When someone has a dream that they desire strongly enough, they will find a way to make things happen.

I can't believe it's already been a month since I decided to start posting on Steemit. It feels like just yesterday that I found out about it from @stevenalexander posting about it on Facebook. I signed up and had gotten my account approved, but then left it alone for a few weeks. I was intimidated by it all and had no idea how to start writing my first post, so I just put it aside for a while. One day, I finally decided that I just had to sit down and start writing my post so that I could begin my Steemit journey.

I wrote my #introduceyourself post and shared it on Facebook. And I didn't think much of it after that, but when I came back to Steemit later that day, I saw that it had gotten a few comments and upvotes and was making a few dollars already. I went through all the comments, and I was truly amazed by how genuine most of the people seemed. I took the time to reply to all of the comments, and I began to get into discussions with people. It was pretty sick.

I felt good about the success of my first post, so I decided to try again. I posted a fictional story that I wrote, and a feature article about the island I come from, but neither of them really got seen or upvoted by too many people. Then I tried to post my Friendship In a New Age blog posts, but they didn't really get a big audience, either.

Still, I kept on writing. I discovered the @MinnowSupport Project and joined their community on Discord. I met some amazing people who really helped with keeping me engaged in the community. Within that first week on Steemit, one story I wrote got upvoted by @curie, and another story I wrote got upvoted by @blocktrades! They were both completely unexpected surprises that really helped to keep me motivated in that first week. Those two huge victories are the reason why that was the most motivating week of my writing career.

In my second week on Steemit, I continued to spend a significant portion of my time on the site as well as in the MSP Discord channel. I ended up on @Ma1neEvent's radio show too, which was pretty cool! I got to talk about my journey on Steemit so far, as well as my plans for future posts. It was because of being on that show that I finally got the final push I needed to start The Dancing Dreamers blog. I joined my first contest on Steemit that week with a story of how I met my best friend, and I ended up winning second place!

I also came to the realization that week that I should invest in Steem. I wanted to power myself up as much as possible and as quickly as possible so that I could be in a better place to show support to my friends who I had been trying to get onto Steemit.

My third week witnessed a lull in my activity, because my mind was focused on a trip I was taking that week. I did manage to launch my contest to celebrate hitting 100 followers, so I was happy about that because people got to talk about how Steemit has helped their lives. One of my Friendship In a New Age posts finally made a few bucks, so that was exciting for me. :)

This fourth week has been amazing for me. All of the posts I made this week are making several dollars, so I am really looking forward to seeing what the final payouts for this week will be. I posted about my road trip to California, and then I posted a painting that I did during the road trip, which was accompanied by a poem. I posted about my experience at Escape: Psycho Circus 2017, and I posted the winners of the contest I ran, as well as another short story that I had just written.

So here I am today, just 28 days later. I've somehow managed to grow to 200 followers and 53 reputation in this short time. But if I can do it, anyone can! I will explain below how you can have the best chances of replicating (and hopefully surpassing!) my success.

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How I Did It

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• The first thing I can tell you is, you should come join us over at the Minnow Support Project's Discord channel, hosted by the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network. As much success as I have had so far on Steemit, I would not be even a fraction of the way to where I am today had it not been for the amazing people I met at MSP. I still remember the joy I felt when I posted a link to a story I wrote and someone expressed their genuine interest in my writing. Small things like that can really do wonders for someone's confidence in their own abilities, which will translate into a nice little boost in one's motivation to keep creating.

• The next piece of advice I can give you is to not go into it focusing on the monetary aspect. Yes, the money was a great selling point, but make no mistake: Steemit is not a get rich quick thing. It takes countless hours or hard work to be successful on Steemit, so if you go into things only thinking about making money, your fire will burn out and you will eventually forget all about this place. Always keep the passion in mind over the profit, and you will make it in the long run.

• A very important part of success on Steemit is in developing real connections with real people. If you're going to leave a comment on someone's post, make it count. Don't just comment asking people to follow you or upvote your posts. Leave some meaningful, relevant comment that will hopefully result in engagement from others. People can tell if you're genuinely interested in their content, or if you're just leaving a comment trying to fish for new followers. Be genuine.

• Likewise, if someone leaves a well-thought out comment and makes it clear that they spent some time on it, don't just leave a one liner response like a simple "Thank you." They most likely left a long comment because they wanted to engage in discussion with you.

• Join contests to try to gain some visibility. Even if you don't win, a lot of times people will read your entry, and if they like what they see, they are more likely to check out your profile.

• In addition to making connections with people on Discord communities like MSP, make some connections on Steemit! Go to the main page and browse through the posts in tags that you're interested in, or tags that you plan to post in. Read other people's posts and leave comments on them to start discussions! People are more likely to check out your profile if you've first expressed a genuine interest in their work.

• Stay the course and focus on building those connections with people. Try to balance out your time and energy to about 25% posting and 75% curating when you're first starting out. Most of your earnings will come from curation at first, as well as pretty much all of your following. It can be tempting as a creative with so much to share with the world, to just want to pump out as much of our own work as possible. But the biggest part of success on Steemit is building real connections, so focus on those first. The numbers will come, you just have to keep that fire in your heart burning brightly.

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Thank you so much!!!

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I have so much to express my gratitude for! I definitely have to thank everyone involved in the @MinnowSupport Project, for all the awesome work that they do to keep that place running as well as it does. Not a single new minnow slips through the cracks over there!

Definitely a huge thank you to @stevenalexander for showing me the wonders of Steemit and for giving me some helpful tips when I was just starting out and trying to navigate my way through this crazy pond. Seeing how successful he's been has helped me to stay motivated to post on a regular basis!

Thank you as well to @jrswab and @paps for sharing their knowledge with me and helping me to improve the quality of my posts. If you'll notice, almost none of my posts from my first week have any nice formatting to them...it wasn't until after I started talking to those guys that I finally learned what I needed in order to format my posts.

Thank you again to @Ma1neEvent for having me on his show a few weeks ago, as that really helped to push me to move forward with my plans for my EDM blog on Steemit. Thank you as well to @discordiant for letting me use his cool animated MSP banner!

Thank you to everyone who has chosen to follow me! I really appreciate your support so much. Thank you for all the times you have upvoted, commented on, and resteemed my posts. It truly warms my heart to know that there are people out there who appreciate my content!

Seriously, I couldn't have done it without you guys. My goal after hitting 100 was to reach 200 followers by the time my first month on here was up. I achieved it because of you. So thank you so much for being here with me and helping me along on this journey! Here's to more steady growth going into my second month on Steemit!

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!steemitworldmap 40.754539 lat -111.902618 long Salt Lake City, Utah local Steemian! d3scr