30 days of Steemit - Looking Forward

Tomorrow will be exactly one month since I joined this wonderful platform for content creation and monetization. I was skeptical at first. Who wouldn't be? I've been trying to make a living writing for about a decade now and what can I say... it has NOT been easy. Especially when I wanted to be creative and artistic, and not just a slave to corporate marketing departments. So when @simba (actually, @rainbowdash , his lovely wife) told me about a platform that pays to write - I was curious but oh-so-very skeptical.

I know very little about cryptocurrencies. My experimentation with mining bitcoin back in the day ended with a very dead Nvidia card and a rather disappointed me. But I decided to give Steemit a shot. After all, I am a content production machine. It's kinda what I do for a living. All I have to lose is whatever time I choose to invest in Steemit. Nothing more.

(Image by @mrlightning , shamelessly recycled from my 30th birthday photoshoot)

So here I am. It has been a month, and I tried my hardest to post daily (and failed on many days). I experimented at first (after posting a short introduction, of course), with various types of content, and then decided to use this platform to launch my first novel - an erotic fantasy epic - that has been waiting for me to find time to finish it. I am more than happy to say I believe I've made a VERY good decision. The latest chapter I published got a payout of a whooping $250.26. It's a personal and amazing (to me) record.

So what did I get in 30 days of steemit?

• A total of USD 223.93 real world money that I currently have in my Xapo account, waiting for a debit card to arrive via snail-mail. HT to @simba for helping me figure this all out. This money was converted from Steem Dollars I got as author rewards. I converted the Steem I got to Steem Power, because I care more about this community than I do about the cash. But more on that later.
• 147 followers - It's not a lot when you compare it to the thousands I have on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but it means more when you consider only about 3 of those people know me in real life.
• Awesome new friends - @merejj99 , @honeyscribe , @modernbukowski and @sykochica just to name a few. These are people I would not have met online if it wasn't for Steem.
• Reasons to keep writing my novel series. I've been battling Mistress of Magic: Morgan's Apprentice  for close to two years. It's all in my head, including the next 3-4 books and some short stories in the same world, but it's been hard to find incentive to write. Unpublished content doesn't pay the bills while you write it, edit it and get it published. I hoped that once I finish one book, publish it on Amazon and get some recognition, it would be easier to write the rest. With Steemit, the payouts, mentions and especially followers drive me to want to create more content and continue the story.
• Affirmation - Even with over a decade of professional writing under my belt, it's hard to find confidence when presenting what you perceive as a work of art to an audience. You never know how they'll take it. Or if you're any good at all. On Steemit, it's usually easy to tell if you're good. So far, I've been picked up numerous times by @curie and #steemprentice and my audience of followers is just growing. If this isn't the world telling me to keep writing that porn - I don't know what is.

What you may have missed

When I started out on Steemit, and was still getting my footing and following, my posts got tiny little payouts. While some were really just experiments, others are really good pieces of content I invested time and thought in, but got so little attention in nearly brought me to despair.

My best and underrated posts this month (IMHO):

•  12 Essential Tips for Moving House & Staying Sane 
•  Why polyamory makes sense in today's world 💛
•  How Steemit is Like Highschool - Musings of a freshman steemian
•  [Original Novel] Mistress of Magic: Morgan's Apprentice - Prologue
•  Fingertips (Original Poem) + An old photo of me 

So what's next?

I plan to keep posting chapters from the Mistress of Magic series as I write it. Once edited, the books will be sold on Amazon, while Steemit will continue to receive exclusive short stories and content from the book's world.

The Steem and Steem Power I earn - I plan to continue using to curate quality content. It's SO FUN to see the payout rise when I upvote. "Look, ma, I'm a dolphin!" The Steem Dollars - I plan to use on things like, well, life. That way I can invest more time in creating content I enjoy for Steemit and curating awesome content.

I'd also like to grow the Steemit community here in Israel. Not through massive evangelism, but rather through selective invitation of high-quality content producers onto the platform. Yeah, I am a snob like that.

Last words?

Not making it to Steemfest this year, which is a shame. I LOVE Amsterdam. But I hope that I'll be able to make it next year. Who knows? If a platform that generates revenue from content for content creators can sustain itself over time, maybe I'll be able to afford a trip to next year's international meetup. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be one of those faces people will recognize.

A girl can dream, right?