I've been reading my comments and I am amazed by how many people are new to steemit. Because of this, I decided to change my content strategy a little bit and cater more to the demand of those who need direction at the beginning of their quest.
I have a special request at the end of this article, for those who can help me, I will give a generous upvote in the comment section.
Welcome Newcomers!
For those of you who have been here for less than a month, let me extend a big WELCOME to you. Steemit is fascinating and can be difficult to grasp at time for some people. It's a completely different approach to social media...one where you can actually make a lot of money by producing value for other members.
I will take for granted that you have read the Welcome Page. Most if not all the technical questions you have can be answered there. What I am about to share with you is what I think you should be doing to make the most out of your experience here.
First - Define Why You Are Here
So why are you here? Are you here just to have a place to write? Are you here to build a large following? Are you here to make money enough to have a retirement fund?
Your aim will define the type of activity you should engage in. I will take for granted in this post that you are here to maximize the amount of visibility and income you can make on steemit.
Second - Establish Your Core Competence
As I said above, you are paid on steemit for providing value...not necessarily for writing content. Content is a vehicle for value.
So don't get caught in the dream that if you spend 2 hours writing a piece of content, no matter how great it is, without a following, without SteemPower and without connections that it will go to the moon...it won't.
Find out in what way you could serve other people, make friends and add value.
Casestudies:
@lemouth:
I didn't coach or said anything to my brother in law about how to go about building his account. At the moment he has accumulate 13,736 SteemPower and he is partially responsable of a project that has 26,000 SteemPower to curate content related to STEM.
How did he do it?
He is a scientist...a really good one. What he did was first to find other people like him. He found other scientists who were a part of his niche. Then he created a project with them called @SteemStem which is a "Community Project to Promote Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Postings on Steemit". Then he kept writing about his particular topic. His community supports him as he is support his community. He is doing really well because of that.
@elear:
This is the guy behind the Utopian project (check utopian.io). He is a brilliant visionary and has created a giant community of people who share his vision. More than 4 Million SteemPower has been delegated to his project so far. Not only that...the people who help him along the way are also benefiting from his creation. Many newcomers interested into the world of open-source have been making much more rewards via his project than they were on steemit.com
@dontstopmenow
I like this guy a lot. He was the number #1 curator on the whole platform for a long time. Even though he had a very small account (something like 50 SteemPower), he diligently worked at figuring out how to make the biggest ROI possible with curation. Since I wanted to reliably be able to follow his votes, I connected with him. Got www.steemauto.com created via a bounty of 1000 STEEM I've put out (Thanks @mahdiyari).
Since then I've been following his trail. He made my curation rewards go up by 75% and I am happy to upvote his post with 100% power whenever he writes something. (He's got to make money after all...curation is mostly profitable for big holders)
Third - Accumulate as Much SteemPower as Possible
SteemPower is unique. When you invest STEEM into SteemPower(SP), your vote define a bigger and bigger portion of the daily reward pool. Not only that, you also gain the ability to make your article trend in the hot section for a while, from there, you gain visibility, followers and more rewards coming from people who like your article or project.
Finally, you start making more and more curation rewards. This, I consider almost like a passive income at this point.
There is nothing like SteemPower and unless you are a pro-trader, accumulating SP is the best crypto move I can think of in the long term.
What's Most Difficult is to Get Off the Ground
The most crowded place is at the bottom. It's difficult to get out of there to be honest and I understand those who get discouraged. There is a cumulative advantage for those who stick it out but most don't have the fortitude to figure how to do it.
If you have no money to spend in buying SP, there are bloggers like me who upvote good, thoughful and helpful comments. Find them out and follow them. Add value to their blog by writing good comments and you'll be rewarded.
THIS IS A SPECIAL TIME FOR YOU.
Right now, because of the ridiculous price of SBD, if you earn anything you are getting a 7X to 10X more STEEM than you think. If you only have 10 SBD right now via comments or authors reward, you can exchange them on the internal market(https://steemit.com/market) for 68 STEEM! So even if you get 1SBD via my upvote on your comment. Consider that you are making at least 7X that amount in STEEM.
There as never been a better time to accumulate SteemPower...EVER!
Conclusion - My Request to You Readers
Most of all, I'm trying to be helpful to my readers. Please write the topic you would like me to cover in my future article. I'll make sure to upvote your suggestions.