Back in the good ol' days of the gold rush it wasn't easy. You had to find your way to California. To get there you probably took a 6-month sea voyage from NYC around the tip of South America and back up to San Fran. You likely got seasick, bored, and ended up with scurvy.
Your other approach would be the Oregon Trail. Where let's face it... you likely wouldn't have made it.
Assuming you got to California without "waking up dead" you then had a million people to deal with. Your shit probably got stolen by another 49er. You likely got jacked by the guy selling plots. Your food likely rotted by the time you got there. The gold buyer probably gipped you on the price they offered you.
Modern Mining is Easier
If you want to get started mining these days one of the fastest ways is to just get an asic miner, unethically steal some electricity from work or a university, and start minting fresh bitcoin. It takes a little technical know how, but not much and there are lots of people on here that could help you. That said, you're out $2k, and if you don't have free electricity it's possible that you're going to spend more then you make. If you do have free electricity it's possible you're going to get caught. Right now you're probably minting cash, but a few weeks from now it could cost you more to run the box than it made or land you in cuffs.
Steemit mining can be different
With steemit you have four options in the system to make currency.
- Authoring
- Mining
- Witnessing
- Curation
The top three take a lot of time. The bottom one doesn't have to. Authoring a post can take you anywhere from 5 seconds to many hours. If you already have a following you may get away briefly with some short shitty posts that you still count on for some SBD, but it's likely a boogie man will eventually get you.
Steem mining?
Mining can be good, but last time I heard about mining a handful of people had basically figured out a way to monopolize it and in one of these hardfork's they minimized how much went to miners.
Witnessing?
Witnessing can be pretty sweet... but there isn't formal documentation from steemit on it (though there are some blog posts). It's also somewhat tricky to do, and if you don't have even basic comprehension of linux commands you may struggle.
Lookin' at you @steemitblog!
So, what about curation!
If you want to be a whale you have to think and act like a whale. They don't just see curation as upvoting posts they like. They also see curation as a means to mine steem. That's part of the reason why bots like steemvoter, @steemvoter, exist. It's to help them mine.
How does curation act like mining?
25% of the reward pool of the post goes back to curators. If you vote early on a post that ends up earning a high reward you'll get more back. If you vote on a post that gets low rewards it will reward less. If you vote super late on a high tally post you won't earn as much as if you had voted early. Most people on here aren't using all their votes. You have 200 a week before your steem power starts draining! That's a shit ton of posts to manually upvote.
What should I do?
My advice would be to go to steemvoter.com. Sign up. Under rules start putting in people that you think you should follow. Who should I follow? Well, for that I'd go to steemwhales.com, and then click on posting. That will give you a sense of who has earned the most through their posts. I'd add as many of those top names as you'd like. or steemvoter wll allow. If you vote before 30 minutes you'll give some of the rewards you earn back to the author. If you vote after 30 minutes you might miss out on a bonus. It's a game. Do some trial and error.
What's the problem with this?
Follow trails will ultimately promote shitty posts. If as a well known author you know every time you click post that 100 people are going to upvote you no matter what then it decreases the sense of urgency to write a great post. It might not get you right away, but eventually folks will notice and it will hurt your rep, good will, and rewards.
Also, you as a bot user contribute to that phenomena. So, when you're staring at the trending list and wondering "how did that make it there?" you might actually be part of the problem... but then again you're trying to earn steem not make steemit the world's best blogging platform. Or are you?
A rising tide lifts all boats
We want folks to see our trending wall and think "Damn, that's some good shit! I'm gonna read this." That will attract people here along with good rewards. We don't want shit posts earning 1k each. So, balance your follows and rules you choose to make sure that you can also support the person making the posts. It's kinda like being a raw foods person who promotes healthy eating, but owns Monsanto. Don't be that guy. Check their wall. Make sure you like them. Make sure the posts seem legit, and if you do add them remember to keep tabs on them to make sure they aren't just taking advantage of your vote.
Curate on!
