Halfway to Being a Minnow! And Lessons Learned

March 29th will mark 2 months since I made my first post on steemit. The learning curve has been huge but I'm happy to say that I think things are going good. I'm now (as of today!) just over 250 SP so halfway to being a minnow! Each week I move a little closer to being a minnow and I'm looking forward to reaching that 500 SP mark!

I really want to say thank you to the entire steem community and especially the homesteading/permaculture community. I would not be where I'm at now without the amazing support of the community on here. I struggled with using up my resource credits when I first started and the community helped me out a lot. I would list individual names but I know I would miss some since so many of you have helped me thought these first 2 months. Please know that I really appreciate all the help you all have given.

Some Lessons Learned

The first big lesson as a new user was dealing with resource credits. Now those are not a big deal but when I started I was always running out. Without a couple community members delegating SP to me that first week or so would have been very frustrating.

I wanted to make daily posts and reply to anyone who left a comment. I also wanted to upvote posts and leave replies on other people's posts. All good things to build engagement...

But a new user just does not have enough resource credits to do all of this. I get why the restriction is needed but I just wish it was more obvious for new users. But luckily the community is great at helping new users.

Now my SP is high enough that I'm not having any resource credit issues.

Another big lesson (and on going) is getting used to all the websites/apps that connect to the steem blockchain. I got into this just knowing about steemit. Recently I learned about steempeak and a while back I learned about Partiko. These 2 have really helped me access the steem blockchain more easily. Though I still use steemit--especially when I use my upload credit on steempeak for pictures.

I'm slowly learning about all the different services/initiatives/projects being run by people on the steem blockchain. For example SBI -- Steem Basic Income. I love the sound of it but I have not done anything with SBI because I'm unsure how to get started and how to make it worthwhile in the long run. This is just an example--I see a lot of awesome sounding services/initiatives/projects being talked about and I really don't know where to get started and which to put my time towards.

If anyone has any tips/advice I would welcome it! :)

Oh and I'm still learning about witnesses... I kinda get it but I got a lot to learn there...

As a new user there is a ton to learn to fully utilize the steem blockchain! Even after reading all the guides I could find (some are outdated) I still really had to learn by doing and asking questions.

Steem Blockchain as a Traffic Source for My Site

I run a business called Wild Homesteading. This business is new (started on Nov 25th 2018) and getting traffic to that site is very important for growing it and eventually getting my content to show up in google searches.

I love the community here and I wanted to join you all because I'm excited about what the steem blockchain could become in the future. But I also need my business site to do well. Deciding what to spend my time on is a challenge. I'm also on Facebook, Pinterest, and a little bit on Twitter.

So how does the steem blockchain stack up to these other sites? Let's look at February and March traffic data.

It is not yet March 28th so the data is not a full comparison but so far it looks like March is going to beat out February for overall traffic by a little bit though this week's blog post is not as popular as most have been.

From the chart you can see that most of the traffic looks similar % wise except that organic search has gone up in March. This is awesome since in the long run organic search traffic will really help my site grow.

Google does not treat steemit/steempeak as social media traffic but instead throws them into the referral group along with all other sites on google analytics. This makes it hard to do a direct comparison.

Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter all together brought in 277 people in February and so far 232 people in March.

Steemit and steempeak together brought in 77 people in February and so far 52 people in March. What is interesting is I had no steempeak traffic until after steemit was offline.

In February only Facebook brought in more traffic than steemit/steempeak out of the social media sites but so far in March steemit/steempeak are beating twitter but not Facebook or Pinterest.

But going back to the theme of community. The engagement with you all is so much greater and better than the engagement I get from those other social media sites. Most of the time the only interaction I get on those sites are people sharing/liking but almost never comments. I love how much I get to talk with you all.

So even though traffic is less than some of the other sites steemit/steempeak still send a decent amount of traffic to my site plus I get to be part of this awesome community. Plus, I like the way things are setup here so much better than on those other sites ;) But I thought you all might be interested in the numbers.

At this point I'm not treating the steem blockchain as an income source. I'm just putting everything towards powering up and connecting with you all. I have a long term goal for the amount of SP I want to always have that would put me well within dolphin status. At that point I will see if I can start trying to earn an income through the steem blockchain but even then I want to always hold a high level of SP.

I'm also interested in trying to sell some of my future products/services for steem potentially through the Homesteaders Co-op. That would be another way to start earning a direct income through the steem blockchain.

Next Steps - Onward Towards Minnow Status!

Really the next steps for me are all about continuing to post, engage with you all, and get SP so I can hit that 500 mark to become a minnow. I would love to reach minnow status before my daughter is born sometime around May 9th since I may not be posting as often with a newborn! :)

Right now I try to post 5 days a week during the work week and then take the weekend off (from all social media) to prioritize homesteading tasks and getting the next blog post up on my site.

Each Monday I share a post that is focused on that week's blog post (the blog post also links to the post on the steemit). Tuesday is my weekend homestead report post and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are just posts that relate to homesteading/permaculture. This post is not normal for me since it is more focused on steem which I normally don't write a lot about.

Hope you all found this post interesting!