7 Days of SteemIt Success - A Path to Riches, Wisdom, and PALs

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I've just completed my first week on Steemit, and it has been a fascinating few days. What I find interesting is my interactions compared to other social networks. I lurked in Reddit. I limped into Twitter, barely understanding its use. But after learning about this platform, I leapt into Steemit.

Within hours of joining and introducing myself , I found myself eagerly joining the P.AL. Discord room and Minnow Support Project. I barely knew what a minnow was, but I realized I needed support. I figured I knew absolutely nothing, but I may as well dive into the deep end and see where I could be helpful. Whatever I learned, I would begin to funnel down to others. Whatever steps I needed to take, I could help document for others.

Over the few days, I tried to post consistent and solid content. It was fun re-invigorating the creative and blogging side of myself. I hadn't blogged actively in quite a while. In my posts, I observed some unspoken rules of SteemIt. And, I also slowly took over the /trending/career sections with stories about Interviewing, Recruiting, and Startups. An area I hopefully will continue to help develop and contribute to as time goes on.

Newbie Advice

The sooner you forget about this number, the sooner you'll start enjoying yourself. We all get it. You came hear dreaming of building up fat stacks of Steem cash with your amazing perspectives, but Steem Rome wasn't built overnight. Respect, reputation and audience will come slowly with great content and interaction. In order for people to care about your vacation, they probably need to first care about you.

I recommend getting over the initial euphoria of checking your dollar amounts consistently. Steem is not a slot machine, and should not be used as such. Just focus on building great content and great interactions, and the rest will follow. For the first few days, your motivations should not be driven by that silly little number beside your posts or others. It should be driven by an earnest sharing of what you have to give. Great photos? Nice writing? Amazing and unique experience. Give those things and be amazed what you'll see reflected back.

The sooner you start having real conversations with others and assisting other people, the sooner you'll enjoy yourself. SteemIt is a poster-child for the 'you get out of it what you put into it' mantra. Put yourself into your posts, into your replies, into all your interactions. Once you do that, you will start having increased success and connections. Steemit can't really be approached successfully from a position of greed. It is counter intuitive to much of the platform.

I recommend checking out Steem as a giving economy by our via own @stellabelle

Criticisms

Slashdot or Reddit?

Currently, I liken SteemIt a bit more to Slashdot's heyday. Why? Because we are hyper focused on a few things - Steemit and the Crypto world. Not everyone wants to interact with those topics on a daily basis, and there is no great way to excuse yourself from those topics or conversations in a meaningful way. I believe SteemIt can be bigger than that. It can be bigger than a few over-arching topics. But, opening up those topics takes empowering everyone on the platform to make valuable curation decisions.

Random idea: Multi-steemits: Get trending in art+design+drawing, or (All Trending minus CryptoSteemit) Can call them Steem Chambers? Steem Rooms? There's a good metaphor in here somewhere...

Create a burgeoning middle class.

Right now, Steemit looks like a feudal system. You have a few royalty (the whales), a few knights and gentry (orcas and dolphins), and a lot of peasants. And the peasants are increasing every day. This means long term success lies in incentivizing these peasants into amazing contributors and consumers and letting them share in the success of the platform. SteemIt needs a successful middle class to continue to scale and grow.

This is one of the reasons I've extremely keen on the Minnow Support Project sponsored by @aggroed. I think him and his compatriots see the same issues and are taking steps to solve it by focusing the minnows into a collective. This collective can then support each other and drive real change within the platform as well as reaping the rewards of the coordination. I highly recommend getting involved, even if its just to ask questions and learn more from one another.

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Outside of grassroots efforts, it looks like there are steps in the HF19 to flatten the reward curve and assist new topics and users. I think this will help, but it may be too early to really judge it success in handling the influx of eager and active users. It'll be fasciating to see post costs and activity levels amongst the swell of new, interested users once the novelty wears off and the payouts don't match initial expectations. Ultimately, only time will tell on the success of this change and future changes to the micro-economy that is Steemit.

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Conclusion

Overall, I'm extremely optimistic about this platform for content creators, interesting people, and intriguing content. Steemit is undergoing some growing pains, but I don't doubt we'll solve them. I look forward to seeing how Steemit evolves as time goes on and as more people join. I'm sure it'll be able to address the growing pains in an effective manner from both above and within that engages a broad, thriving audience to make a better community and platform.

_{PS - Sorry for the clickbaity title, but for the best fishing, you gotta use good clickbait.}

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