Dear Steemian minnows,
We need to talk. From minnow to minnow. We need to talk about your dreams of making money here on/with steemit and the actual ROI of your modus operandi, your methodology.
Let's be clear here: I'm new here at steemit myself and I don't think so far I've gained 10 days of experience already. But I have an asset, a bonus card in my drawer.
I've been in this game for many years already and even managed an indie blog network (now defunct) for several years.
And let me tell you that while you are dreaming of $$$, Steemit isn't different from blogging.
But let's start from the beginning, shall we.
Our First Days on Steemit
Steemit has a seemingly rather steep learning curve and there's no doubt that for people new to the world of crypto currency the noise level is almost intolerable and one doesn't know where to look first.
How will I cash in those Steem Dollars?
What is the best moment to cash in?
What do I need, can I just transfer them to my Paypal.
And many more questions. We all had them.
Slow down, tiger!, what bucks are you talking about?
Or did you mean all those SBDs you will be receiving from your awesome curation and upvoting efforts next weekend?
Because that's what you've been doing, haven't you?
Yes, you've been hanging out in trending and hot sections strolling new content, looking for those viral posts.
Additionally, you even started following @minnowpond and lost your virginity when you joined @minnowbooster.
Next... PROFIT! $
Take a moment to think about above photo and reflect on who of both persons you will be come next weekend when rewards are collected.
Clearly, you will be the girl. Right! Right.
Because upvoting isn't the only thing you've been doing.
You've also crafted awesome content and since you joined the @minnowpond, surely your posts will soon be discovered and upvoted.
Let me break the news to you.
Just like last week, your earnings will be minimal. Nihilistically minimal. Bordering on inexistent.
And that's because you're steeming wrongly!
That's right, fellow steemit minnow. It's your fault while you aren't earning and I'm going to tell you now what you've been doing wrong.
I'm going to share with you how I will prevent myself from going down that same rabbit hole, inevitably ending up disillusioned with Steemit and burn out.
I'm here to help you in your Steemit journey. Help you with common sense no-thrill, no-nonsense tips.
You've made three main errors. In no particular order:
- Focused on upvoting popular content, mostly in the trending section
- Bought into the hype of the minnowbots for your content promotion
- Focused on money, on making bucks
Now let me explain these three elements to you.
1. Wrong Upvoting Strategy
Dutifully, as steemian newbie, you have tried to find popular content and upvoted that content. Without truly understanding how steemit curation distribution works.
Obviously, if a post earns several hundreds of bucks in few hours only you need to get your vote in and will earn something from it too!
And so thought another 753 steemians.
The beauty of the point I'm making here is that we even don't need to go into detail of the upvoting mechanism. All we need right now is that wonderful thing called common sense
Let's resort to some basic math and have a look at how much you possibly earn in two totally opposite cases.
Super Trending Post by Popular Steemit Writer
A post by a popular writer, somebody who has thousands of steemian followers and makes a living from steemit ended with $500 earnings and, for the sake simplicity, had 2,000 upvotes. Yours included.
In the simplest use case, 25% of the earnings of the post is distributed among the upvoters.
$500 x 25% = $125
To be distributed among 2,000 steemians. Even in the event that everybody would have the same SP, VP, and time of upvotes didn't play any role, your projected earning of that post would be 1/2000th of $125 or $0.0625.
Queue the Steemit magic sauce, factors like steem power, voting power, and time of upvote, and... ladies and gents, your estimated earning of that post is less than $0.01.
Unknown Author with Solid Article Discovered by a Decent Upvoter
Let's look at a different case. Somebody, with maybe less than 100 followers, wrote a post in a long-tail niche and had some success with that post.
The post never made it to the hot or trending sections, yet at the end of the week the post had generated $40 of revenue.
With only 17 upvotes. One upvoter being you.
Applying the same basic math to that post, you could earn 1/17th of $10 (25% curator revenue distribution) in our most basic common sense situation.
Do I need to do the math for you?
The popular post would net you $0.0625 before Steemit magic sauce. The lesser-known author with fewer upvotes has a potential earning base of $0.5882 before Steemit magic sauce. [insert mindblown rage comic]
It isn't rocket science, it's just common sense.
While you could always try to piggyback on some popular posts with big earning, initially your focus should be on discovering the gems. The lesser known gems.
Gems you hopefully also write.
Which brings us to the next point.
2. Bought into the Big Bucks Minnow Community Hype
Ok, I'm going to burst some bubbles here.
Firstly just because I can, but more importantly for you because I have a rather no-BS analytical mind.
And I've been there too, I've committed the same crimes in my first few days before quickly understanding that it wouldn't work.
What am I talking about?
I'm talking about those community minnow boosting projects like @minnowpond and @minnowbooster.
There is no doubt that a majority of those projects started from a genuine grassroot sentiment and were aimed at helping newer members and members who struggled growing their reputation.
But as these projects expanded and started delivering additional, paid promotion efforts, they started to take a larger role in the Steemit community. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these bots have become the mega corporations of Steemit. They've become the $tarbuck$ conglomerate of this once community.
There is no doubt that they deliver a good service to the community. But due to their incessant growth, and ever higher steem power, these bots have become the corporate greedy evil taking always always larger shares from the community's curation bucks.
The upvoting bots have become the corporate evil of Steemit
Because they have become so powerful.
That powerful that they boost any post with tens of bucks if they wished so. But due to their rock solid steem power, they also take a large share of the curation revenue.
Each time that somebody hires their service, the bots' steem power increases. Even if you paid only $0.25
But how about those free upvotes they give you? Let's be honest for a second.
Most of us barely get any comments to our posts. While you could join regular contests, in the early days it is a struggle to receive comments. And that's normal.
Now because you have bought in to the hype of minnowboosting platforms and bots, more often than not your posts have become a billboard for those services.
Free services which tend to leave a vote worth $0.01 at best. But more often even less than that.
Yet, that comment bubble digit refers to only bot generated comments. No comment of a real person at all.
A billboard did your content become indeed. A free billboard for services promising you to get your content ourt there and increase your revenue thanks to their influence on your Steem Power.
Pardon my French but... bollock$.
Which brings us to our third point.
3. Focus on Earning
One of the most catchy elements of Steemit is of course the earning potential of the platform. Possibly the future of decentralized publishing, and even the future of online publishing.
All n00b errors we made in the early days were because we focused on increasing our revenue.
But, while trying to pursue the holy grail and find the honeypot at the foot of the rainbow, we've forgotten the single most important thing.
While chasing the bucks, you've neglected to make the best thing happen
You have focused that much, almost exclusively, on discovering how to earn and on chasing that unicorn.
And while chasing that unicorn, you've neglected yourself.
Adèle covers the situation you are in now with her track Chasing Pavements.
So what have you forgotten?
You've forgotten to connect with other steemians. You've forgotten to build community. You've forgotten to get your name out there.
Maybe you did leave some comments on those popular blogs, hoping to get an upvote and earn some steemmies (steem pennies?) from an upvote but being one of hundreds thanking the author for their article obviously you did go unnoticed.
Instead you should focus on finding new people to follow in sections, topical niches you love. Open up the hot and new sections of those topics and find catchy images with good titles.
Read the article. If you like the article, leave a valuable comment which hopefully adds value to the article by expanding upon it or maybe even by challenging the views of the author.
Then open the steemian's profile and check their profile. Do you find mostly originally crafted content you like and love reading?
Follow them. Rinse and repeat.
I promise you that after several days of regular commenting, people will reciprocate the favor and start following your content too.
They may even upvote it and also resteem.
Build your community. Build your tribe.
If you like this post, don't forget to subscribe to my updates. I'm @fknmayhem, thank You!
And before you know it, even steemians with more steem power will start to discover your content.
In the earlier stage of your efforts you could use a service such as SteemFollower to have a small additional boost in upvotes, but keep the eye on the target.
The target is quality. Quality first and then quality relationships.
That's networking to win.
If you're here at Steemit to win at Steeming, you have no time to lose.
Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.
So let's quickly recap the three main erros you've been making:
- Upvoting only popular content
- Bought into the hype of the minnowbots
- Too focused on earning
Are you in this to win?
I know I am, how about you? Let's build our tribe! 👊
PS: Thanks to @htliao for the inspiration for this post.