The Steemit Success Tips I Learnt From Jerry Banfield

This is a post created referencing Jerry Banfield's amazing discussion at the meetup at Sarasota, Florida. The main discussion was recorded on video and posted by @terrybrock. The tips offered during the discussion truly deserve an even wider audience after being posted as a video a few days ago, so that the invaluable information can be used by all Steemians.

Hence I have recreated the video discussion in text and also added some of my own words in order to give the reader the best experience and value. My sincere thanks to @jerrybanfield for all the invaluable tips and @terrybrock for bringing this to us in his video.

You can find terrybrock's post here - Steemit Secrets revealed By Jerry Banfield Sarasota Florida Steemit Meetup

Who is Jerry Banfield?

Jerry Banfield(@jerrybanfield) has millions of students and viewers on YouTube and more than 10,500 followers on Steemit. At least 1% of Earth's population(100 million people) has seen some content created by him! He is an amazing teacher who has taught hundreds of thousands of students.

He started on Steemit in May 2017, and is one of the most consistent bloggers with a high reputation(69) and a large investment in Steem. He is not only a very regular contributor with his excellent posts but is also a Witness.

You can vote for him as a Witness HERE not only because he publishes so much great content which benefits everyone, but as he says...

...it feels good to participate in the voting process and to vote for witnesses that are working for us today!

Steemit Tips Given By Jerry Banfield

Steemit Content Strategy

Create posts in such a way that they can be easily found in Google in the years to come. The biggest advantage of this strategy is that you will keep gaining followers as you keep doing that. On Steemit you can create posts that you want to create but keep in mind that someone looking for information in Google should be able to find your post easily and be able to follow you.

Google prefers long and detailed posts. If you publish YouTube videos that is also a part of Google. Post consistently and publish every day. People tend to forget you if you do not keep posting and giving value regularly.

Scheduling Posts For Consistency

If you are going to be away for a few days, you can schedule posts ahead of time with Streemian. This way you can create posts in advance and each post will be posted as per your predetermined schedule. Your followers will have something that they can read every day instead of following someone else and maybe even forget about you if you don't post for a long time.

Earning an Income Fast

For earning an income soon after you sign up and to earn consistently it is best to bring in your own audience. For example bring your spouse or a friend, contribute some Steem and ask him/her to follow you and upvote your posts. If you're starting from scratch you can easily gain traction among yourselves by upvoting each other's posts.

Investing in Steem

It is also important to have some Steem. 90% of Steemit users have no or very less Steem. Most people will take a look at how much your posts are being upvoted(and earning) and also how much is in your wallet. It is human tendency to think - "what's In It For Me"(WIIFM). So if you have some Steem then it means that when you upvote other people's posts you will be able to also give them some Steem value - the higher the better.

So, for example you decide to invest 1000 Steem. Using the upvote calculator(https://steemnow.com/upvotecalc.html) it says that one upvote will be worth 0.25 USD, which is better than a 1 cent upvote if you have a new account. With 6500 Steem Power you can have an upvote value of exactly one dollar.

Helping People

It's not about followers or money all the time. When you go after money only you may not even feel like posting anything once you have reached your goal. Say your goal is to earn fifty dollars from your posts. Once your latest post crosses the amount you're done for the time being. True you do feel euphoric but that dissipates soon after.

It's even worse when one of your posts gets upvoted to the moon. You might think it to be very good when it earns hundreds of dollars and it is - but the disadvantage is that when your next post earns only a few cents you feel crushed. This can even stop you from creating content due to the fear that the post may not earn what you might expect.

Helping people is the key, not earning a lot of money and not just getting followers. Once you start helping people, the rest will follow.

Upvotes and Voting Power

Voting power is based on the amount of Steem you have. If you vote too much your voting power goes down and the value of your upvote falls. Every day you get 20% of your voting power back. Keep your voting power between 70% and 90% and you can vote with full strength ten times a day.

It is easy to just make ten posts every day and vote all of them up. This is especially tempting if you have a high value to your voting power, say 10 SBD. So if you upvote ten posts you've made 100 SBD in a day. You tend to lose satisfaction when you keep upvoting your own posts. It is better to vote other people's posts because when you publish a post they will all vote for you. When hundreds of people upvote your post you will be the person who gains the most.

However, you can upvote your own posts too sometimes(not your comments) but don't spend all your upvoting power on your own posts and comments.

Making Comments

Many people upvote posts but do not comment. Remember that merely upvoting and commenting does not provide any feedback to the creator of the post. The fewer followers you have the more you can spend time commenting on their posts and strengthening your relationship with them.

Resteeming Posts

Resteeming a post makes it show up on your blog page at the top position. This is a disadvantage if you create many posts regularly because as soon as you resteem something after publishing your latest blog post, the resteemed post takes the first position. If you resteem a few posts your own blog post starts going down the order on the page - those visiting your profile may miss your posts if there are too many resteemed posts.

In my opinion, resteeming is good if your own posts are far and few but you don't want to let your blog page show your inactivity - resteeming is also an activity on Steemit. You also get the opportunity to share useful content with your followers this way. On the other hand resteeming your follower's post shows your support and increases the audience for your follower.

Another disadvantage of resteeming is that if you resteem too many good authors' posts your followers may stop reading your content because they will be busy reading others' content! I think that's all the more reason that your own post must be top notch while providing high value.

You can also get high upvotes by resteeming. Anyone whose post is resteemed feels happy and if it happens to be a whale or anyone with high voting power you are sure to get a good upvote.

Getting Your Post To The Trending Page

This is a combination of how recent the post is and how much money it's earning through upvotes. Scroll down the trending page and you will see some new posts that may not have the highest payout value, along with posts that have been around for some hours but have a high payout. The best thing to do for trending your post is to provide something helpful and trust that people especially your followers will vote for it.

The key to trending is the number of followers you have. Bring in followers from wherever you have been active like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or any other social platform where you have a following. When your followers on other platforms join Steemit and start following you, their feed will consist of only your posts - until they start following others as well. The trending page is not so important if you have your own large following because they will get your post trending anyway by upvoting your post.

Making Money By Investing

It becomes easier to earn if you invest in Steem Power. Firstly, people get attracted to you due to the power to upvote with a higher amount. A high investment also shows your commitment to Steemit for the long term.

A thousand dollars can be considered a good investment. If you haven't invested anything at all then some people may judge you by that. Investing a thousand dollars will make you one of the bigger investors on Steemit since over 99% do not have so much money invested into Steem. If you are unable to invest such an amount at one time, you can start investing smaller amounts every week or month.

Steem is poised for mass market adoption because there is a reason to invest - Steemit. Bitcoin may not be preferred by everyone and is only used for payments. Most people still like to pay by cash or credit card. You could keep that in mind while investing.

Creating Content

Helping people by solving their problems is the best way to create content. If you have faced a problem and are able to solve it, make a step-by-step guide on how you went about it and create a post with the content.

Write for people who search for information and your post will automatically rank high on Google. It is the same with videos - if you make a how-to video and publish it on YouTube, when people search for that information they will see your video ranking at the top. Steemit is a high ranking site on its own and when you publish on Steemit your posts will also rank high in the search engines if you publish contant that people are searching for.

Steemit Addiction

You may tend to spend all your time on Steemit but be sure to take a break and spend time with your family. Don't spend all your time on Steemit just because you feel that you might be late in responding to a comment. Come back refreshed later, after a break and produce even better content.

Google and Facebook Traffic

Don't depend on traffic from Google and Facebooks since this could stop in the future. Build your own following so that if such a thing happens you are not affected.

Conclusion

These are the best Steemit tips that you can get anywhere on the internet. Jerry has offered them after his own successful experience on Steemit. If you take action on even a few of them you can be sure to become very successful on Steemit be an integral part of the community.

If you find it useful please upvote and resteem it so that it can reach more people. Also, follow me by clicking
HERE for more interesting content.

Please let me know in the comments if you have good content published recently(no memes/images/copied content). If you have anything to add or any questions please comment below.

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