I have been a SteemIt contributor now since May 2017. I am a normal person that joined the community in the hopes of gaining riches for little effort. I quickly found that this was not the case. It takes effort, persistence, and a great deal of patience, but I can personally attest to the fact that you can make real money. Even if you are a normal person like me that doesn't already have a significant following, and quite frankly is not an experienced/good writer.
You will most likely will NOT get rich quick and you will definitely need to put forth effort, but over the past 7 months, I have currently been able to make a little over $1,000 USD of equivalent Steem Dollars. It is real money!
My SteemIt Experience
I initially started with 0 followers and chose to write a couple of posts per day and follow other Steemians and comment on their posts. I found that with each post and each comment, people started to follow me. I know have over 500 followers. And even with 500+ followers, I only average about 7 upvotes for each post.
While I would love to be one of those Steemians that consistently trends with 100+ upvotes per post, that is apparently not me, but I continue to hope for that one magic post that will attract a great deal of interest and place me on the list of SteemIt notables. Maybe one day it will happen, but until then I have been slow and steady.
What Do I Post?
Initially, determining what was post worthy was one of my biggest struggles on SteemIt. I started by posting opinions about current events. While that gained a little traction, I found myself trying to force opinions just to have something to post. My thought process was that I could be the next Sean Hannity, Don Lemon, Rush Limbeau, Laura Ingraham, etc. and people would beg to read my take on the news. I quickly found that not only am I not those people, and it is incredibly stressful to have an opinion about EVERYTHING! Further, I discovered that my take on current events is not that unique and upvote worthy. I also discovered that iff I am not passionate about a subject, I should not write about it.
Advice: SteemIt Dreams vs. SteemIt Goals!
While it is great to have SteemIt dreams of getting rich quick or writing that $3,000 post, I find that it is much more realistic to set attainable SteemIt Goals. For example, attracting X amount of followers per month, increasing the average value of your post by X percent, increasing your reputation to a specific value, etc.
The most important piece of SteemIt advice that I can offer to you is to stay real, be tolerant and open minded to all opinions, contribute to the community, and enjoy your experience!
As always, I would welcome your comments, upvotes and willingness to follow me in this community. Thanks for taking the time to read this!