My Steem Story: Seven Months (and counting)

This is my #SteemStory entry for the great competition being run by @whatsup encouraging Steemians to share their stories of how they discovered Steem, what keeps them around and overall just sharing their story of how they got to now.

My story begins in January 2018, but really the seeds of Steem were planted in 2017.

After riding the cryptocurrency wave of 2017, I was suckered into the cryptocurrency/blockchain rabbit hole. I was addicted and what started out as just a hobby, investing little bits of fiat into Bitcoin and other currencies, became a passion.

After making a nice profit selling some Bitcoin near it's all-time high and doing well from some other cryptocurrencies, as a developer, I started developing an interest in the blockchain and the numerous applications and tools people were building.

Like most developers, my gateway was Ethereum. I learned Solidity and started programming smart contracts, taking some contract freelance work helping ICO's develop smart contracts so they could raise money. I also helped a startup develop a smart wallet that existed inside of a smart contract.

And then I discovered Steem. I knew of Dan Larimer previously because of his involvement in BitShares. I was exploring blockchains that didn't have transactional speed issues and fees, this is one of the downsides of Ethereum (everything costs money). This amazing blockchain could not only handle a high amount of transactions per second, but there are no fees.

I have a passion for writing, especially long-form content. I actually run a successful blog outside of Steem that gets 100k visitors per month, but I've pigeonholed myself as a development blog and feel as though I can no longer blog about anything I want without fear of alienating my audience.

This is why I fell in love with Steem shortly after discovering it. I didn't care in the beginning I wasn't making any money, I was still writing every day. Some days I would publish 5+ posts because I was feeling myself and even if it meant making $0 it didn't matter.

I felt freedom. This newfound platform where I had to start again and allowed me to write about whatever I wanted without fear of pushing away visitors coming for developer-related content, it was amazing. Eventually, after a couple of months, I discovered @teamaustralia a curation group for Australian Steemians and pretty shortly I was making $1 per post minimum.

Given my hourly contract rate as a developer is $100, the amount of money I am making on Steem definitely is less than if I was doing contract work, but I love writing and I am a huge believer in the concept of Steem. You know you have fallen in love with something when seemingly non-material things like money become secondary concerns, not primary.

But, it hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows.

I know I am not alone in this, but eventually, a Steem depression will set in. Unless you bought your way in, growing your Steem account organically is really difficult, super difficult. You'll see the same serial offenders on the trending page, you'll see whales self-voting their content and perpetually generating income for themselves, while you languish in the dark abyss desperate to even make $1.

Eventually, the dark side of Steem comes to light. You'll see unspeakable acts of reward pool theft, you'll eventually find yourself on the end of a flag by someone who is more powerful and has a higher reputation than you and it will hurt, you'll find yourself being targeted or getting involved in drama way above your head.

After sticking around here for seven months and growing, I have experienced some good as well and you will too. You'll discover curation groups and coordinated efforts to make Steem a better place, @curie is a curation group rewarding high-quality content and I have been fortunate to receive a few Curies in my time here.

If you have the patience, you can make some good money writing tutorials, completing tasks and contributing to open source via @utopian-io which resulted in breaking the $100 barrier last month in payouts thanks to a couple of tutorials I published.

What brought me to Steem originally was the freedom of being able to publish whatever I wanted to without having to worry about an existing audience.

What kept me around was the friendships I've formed, the curation groups that support me (and others) and the realisation that the Steem blockchain is still an early product that has yet to reach a mainstream audience and being a member now is a huge opportunity for the future.

The one thing that I would say is important to succeeding on Steem is to NOT be here for monetary reasons. This is not some get rich quick scheme platform, you have to put in some serious work just like the real world. If you join and expect to make enough to pay your rent straight away, this is not the platform for you.

You can make a little bit of money here and there if you write great content and find the support you need, but your focus should be on writing high-quality content and the money should merely be a side-effect of your efforts, not the other way around.

There are still challenges I face every day, but I continue onwards with only one goal: keep on powering up every chance I get and organically grow my Steem account so that one day I can help other struggling minnows on this platform also succeed.