully become crazy, unbelievably wealthy by writing a little at a time. So many people have had consistent success with their articles, surely I could be among them at some point, right?

That is the great question, isn't it? Of course, being one to always strategize, I wondered how could I best position myself in to be as successful as possible on Steemit?

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MY PLAN:

Surely by being an early adopter of the platform (admittedly, not the earliest of adopters, but I would count all of us among the early adopters before the tipping point), I had quite the advantage since most of my friends have never even heard about Steemit. I am able to get established and make some money BEFORE they get wind of it all. I can position myself early and reap the benefits when it becomes mainstream. So I won't tell anyone about it until I have about "X" number of followers. For good measure, let's say a thousand followers. That's a nice even round number.

That was my initial plan. The stock investor side of me thought the value in the platform only started to be revealed after it caught on to the rest of the world. I figured, like in stocks, when everyone starts buying in, the value starts to rise for those early adopters who positioned themselves first. I wanted to get a bigger slice of the pie before it started to increase in value. Just look hat is happening to Bitcoin as it becomes more mainstream. Would you have preferred to buy your 5 or 10 Bitcoins early and see the price automatically shoot up or would you prefer to have more time to accumulate more coins and THEN watch as the value skyrockets?

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Another reason I thought to keep it to myself is due to the article saturation that I sometimes see. When you post an article, it stays in the "New" news stream for approximately "X" number of seconds before it starts tumbling down as "old news". I was concerned that if more people started blogging on Steemit and the tipping point was reached sooner, then my articles would have a smaller chance for real exposure and I would have lower payouts, simply because the news feed would flow faster and fewer eyeballs would see my awesome articles. It was a simple thought; dilute the pool with more minnows and there is less room to grow, fewer rewards, and less exposure.

But like a military operation, when you are talking about planning, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I was naive and maybe a little on the greedy side.

NEW PLAN:

Now that I have been on here for about a month and a half and have started figuring out some things for myself, I'm starting to see how I may have misinterpreted the Steemit landscape in my initial plan. I see the error in my ways. In reality, Sharing is Caring. Caring about your friends, caring about this community, and caring about this platform. I now feel it is a little short-sighted to think that you only benefit by trying to grow within the existing confines of Steemit. By sharing the platform with your friends and encouraging the community to grow, you are encouraging this movement to reach the tipping point THAT much earlier. When we reach that point, there is little chance this movement will fall by the way side. As of now, that is still a possibility and I doubt anyone reading this would want to see that happen.

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The tipping point is considered 15-18% of the population. Since this is a global platform, we're talking about 1.08 BILLION people (give or take a few hundred million), so we still have a long way to go. When your friends join Steemit, you should be able to follow each other right away. That means more upvotes, more resteems, and more curation as you and your friends interact with each other on your posts. And in case you didn't know, that equals more money. Also, as more people join Steemit, the value of STEEM should also start rising. This is a natural effect since there would be a greater demand and supply would likely struggle a little to keep up. That ALSO equals more money.

So if any of you out there haven't taken the time to tell a few people about Steemit, I would encourage you to do just that: spread the word!

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I know it could be tempting to keep it to yourself, but when your friends join and engage in the community, we all benefit. So develop a new strategy and recalculate your tactics, basing them on quality content and exposing your articles to friends. Don't have any friends here yet? Make some on Discord or you can get there by clicking on this link here https://discord.gg/QqY5syH. You'll find a great community of fellow minnows ready to help you get established on Steemit. You might even get a few to read your content if you ask nicely. ;-)

Thanks for considering this new strategy. If you feel this new way of looking at Steemit was helpful to you, resteem this article and help me spread the word!