I Just Can't
I can not continue with all this positivity. When I first joined Steem, I poked around the platform to see how things were done here. What I found amazed me. There were all these happy people, and they were getting paid. It was enough to send a diabetic to sugar shock.
I followed the common advice about how to become successful on Steem. I whored myself out in the comments on posts I didn't care about. I began autovoting millionaires because they promised me a few dollars a day in upvotes if I did. I was successful at these things, but it felt hollow.
I was just lying to myself. I am not a happy person. Engaging in all this false positivity and circle jerking made me sick. It led to my pretty much dropping off Steem. I have been slowly coming back, but only after a realization. I have to do this my way. I won't engage in the circle jerk any more. I honestly am not feeling positively about this platform. While I am happy to get paid for writing here and I don't begrudge anyone else for the methods they use to get ahead, I won't be going that route myself.
Just Business Nibba
Steem is not a "great community" or "a fun hobby" for me. It is a business or part of one. This is the social media face of WDW inc. That is all. And since it is a business, my concern is the bottom line.
Since I am not concerned with the circle jerk that is so common on Steem one would think that my bottom line would be damaged, but it hasn't been. Even when I wasn't actively writing on Steem I made enough money to pay for the delegations that I lease. I average around .200 sbd a day just from selling my votes. That is more than most people make for their efforts here.
Just to be clear, I will say it again: I made more doing nothing than most of you made grinding your ass off. I didn't have to sell my soul. I didn't have to kiss any ass. I didn't have to autovote any whales. I didn't sacrifice my self respect at all. I just sold my votes.
In case you didn't know Steem is a financial instrument. In the financial world and everywhere else, money talks. Nobody cares what you have to say. They want to know what you can do for them. Begin looking at Steem that way and you will do better. If you don't do better, at least you will have your self respect. If that isn't worth anything to you, just keep circle jerking.
If you like what you read here then please give it an upvote and a resteem. Follow @wdougwatson to keep up with my journey to freedom.
Until next time, Keep Steeming!
Banner by @shai-hulud
Well that's disconcerting. Not really surprising though. All platforms have their issues and people are going to talk about them, and they definitely SHOULD because we need to discuss these issues. As a Steemit user and a YouTuber, I get frustrated with those who won't discuss issues on YouTube because they think YT is great simply for allowing us to upload videos. When it comes to YouTube I've found both the people who get off the wall angry and rant but don't consider what they will do about it as they are too focused on how much they hate YouTube and the people who are up YouTube's arse are completely useless at discussing and dealing with the issues at hand when a policy comes in etc that affects us creators. There are issues on all platforms and it is better that we discuss them than not. Don't pretend to be happy with how everything is - we do need to fix issues that arise or at least find a solution that we can use to address that issue.
The question I want answered by someone who knows is if the only way up is to focus on the whales etc and get in their good books. Do you have to as you said "sell your soul, kiss ass, comment on posts you don't care about and autovote whales"?
I've got this far (level 49 and had one but only one post that made enough money to be worth pulling out which helped us financially a lot at that point) by just commenting on posts I genuinely enjoyed and not paying much attention, if any, to the level of the people who made the posts. However, I am taking a while to progress any further and some posts do okay (nothing like the other post but okay) and some get very few votes including a couple that have no votes apart from my partner. Do you think people can nowadays get to where they are doing well enough on Steemit to make an actual income from Steemit through quantity of upvotes alone or do you think people reach a point where the only way forward is through getting votes from whales and they have to change to "networking" mode and choose who they talk to and comment on the posts on based on their level and steem power instead of simply the quality of their post and if they seem like a good person? I've always had trouble (morally I guess) with networking, on or off the internet, because of how "using" it is. I will network if I need to, but choosing who to interact with based on what they can offer you, just doesn't sit well with me.
You even see articles saying stuff like "only surround yourself with successful people as it affects your success" and I can't be like "No person I can't be friends with you anymore because you're not successful". That's taking it too far as that is saying choose your friends by how successful they are, not by whether they are a good person or not.
But on Steemit, I do wonder if it reaches a point you stall and it becomes a whale chasing game or if enough upvotes of various amounts (even if mostly or all are small) can make you big enough to make a sort of regular-ish income on Steemit purely via quantity. I'd like to make a proper income on Steemit personally and quantity is the way I would prefer it to happen than just following people because of their size, but idk if that's actually possible or not. I might be chasing something that is impossible - we might all be really. The big people might already be established as the big people and it is hard to push past that and join them.
Good luck with what you are planning to do next. You've got to do what you've got to do. And all the other users need to work out what they are doing too. Strategies aren't working for the average user, so for many, if they want success they likely need to put some other kind of strategy in place. It's just hard to work out what. Good luck with what you will be doing from this point forward.
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As to the rep level thing, getting to 49 was easy for me, but after that it gets harder. This is in line with what others have said as well. Your rep will only increase significantly when others with a much higher rep upvote you. In truth though, as long as you have a decent rep like you or I, it isn't a big deal. Rep is only an issue when you get a bunch of flags and people can no longer see your posts. SP is the real indicator.
I am not against networking in general but like you, I can't do it if it feels immoral. There are legitimate communities that care about us small people. @asapers and minnowsupportproject are awesome. You can use these things to rise on here, especially if you provide value to them, and I would highly recommend it. I also recommend networking with those you genuinely like or whose work you enjoy.
As for whale hunting, I believe it is not needed. Sure you can make money doing it, but ffs we are worth more than that.
Your strategy of quantity will work. It will allow you to slowly build. As to earnings on posts, money helps. I don't recommend using bid bots because you have to figure out timing and if you get it wrong, you will lose money. They can help you make it to trending though and get you more exposure which may translate to more profits later on. I spend in general 0.1 sbd on smartmarket and 0.1 sbd on minnowbooster for paid votes from users like myself who sell votes. It is profitable every time. The most important thing to remember is that for either vote markets or bid bots, do not use them on posts older than 3 days. If you do GrumpyCat will flag you.
I will be making some posts on strategies of generating earnings on Steem that you might wanna check out. Until you reach a certain level of real SP, not leased like mine, your strategy of quantity in very important. Once you reach a certain level, you can let your money work for you. In fact, if you look at the wallets of alot of whales you will see that this is what they do. But you don't have to be a whale to use these strategies.
One thing for you in particular I would recommend since you are a youtuber, is to duplicate your content on Dtube. There is a substantial chance that you will get a lucky upvote just for doing so. Dtube and Steem in general needs users like you who generate real content rather than just posting about how awesome Steem is all the time. Nobody cares about how great a site is, they want to be entertained. We need videos like you make of the "lets play" variety on Dtube because people enjoy them. We need stories like you write on Steem for the same reason. What we don't need is more circle jerking.
Hopefully my little rant wasn't disheartening to you. It was just something I felt needed to be said. It is also part of a strategy. Once I realized that I was making money even while being inactive, I wanted to share it with others. We all want to make money, that is why we are here. If more people can do it while maintaining self respect, that is good for everyone.
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Thanks for your reply. I understand that it was something that needed to be said. Better to discuss stuff than pretend it isn't there.
I have joined the asapers discord and I have heard of minnowsupportproject but I haven't really researched them. Might have to look into it.
It's interesting to hear about the bidding bots. I have heard mixed opinions about them and once I saw a conversation going down between one person who was in the level 60's and someone else (not sure what level they were - I can't remember) and they both agreed that they don't like bots and would not upvote someone who used a bot. I don't know if they meant paid bots or if they also meant stuff like originalworks (which I think is down atm - it was at least but it may be functioning again) and since original works wasn't working for me at that point anyway, I stopped using it simply because of that, because I don't know how many other people share that sentiment. I personally see no issues with something like original works as it is free and only upvotes people making original content, but idk if others see it that way. I'll have to have a look at the ones you mentioned too, as well as I guess check if originalworks is up and running again (I didn't know it was down when it first went down and was wondering why it was ignoring me). I know there's an Australian one too that upvotes Australians (they named it after the department responsible for welfare here) but I can't remember what the requirements were to use that other than being Australian.
I did try Dtube and I have uploaded some videos there, but I have just had so many issues with Dtube both as a viewer and a creator. As a viewer, it takes forever to load the video and it just buffers forever more often than not, and as a creator, I'd upload a video onto YouTube, Dailymotion and Dtube overnight (Australian internet isn't the worst out there but it's far from the best so overnight is the best option) and the YouTube and Dailymotion videos would upload, bu the Dtube upload would shit itself and not upload, unfortunately more often than not and eventually I gave up on Dtube. I have really wanted to use Dtube but I am having so many issues with it. I did notice today though that you can upload videos to Dlive (I thought it was only streaming) and Dlive videos and past streams do play lots better for me than Dtube videos so I'm thinking maybe it is possible I would have less upload issues with Dlive than Dtube. It's not a given but maybe Dlive will work where Dtube hasn't been working for me. I'm not sure. Videos on there certainly play better for me at least.
Thanks for your advice and I will check out those posts on strategies you said you will be making. That sounds quite helpful.
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Hi, I just followed and upvoted you :-)
Follow back and we can help each other succeed! @hatu
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No, we can't. Stop spamming dude. If you do this on the wrong post someone will nuke your account.
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That plus curation equals a couple of Steem per week.
If (and it’s a big if) SMT’s take off, a couple of Steem a week could be a significant chunk of change.
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I wish I found you earlier my friend @wdougwatson, I would love to see you soon
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