Surpassing 700 Total Combined Giveaways in 9 Months!
This coming Friday, my team that has been assembled here on Steemit is going to hit a major milestone in surpassing a combined total of over 700 giveaways on Steemit!
Some Background on this Journey
I have been a Steemian now since the beginning of January of 2018, or about 16 months. It took me some time to find my way around, learn the basics about Steemit and it's cryptocurrency, learn a bit more about Markdown formatting and how that worked (believe me I'm still no expert there) and to simply discover new services and communities to become engulfed in.
Roughly 7 months into my journey I found a newly developed digital card we all know and love today called "Steem Monsters" or the soon to be rebranded "Splinterlands."
Having been an avid Magic the Gathering player as a kid, this game intrigued me. The mere concept of a game that seemed very similar in ways with having the same essential color formats for it's creatures and a comparable manna format in order to play the game. The major difference being that this game was 100% digital with no physical cards to speak of.
In my young adult days while I was trying to make a little bit of extra money on the side, I used to try to sell trading online through Ebay and on various trading forums. The margins were extremely tiny in most cases and also included having to buy bubble envelopes, soft plastic sleeves and toploaders, along with stamps and various trips to the post office. To make a long story short, it was WAYYYY more work than it was worth by a long shot.
So along comes @steemmonsters. A comparable style of card game where none of that is required. You can buy packs or individual cards online and then sell them or trade them instantly through the internet. The more business savy types of individuals would have to ask yourself, if time is money and margins matter, why then would you ever go back to trying to dabble at sales in a physical card game when something like this exists in the world?
Speaking from experience and also being a CPA by profession, my side projects do tend to have a mind for profitability embedded in whatever I do.
So 9 months ago, when the Steem Monsters game was first launched, I had seen some other individuals already doing giveaways like @shoemanchu, @crystalhuman, @mister-meeseeks, and @rakkasan84 to name a few. I decided to follow suit and it was here that the random number generator contests that you see throughout many giveaway posts today were born.
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@jonnyla08/zintar-mortalis-giveaway-super-easy-to-participate
Shortly after I started this, @littlescribe from the @steemmonsters noticed what we were doing and gave us a nice little shoutout on the official Steem Monsters page via a video post that was added:
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@steemmonsters/steem-monsters-contests-and-giveaways
This was quite a surprise for me, to be recognized, in any sort of capacity and to be afforded words of encouragement that what I was doing at that time was in fact being noticed and was useful in some way. From that point on, there was really never any looking back and my giveaway journey became a regular everyday occurrence.
Over time, I started to learn more about other services on the Steem blockchain. I eventually discovered @steembasicincome and realized just how important something like this program is to success and sustainability. It wasn't long after this that the @steemexplorers account was born which conducts daily giveaways of Steem Basic income shares.
The Team
Today, 9 months after my giveaway journey began, my team now consists of 5x active members/accounts, with 4x of those accounts conducting regular daily giveaways of either Steem Monsters cards or Steembasicincome (with the occassional Incinboost giveaways as well) and combined total 28x giveaways every single week. We may not give away high dollar value cards as some others do but we drive volume. Our focus is to grow ourselves and achieve profitability while also ensuring others are benefiting from our services as well. Our 5th account serves as an upvote service where people can trade in their low valued Steem Monsters rewards cards in exchange for upvotes, currently of about $0.03 - $0.04 in upvote value, which should climb higher over time. We are still growing and have more ideas in the pipeline that may still come at a later date.
| User | Service Provided |
|---|---|
| @jonnyla08 | Steem Monsters Giveaways |
| @monstermadness | Steem Monsters Giveaways |
| @just4kicks46 | Steem Monsters Giveaways |
| @steemexplorers | Steembasicincome Giveaways |
| @givememonsters | Upvote Service |
All of this was initially sparked by a single idea combined with even the smallest of praises, which drove our ambition to continue learning, continue growing and to try to help people where we could in the process. Keep this in mind when you see others trying new things and trying to help the community when you're browsing through posts on Steemit. All they may need to really light a fire under then is a little bit of reassurance or even the smallest of compliments or kind gestures.
Closing Remarks
So to wrap this up, I want to thank everyone that has supported us along the way and helped provide guidance, insights, lending hands and for all those who have been dedicated participants in our giveaways. You guys help to keep us motivated and your continued support means a great deal to us. We'll continue to explorer additional avenues to help people in any way we can and we look forward to seeing what the next 9 months and beyond could bring for us and for the Steemit community as a whole. The possibilities seem endless!