I'm in the top 150 authors by followers. By the time this post publishes I'll probably be at or past 900 followers. This account is at $6700SP and 700 SBD. I'm going to invest 1 BTC worth into steem too. So, I think the account will top $10k. I have some whales that follow and support my work. I'm planning a witness run for Tuesday. Things are going ok for right now!
How did I get here
First off. I'm lucky as shit. I was born white, male, and upper middle class in America. I've been sent to private schools for the better part of my life. I'm been armed to the teeth with opportunity. I also work my ass off as a life thing. Within 7 years after I graduated high school I already had a PhD. I was 25! I graduated a liberal arts college with a science degree in 3 years, and finished graduate school in 4. I can write, read, think, wait, and have an incredible support network. I have full time employment that pays a decent living. All those things combined make it so that by the time I got to this platform I had a lot of the necessary analytical skills, reading and writing ability, and work ethic to make it happen.
Do I think that's necessary? Fuck no! So much of school is a terrible experience. People make it on here as self-taught artists and high school drop outs. There's a ton of approaches that will work. I'm starting by saying I had a leg up because of my upbringing.
How'd I get started?
I've been political for years. It always interested me. I'm ashamed to admit I was a Democrat for a while. I still like a lot of the things that they stand for: Everyone should have access to health care, everyone should have access to great schools etc. But I'm appalled by the methods they are willing to use to acheive them, ie coercion and force. I had my political awakening back in 2012 when I really started questioning every single official story around. I certainly wasn't one of the first truthers out there, but given my background and how much folks like me have invested in the system it was a pretty big deal to push back against.
I've been protesting war since folks showed up at the Bush's ranch in Crawford TX. I've been to at least 12 different occupy rallies. I've been to Tea Party protests. I even ran for office and got ~6,000 votes (I still lost).
So, when I started posting I started immediately talking about political things. And I was willing to say some uncomfortable things.
So, that got me to like 50 followers... then what
After getting some initial followers I had to start branching out. I couldn't keep posting just political stuff. People get put off by politics. Hell, even some of the curation guilds on here specifically state they won't touch them. So, it was becoming harder to just do those posts and expand. I talked about this weird phenomenon called the Mandela Effect. I started a couple creative writing endeavors. I had some angry things to say about the way steem was being run that hurt minnows in particular. I started doing some satire.
One of my favorite pieces was right during the inflation when things sucked, and @charlieshrem put out a story about how you could put steem on a credit card and live just off of steem. I was making $0.04 on a post, so I wrote a satire article about it.
It was the biggest hit I had at the time. It was in the zeitgeist of the moment. A popular author wrote a story. People were struggling in the platform. And I hit a good moment with some folks. So, that got some play.
I was trying to go back and forth between edgy, truther, consipiracy theory posts that interested me and trying to do some satire about the same things that might be more palpable for other audience members to grab a hold of.
Raging against Hillary
I think another thing that helped get me on the map was being strongly against Hillary Clinton and exposing reasons why people should be. It was an election year. People were interested in that. I don't think politics is always enough to talk about but Trump, Bernie, and Hillary certainly caught folks attention. So, I don't think it was just Hillary rage, but I think it was really capturing a moment. I got some big bucks for a piece mocking HRC saying if she's elected they will rename the presidential plane to Ambulance 1. I also got some love for a debate satire- https://steemit.com/politics/@aggroed/satirically-yours-s1e27-republicans-furious-as-presidential-debate-moderator-lester-holt-alleged-to-have-administered
So, it wasn't just Hill. It was actually about putting a funny spin on the things everyone was talking about.
Running a series
I'm a big fan of series. I talk a lot about the Daily Show format.
Cue the intro
Funny intro bit by host
Bit
Bit
Interview
Daily dose of zen
Repeat for decades!
It was the format that really got people and kept them. So, my creative articles were in a series, my satire is in a series, my memethenews is a series, Minnow Support Project, Aggroed's Antidote. I serialized everything.
Announce success
This post is in part talking about success. Sharing success often brings people in. So, when I hit milestone I like to talk about them. I try to include more than just "I hit 200 followers" and try to provide context and the struggle with it to make it personal. So, you can find 50 follower and 200 follower posts on my wall. People that haven't made it that far will pay attention.
Talk about what's meaningful to you even if no one is listening
One of my first articles on here was about the Seth Rich murder. I've known since I saw the headline that was a major deal. I think it's going to bring down the DNC leadership. I think it might even crack a giant hole in the USG and mainstream things like the Clinton Body Count and Pedogate. That first article got like 4 upvotes, but I've been talking about it for 7 months. Now, that I'm here I think it lends some credibility to me when I'm posting things. I saw that and knew something was afoot, and here's what I'm talking about now and why you should pay attention to that.
I stuck it out
There was a period during the mass inflation where there was a new rant showing up every day talking about why they were leaving. This platform sucks blah blah blah. They basically didn't have the patience to see through the hard times. So, they left. Tons of new people are arriving now, and there aren't a lot of people that are still here posting from the low reward days. So, I have a leg up there too.
Things kept creeping along and then I started paying attention to people better at this than me
I owe a lot of the growth of my page to @kaylinart. That lady knows how to interact with her fans. Got a lot of good posts done in a reasonable amount of time. And she has a tight following. I wrote an article about her style that could be mimiced, and I took some turns working on it. Because I had been interacting with her some she was kind enough to resteem the post.
https://steemit.com/blogging/@aggroed/tips-to-successful-steemit-posting-learning-from-kaylinart
She's got an audience of 1600 people or so. I've been on a rocket course ever since. I think I've doubled in size in less than a month from 450 to 900 followers. And now that I'm bigger it's easier to attract the attention of other well known bloggers. We're all incentived to get along and share one another's posts. So I've lucked out and gotten a few resteems from some follower-whales. That to me is the biggest deal.
I think @curie picked up a few of my stories and I made a few bucks from them, but I'll take a big resteem over bucks any day. Resteem leads to followers which is long term sustainable. No one really cares that much if my account value goes up another 50.
Mission Driven to help others through this without taking 9 months
So, now I'm on a mission to help other people succeed as fast or faster than me, and hopefully without needing the background I came with. I'm literally trying to pave a path on this platform to make it easier for those who come after me. That's what my Minnow Support Project is all about, and that's what my witness run will focus on.
https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@aggroed/minnow-support-project-weekly-minnow-resteem
By the Numbers
Ok, So, in the last 9 days I have 39 posts.
They total just under $1500.
They average $37.
Two of them are over $100.
Eight of them are between $50-100.
22 Are under $25.
18 of them are geared toward helping others on the platfrom.
21 are about news, politics, humor, or satire.
The highest has 460 upvotes. It also has the most comments at 160 (maybe 60 are replies from me).
The lowest has 20 upvotes.
Before these last ten days I had maybe 5-6 posts with over 100 votes. I've gotten that many just in the last 10 days.
So, I'm still not super consistent. I think it's because I'm uncompromising on talking about some things that still no one cares about, but it's important to me. Eventually, people will pick them up too, or they won't. I still think it's fascinating, so I'm not changing direction on things like my Hard Times Series as I have time or the Mandela Effect posts as I find new ones.
Anyway, that's my journey
And hopefully, if things go according to plan, I'll make it easier for you to follow it than it was for me to blaze it. Thanks for following, thanks for interacting with me, and hopefully these kinds of posts can help you grow your page and learn from what worked for me.