On 1 March I embarked on a journey of enthusiastic experimentation to see if I could truly affect my position on Steemit. Almost immediately I learned what I already knew:
There is no one-size-fits-all formula for success.
So I quickly started tweaking my goals, my KPIs, and my expectations. The simple fact is that my original plan just was not realistically advantageous for anyone. But before I go into that, let me address the question I probably should have clarified for myself before jumping head first into the fire...
WHY AM I DOING THIS?
There are some obvious reasons here:
- To make more Steem
- To increase my reputation
- To engage more with my fellow Steemians
- To establish and build my Steemit community
- To position myself to be a trendsetter as well as a creator
But I need to go deeper and be a hell of a lot more honest with myself. And that requires some much tougher and far more specific questions:
Am I being greedy?
I can honestly say no. I don’t see myself ever being a Steem tycoon. Besides, the pie model of distribution of wealth is so outdated. My getting more does not mean you getting less. Isn’t that the entire point of a decentralized currency to begin with?
Am I willing to do whatever it takes to reach my Steemit goals?
This one is rough. And the honest answer is no. I’m not. There are so many shortcuts and fast tracks that I will not use. Like bots, for instance. But it goes further. I’m also not willing to pretend to like content or people if they do not “click” for me. I’m not giving full votes or leaving sycophantic comments to strategically boost my curation rewards. And I won’t publish crap just for the sake of publishing something. I’m not by any means saying that all successful Steemians do any or all of these things. But many do.
What is it that I truly want to get from Steemit?
I want utopia. And I’m not sure if it’s possible. I may be a bit deluded. But I want a place to share my art and my stories where they will be appreciated, offer inspiration, allow me to truly connect to like-minded folks, and pay my bills. I know I’m not alone here. But I also realize that there’s a far larger percentage of people attracted to this format with the sole intention of getting rich. Quick.
Am I still enthusiastic?
Yes. And no. Depending on when you ask. Overall I still see such great promise and potential here. But I fear that it’s not an organic environment. It truly seems to have become a microcosm of the fiat currency world. And the art world. And well...the world world. On virtually every level. Which is not surprising. People are people. But I’d be lying if I said that this reality check wasn’t a bit disappointing.
So here I am. 22 days to go. What have I gained this far?
- I’ve made many new connections. And that is exciting! That part has no downside that I can see. And I’m very grateful for all of my new friends.
- I’ve started broadening my reach by entering contests.
- I may be joining one of the most respected curation groups on Steemit. It’s still in the works. Details to follow if and when appropriate.
Now to rehash my original goals:
- I will create 2 posts per day
- I will follow at least 10 new people per day
- I will do at least 25 upvotes per day
- I will comment on at least 12 unique posts per day (other than my own)
- I will resteem 1 amazing post per day
- I will enter at least one contest per day
- I will run a couple of contests, funds permitting
- I will reach 1,000 followers by the end of March - nearly doubly what I have now
- I will reach 2,000 posts - again, nearly doubling the current count
- I will increase the accounts I follow to at least 500
- I will pay my rent with SBD
Really audacious! Right?
Well a lot of this is not truly in line with what I actually want to accomplish. And some of it is simply beyond my control.
Does this mean I’m no longer going to be audacious? Hell no! But it does mean I will not tie myself to these metrics, attempting to meet them at any cost, sanity and well-being be damned.
I will soldier on, completing what I set out to do, using my true goals as my guides. And when they align with the metrics I set, awesome! When they don’t, I will not beat the crap out of myself.
What’s my ultimate takeaway from all of this?
I gotta do me!
Thank you guys for coming along for the ride!
See my previous Audacious March posts here:
Day 4 Roundup
Day 3 Roundup
Day 2 Roundup
Day 1 Roundup
My Game-plan
There are still a variety of curation groups; make a list of them all and see whether any fit your writing - or change your writing to fit them.
Resteemed and upvoted by the MAP-AAKOM community.
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Thanks. Of course I’m not strictly a writer but I get your point. I had the good fortune of being curated very early on by some of the best. It was a huge boost and I absolutely appreciated it. But I want to ask you a tough question because I’m not sure I’ve fully wrapped my mind around this yet:
Do you see this type of curation as being truly helpful in any sustainable way?
What I’ve experienced is that there are a number of accounts which essential swoop in and vote for posts that are curated by the big boys. I’m sure some are bots. But even those that aren’t...for the most part I don’t get the sense that they are reading the content. Or forming connections. In fact, after eight months of being here, I still need the boost of one of these groups to create substantial activity on one of my posts.
I’m not complaining here. I’m truly trying to understand. And learn. Clearly I’m not doing something right. I know it’s not my content. Or my stellar personality 😉
Perhaps it’s what @nikv said...there’s a lack of cohesive community.
You’ve been at this for awhile yourself. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Interesting. My view is that Steemit is not functioning as a "complete" social media site insofar as a lot of the community-building and connection-forming dialogues take place off-blockchain on the chat channels. So that the upvotes one sees on Steemit are often the result of such off-site connections rather than rewards purely based on content. (The bidbots are now another source of upvotes but irrelevant to community-building as such.)
I've only recently posted this question on chainbb highlighting that their platform fee has dropped to 5%. That is an opportunity for communities to be built within the blockchain and gain rewards for dialogue and interaction, not just posting full articles.
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As to sustainability, every curation group or community is limited by the mathematical certainty that their voting power will drop! Therefore choices need to be made and support "rationed" by some criteria. The assumption by many has been that good content creators will eventually have a following large enough to sustain them without further "big upvotes"; this has generally proved to be untrue as the stream of posts is unmanageable. Ironically, the most helpful way to help humans-support-humans is to use some auto-voter to upvote your favourite authors! This includes upvoting the communities too as most rely on some delegated SP that can vanish in a click.
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This makes me sad. I’ve been in the arts and entertainment world for quite awhile. And I simply refuse to participate in “pay-to-play” on any level. People have encouraged me to do so - and to join the power voter groups with fees - with the argument that the fees are negligible. And I agree that they are. But that’s how it starts. Small fees in exchange for big value. And then before you know it, we have a ‘vanity publishing’ culture where everyone has been slowly conditioned to pay substantially for nothing but the illusion success.
I absolutely support folks like you and @curie who are truly attempting to improve the quality of content and community. And of course you need support. But you guys understand that part of the deal is to generate that with your process and build it into your model.
As far as I’m concerned, expecting creators to pay with more than their blood, sweat, and tears is a deal breaker.
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The real-life publishing models are relevant here. In the case of books, you will often see literary fiction making a loss that is covered by pulp fiction or textbooks, depending on the publisher, yet literary novels continue to be published because they are seen as culturally important.
At the other end, we see some glossy magazines are, maybe 90% adverts and advertorials yet retain some cultural influence.
Disturbingly, even science journals, especially those related to medicine or any mass product, are now pay-to-play as the fabrication of a consensus is vital to profits.
Having devalued truth to the level of a profitable advertorial will devalue all other values.
I started the MAP Rewarder precisely to overcome this dilemma of balancing quality and rewards - we shall see if it is successful!
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Thanks for your thoughtful responses. As I told you earlier, I want to get more involved with MAP and be an active member of your community. I see your vision and support it.
I am already pretty committed to my March madness...expect more from me in April.
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One problem with trying to pay your rent with cryptos is the sheer volatility of it all. I think that's only vaguely possible in a country like mine, where the local currency is over 10:1 USD.
But keep making friends and connections and enjoying yourself. There are high hopes for the communities model that is coming because it is understood that the current model is completely broken. It does take time to tweak things to a point where the developers are ready to roll them.
Sadly, the current Steemit financial model is a picture of human nature. Not pretty.
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@nikv, “Paying my rent” is somewhat of a metaphor. Except that it’s not for me at the moment. And I’m sure that’s part of the problem. I’m not greedy, but as a freelance writer and artist, I’m pretty needy for income.
I can spend hours writing and creating content for the likes of upwork or fiverr, which is drivel and a compromise for me and of course I don’t own it and it pays crap. Or I can come here, spend the time, create what I want, own it, and ostensibly be rewarded in exchange by the generation of crypto and some good friendships. Only it’s not like that so far for me. Not on a workable scale anyhow.
Maybe I’m being too impatient. I’m not sure. I see people making $50, $200, even $1,000 SBD per post, regardless of the quality or the content and it makes me want to bang my head. Especially when they’re newer here than I am. Not because I begrudge them the ablility to generate that but because I can’t seem to figure it out.
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Don't you think that any financial model will be dominated by greed as long as there are humans involved? :)
Could you elaborate more on the upcoming communities? I keep hearing about them but I still don't have a clear idea how they will function and what they will change.
That's probably the best advice, Lisa :) it's all about connections
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Dan, I agree that it’s great advice. And I also want to hear more about these communities. I’m trying really hard not to become skeptical here. The idea of Steemit is just so perfect for peopkevlije us.
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Right now, it is impossible to make any money unless you either are a whale yourself or know a whale, so posts making large amounts are either getting upvotes from whales, or paying bidbots for those upvotes. This is the result of stake-based voting, meaning, the more Steem you have, the more your vote is worth. I don't know exactly how it will be changed, but that it is going to change. I am repeating hearsay, but it is well-connected hearsay.
This is the form that communities are being envisaged at this stage https://github.com/steemit/hivemind/blob/master/docs/communities.md
As a freelancer my entire life, I totally understand where you are coming from
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This makes me want to work at Sbux 🙁
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"Left to the free market to decide" doesn't produce anything other than portraits of human greed :(
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Greetings @outrayjust! Your post was chosen at random and was resteemed as part of Shareables' campaign. Enjoy your free resteem!
@Shareables, we resteem anything we find shareable. That means good quality content. Go on express and harness your blogging potential!
God bless from us @Shareables!
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Technically your mission or aim pertain with many steemit users even me personally and it's OK
I think I will have to follow all your posts to get upvotes
😁 😁 😁
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If you’re in it for the upvotes, that’s kind of exactly the opposite of what I’m talking about. And if you want upvotes, the smart way to go about it is to create and upvote quality content that speaks to you...not to ask for upvotes.
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@outrayjust - I love the clarity and readiness for the the task at hand. I wish you all the success.
I love the following extracted from you post, I am of the same opinion.
I am also curious as to why you have set the following goal?
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Thanks, @rlt47. Following people puts them in my feed. It allows me to keep track of their work, engage, and reward them when they do great work. Right now I’m attempting to create more connection and community. I also need more followers for that...so the obvious choice is to follow people and form those things. I’ve also started unfollowing people who do not seem to click with me.
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Hi @outrayjust - thank you for your response.
Yeah, I've just purged my 'following people' too! I was also on a similar strategy to increase this section by a certain quota per day but it created the wrong pressure. Now I'm only going add people when I've developed the correct connection and that may take weeks or even months...
So, my new strategy is to keep my 'following people' small and then just manual keep tabs on it. The feed system has three problems, I find - A lot of my contacts are in different time zones so I miss there feeds any way. Secondly, if you are following any of the reblogging bots, then it trashes your feeds with lots of low quality content. Thirdly, I find I waste a lot of time scanning the feed for posts of those that I'm following (it' a 24 hour job, lol) - instead I systematically work through my short list over a week.
I skip right over the feed and find fresh content and people to follow in hot and trending sections.
You are welcome to check out the blog of @ainie.kashif, she runs a 'topic of the week' in a post called 'hello! hello! group' where we discuss topics to educate ourselves and newbies. It's a fun and supportive environment. We are trying to establish an online community.
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