Growing Frustrated

ericvancewalton (76) in steemit • 8 years ago (edited)

I'd like to start by saying that I've been on Steemit now for a little over three weeks and love the concept of a free and open forum for people to share their ideas and their passions. The concept of crypto-currency is ingenious and I'm totally onboard with this concept as well. As I writer who has been in the business for over two decades it was a dream come true for me to finally find a place that pays me for what I contribute. That dream appears to have been more short-lived by the day.

What I'm growing frustrated with here is the inability to clearly understand the inconsistency I'm seeing in reader engagement. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what gets upvoted and what doesn't. It seems some people get huge upvotes for anything they write, while others get little or nothing. This is not intended to put down the talents of those getting the huge upvotes. I don't begrudge anyone for their successes, but this is beginning to appear to me as more of a popularity contest than it is a true reflection of the value and wealth of knowledge and experience people are adding to this community.

I've seen a lot of other users post similar concerns and I see people telling them to "be patient", "Steemit is still in Beta", etc. The main questions this community needs to ask itself very soon is, "In terms of content, what exactly is the true measure of value here on Steemit?" an "How do those people adding the true value get the appropriate rewards." Once these questions are accurately answered then those answers must be made as clear as possible to the Steemit community. Unless these questions are addressed soon I feel the platform will begin to lose people who share engaging and substantive content.

Maybe I've just totally missed the boat here. Maybe this isn't the platform for my style of writing but I'd be very interested to learn other's opinions!

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8 years ago by ericvancewalton (76)

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mctiller (69) · 8 years ago

I think Steemit is like any social platform. Why do certain things take off? Remember the Chewbacca Mom from few weeks ago that took over Facebook? She got on several tv shows, Khols gave her family free toys, and she got a lot of other things. But why did her video take off? I think it was like the most viewed Facebook video ever.

But she already had a large following on Facebook and that helped her. But again, did it "deserve" to be the most viewed Facebook video? Who knows? But it was.

I still think it is the same thing here on Steemit. Post regularly, build your audience, and then when some one who has a large following, i.e. a whale, upvotes you then things could change.

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3 votes

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churdtzu (68) · 8 years ago

In my experience, making good content is only half the victory. On our podcast @paradise-paradox, we've been publishing videos and audios for about 20 months, and from the beginning I thought that, if we make good content, sooner or later someone is going to notice it. That's true to an extent, but the fact is, normally if you publish something on the Internet and don't tell anybody about it, nobody is going to know about it. People will share good content if they get a chance, but you need to get the ball rolling. If you can put your headline and title image before 3000 sets of eyeballs, that's when things start to get interesting.

The other day, I heard @andrarchy say something like: Whenever I publish something, I want to show it to whomever might possibly be interested in it. Now, that's the attitude of a true hustler, and you can see that his results reflect that. Of course, he's not sharing trash either; he's sharing well-thought-out content which people want to see.

Get on the rocket.chat #postpromotion channel if you're not already. Join the 5 or 6 Facebook groups that exist for sharing Steemit content. Join writing groups on Facebook, or any other groups related to your niche. Submit your content to Reddit, Digg, Google, Bing. Most importantly, engage with people on those media where you can. From your perspective, it seems like a popularity contest. From others' perspective, they have asked for the support of their friends. People are rarely popular by accident; normally, it's because they've put in the effort to make connections with people.

The other tip I can give you is, you already have some content on here which is quite successful. I can see you've earned a few hundred dollars between two specific posts. So don't be so quick to say that the dream is short-lived when you've already achieved so much on here. Making $500 as a writer is nothing to sneeze at. By many measures, that's a lot of money. I wrote a blog for years and didn't make that much; I'm sure you've had similar experiences. Celebrate your victories, and analyse your victories.

I hope that gives you a few things to think about, and a few action points. Good luck my friend!

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5 votes

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ericvancewalton (76) · 8 years ago

Thank you for the thoughtful response @churdtzu! You give really good advice about online networking. I’m learning from guys like Ramit Sethi how vital this is to steering traffic to your content. I’ve been managing my social media pages for years for my writing but this platform is like a slightly altered universe in a sense. I am TOTALLY grateful for what I’ve made on here, I’ve made more in three weeks here than I did the first few months after I published my last book. It’s very difficult to make this kind of money as an author, especially in this day and age. You’ve helped a lot, thank you.