When you search "steemit" on Google, this is the first thing you will see:
"Steemit is a social media platform where everyone gets paid for creating and curating content."
Sounds awesome right? But that's just it, it only sounds awesome. Don't get me wrong, steemit is NOT A SCAM. It does pay its users for creating and curating content. What it DOES NOT do, is pay everyone the same way.
Steemit is based on a hierarchical system, where the rich get richer. If you have been here for more than a week you know what I am taking about, for the others let me explain.
When you start your journey, you are the baby minnow with no friends, or followers in the case of Steemit. Followers are very important, for followers are the ones who will read your content and upvote it. For you to earn any money, your posts need upvotes, which translates into Steempower or Steem Dollars. If no one reads your content, you get no upvotes and no upvotes mean no moolah!
There is too much content on Steemit for human readers to effectively upvote good content. Most people will follow certain users, whose content they find appealing, and upvote only the content that shows up in their feed. Now, don't think that will still be a small feed, I would expect any users feed to very soon become too large for them to curate effectively also.
Ever notice how the best written articles make less than a dollar, yet some people post a one liner and earn over $100. That's because they have a loyal following, who upvote all their content, no matter how banal. This is also in part attributable to websites like steemvoter.com, a website that votes on your behalf automatically.
The irony is that, to build a following you need people to read your content, and to follow you so you show up on their feed. But to actually get read, you need your post to not get lost in the sea of re-posts from other websites and the million half assed attempts at creating content. The odds of your post being read by a person with a strong following, or even by minnows, are higher when people follow you and your posts show up in many feeds.
The idea that incentivizing content, would help produce quality remains just that - an idea. Everyday more and more people, looking to make a quick buck enter the Steemit ecosystem, many plagiarize, others put up posts with no original thought, in the hope that people won't notice and they will make a few extra dollars. The problem with this is not that the undeserving get rewarded, but that the deserving get ignored. No one has the time to sift through thousands of posts, to find that one gem. Curators will do this initially, but once they have identified enough good writers, they follow only those and curate the content as it shows up in their feed.
Theory: Incentivizing and crowd sourcing content curation and creation will attract quality content.
Fact: The skewed system of vote power has put the control in the hands of a few users, leaving the best content to get lost among the sheer volume of useless content being uploaded.
If you are persistent, eventually a few people will read your content, some will even follow you and upvote you. Unfortunately, that's not enough. You need those at the top of the food chain to notice. Why? You ask. Simply put, the higher up you are in the food chain, the more power your vote carries. A hundred minnow votes will still earn you lesser than what you will from 1 vote from a whale. Steemit is not a true democracy, where everyone has an equal vote. The more money your posts make or the more Steempower you possess, the more powerful your votes become.
The whales, sit at the top of the food chain, and hold most of this power. Moreover, the system is rigged so that those on the top not only hold all the power, but continue to get more and more powerful with time. Their posts, no matter how lame, get tons of views and that translates into upvotes, which means they earn more money and more Steempower, ultimately giving them even more power in the system.
Most whales have reached there by producing quality content at a time when it was easier to get noticed. Others, have just gone out and purchased lots of Steempower for straight up cash. Then there are those in the middle who borrow this power from the whales, in exchange for Steemdollars, further adding to the whales' already immense power. Such a system perpetuates the philosophy of the rich getting richer, like every other capitalist economy. It encourages, the small fish, as curators, to sell their votes for Steempower, and as content creators to buy upvotes from bots and whales to gain traction.
Some benevolent whales, do try to balance these issues, by holding contests and making an effort to actually support the little fish, but it's mostly too little too late. Imagine it as a simple demand and supply problem; too many minnows that need support and too few whales, with limited time, to help them. In such a scenario, it's inevitable for resentment and disillusionment to breed, leading to many great writers and curators just giving up.
Theory: Content is everything.
Fact: You need smarts and either persistence or money to play the game that is Steemit.