Getting a little Discouraged (Putting in a Lot of work and Getting Little to no results)

in steemit •  8 years ago 

Hello Steemians, it has been three days for me now and I have poured my heart into my work on here, but for some reason I am not getting much notice. Besides this bot thingy, which upvotes my posts so much I can not figure out who is real and who is a bot account. I'm not trying to be a downer, as everyone has been real nice to me fro the start, but I am losing my motivation. I have posted some Articles on here, that to me are phenomenal and they are going un- noticed. These are not One liner Articles either, they are long informative posts, that I thought would help people, but in turn seems to be making me look dumb. Please look below at my Articles and tell me why you think I am not getting much notice.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alwaysfelicia/how-sexy-is-your-brain

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alwaysfelicia/how-to-tell-if-someone-is-being-genuine-or-fake-my-thoughts-anyway

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alwaysfelicia/guide-to-finding-inspiration-in-everyday-life-great-content-everywhere-you-look

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alwaysfelicia/ground-zero-steemit-through-the-eye-s-of-a-newbie

https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@alwaysfelicia/heard-about-steemit-and-wanted-to-give-it-a-try

Here are just a few and each of these took me a long time to compose, if you guys can look at them or even glance and tell me if I am doing something wrong.

Thanks for Looking :(

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Please take this as constructive criticism and not slander but I personally didn't find your posts to be all that great.

I can tell you I had a similar feeling - put my heart and sole into my first few posts - I tried REALLY hard to make the awesome. Good content, good photos, I proof read them 15 times to make sure there no were mistakes and then I'd get $0.05. Couldn't understand what was going on.

So I did the typical new user thing and blamed the stupid website. Surely it couldn't be my content - that was not the issue. It probably has more to do with the bots, or keywords, or just getting on a whale's watch list - but how the hell do I do that?

No... it was the content. Dunning-Kruger effect is catching up to a lot of us here who think we are writing better content than we really are. Steemit.com provides the purest form of free market valuation. It's not a matter of time = money or effort = money but rather value = money. If you aren't receiving the $ amount you think your content is worth, you simply aren't providing enough value.

I only read your first post on the subject of "how sexy is your brain". Now again, please take this as constructive criticism and not me trying to put you down. I got about 1/3 of the way through the piece and really didn't understand where you were going with it. I was slightly confused and at about 1/2 of the way was like "meh, I've had enough" and just closed the page. And again, this same thing has been true with my content - so I've been there.

So I've really been working the last few days on figuring out how to ADD VALUE through my content because that is really what this website is all about. Perhaps this helps, maybe not. But just my $0.02 on the subject.

  • Cheers!

I had the same general response to "How sexy is your brain." What keeps me reading is new information or new ideas, and I didn't really get either of those in that post. I'm also finding them a bit difficult to understand; the sentences just don't make sense. Take this sentence from "How to tell":

They're every one of the an element of how we see each other through our own subjective lenses.

What does this mean? It's not grammatically correct. It's not immediately obvious what you're trying to say. I can figure it out, but that's work, and I find myself having to do that work on most sentences in your post.

Now maybe if I knew you personally, and I had some independent reason to value your thoughts and analyses, I'd be more willing to put that work in, but this is a social news site. There are plenty of other posts which are easier to parse, and I have no reason to assume yours is worth the added effort.

As with @dogguy, this isn't a put-down; I'm giving you my honest feedback.

You should take a break. Write max 4 every 24 hours, else you won't receive 100% earnings and editing posts counts as a new post!
Secondly try to stylize your posts. I looked through your posts. They are all normal text + 1 picture. Use headlines and italics. Quotes. Maybe more pictures.
Third, 99% of post don't earn anything here. People simply lack the votingpower and the stream of new posts each second is too big. We can only climpse a small fraction of posts each day.
Fourth, whales are usually the developers - they are techsawwy or look for posts which promote steem(or just upvote friends).

Don't write for money, write for yourself. Keep going.
It's easier to earn money if you just comment on new posts at the beginning. Maybe take part in competitions. If you find a post which is new and already has a big payout, try to engage the author. There might be the chance that a whale notices you and your comment gets a few hundred $.

Have a good day!

WTF? Editing a post counts as a new post?

No, this is not true.

You are allowed to edit your post before the payout takes place (i.e. until 12h after creation) and editing does NOT affect the payout.

From what I know, yes.
So make that first as good as possible. Always upload pictures to separate sites like imgsafe.com . Don't mess with the code much. Always best to write a post with one go.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

There have been some misinformation about it - a couple of days ago some people mistakenly believed this was the case. But it's not like that. As far as I know, editing a post does NOT affect the payout.

ok

I am also getting a bit upset but then i totally agree with you. Nice point. We should write for ourselves.

Don't get discouraged, it's only been three days! If you look at successful posts, they have a lot of pictures and have headlines to separate the main ideas. You should try doing that and see if it helps. I also noticed that people who share personal stories or their hobbies get more votes. I think you should share more about yourself to draw people in.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Sounds like you are giving up too soon. Keep working on it and you will be successful.Also, Getting rich overnight is rare. I've been on for 4 days and I'm getting a lot of small change like at most a dollar, but I know I just got to keep working on it.

My sister came onto steem for the first time today and posted her first article and made 60 bucks, she did that by posting some photographs. Maybe you should try that.

Im just happy for anyone who is successful, and I am on steem because I enjoy the community, and it is a place for me to "Release Steam"

good pun :)

I like the expression you use in your last sentence, it could even be the motto of Steemit

Also try to not tag them with "steemit" cause bots with no value are spam upvoting those posts right now.

Does that hurt chances of getting more paid upvotes down the road because they jump in first or something?

No I just think most people know about the bots nowadays and automatically don't upvote content tagged with steemit cause they think the posts are related to the bots. Not saying that all are, but many were abusing the 40 bots upvoting posts by 35 cents.

Sure -thanks for the insight!

thanks for your post I will be featuring it today

Maybe steemit at this stage is not a decent place to put you efforts in.

I checked your account real quick, you should try giving commenting a try! I know they don't get rewarded as much right now but you will learn how to do it better and with time and new features it will pay off for both, I think! :)

Hmm, that's a way to go. Constructive commenting is also a very good way to get involved and thus contributing towards the growth of the community and the steemit platform.

I'm treating Steem like any other forum or group.
Just have fun, read and participate in the topics that interest you, discarting the idea that everything revolves around making money.
If your posts get you upvoted and make you money, that's fine, if not, no big deal.
Concentrate on the good content and enjoy ;)

Yes. It is a forum to share ideas and get new insights. I'm treating it that way too. In doing so if i get a little reward I'm very happy with that.

This is a Reply to all of you for reading and Voting on my post. I thank you. I have found a new light to my posts and have risen from the ashes like a phoenix. Here is a new article I just posted. check it out.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alwaysfelicia/why-steemit-will-steem-on-and-yours-will-fail-and-the-winner-is

Has some nice info in it. :)

Come on man. You have 82 votes and 707USD at the time I am writing. Keep up the good job and you'll get what you deserve

Don't give up! My twin and I are on steemit for a week now. It's fascinating to see this community interests in variety of topics and it's growing.You will find a niche.

Besides, you got my attention with the grey/white....which I haven't see a photo like that here. and the hippo :)

Keep at it! You can see how you have been recognized and revived from the dead, I'm guessing thanks to @berniesanders

It has happened with me too. Many of my posts are lost. But if you keep at it, eventually you'll be recognized and people will start seeing your previous work.

The key is not worry about how much money or upvotes you are gaining. Keep writing, keep enjoying, rewards will come.

I analyzed the most popular posts (as opposed to the most rewarded) https://steemit.com/steemit/@jl777/want-to-see-the-top-posts-in-last-24-hours-rank-calculated-by-minnow-1-dolphin-2-whale-3-megawhale-4

tl:dr is that they have a very large overlap and dolphins are the most active in absolute terms and way off the charts in relative terms. What this means is write posts that dolphins like and it is a matter of time it will be discovered by whales.

also, there is a high variance in outcomes, like a lottery in some aspects. Today I had a $6 post and a $1000+ so in some ways it is a numbers game

Sadly I'm feeling the same way, I've received plenty of votes but nothing from whales so it basically doesn't count and that right there tells you something is not right. I'm not here to promote my posts so here's a perfect example of one I voted for, it got a greasly $0.04 payout: https://steemit.com/steemit/@millen/steempages-com-a-steemit-business-and-project-directory-beta

I know life isn't fair but this is getting ridiculous, the whales really have too much power compared to the rest and if you don't get an upvote from one of them (and there are very few!) in the first 15-30 minutes your post is basically doomed to oblivion.