how to really make money on steem!

Ways to earn Steem
I am getting tired of reading from people that Steemit is some corrupt system that doesn't allow 99% of people to make money Because the mega whales make all the money. Sure, whales earn a lot, but does that stop you from earning? No! Inevitably when I read this and check these people's blogs it's full of plagiarism and 15 word posts. Guys! STEEMIT IS A MERITOCRACY! The amount you earn is directly proportional to the quality of your content and your readers. (Notice I said readers and not followers, I will explain further down why). Now to be fully transparent I did buy Steempower, but I was earning Steem before that and I've been earning Steem after that.

I thought I would do a list of good things you can do to improve your earnings in Steemit:

Get as much Steempower as you can.
Since Steempower is the backbone of the platform, you should do everything you can to get as much Steempower as possible. 100% Steempower your posts, buy Steem on the exchanges, invest real money into Steem etc... if you can't afford to buy steem and/or you don't have any crypto holdings that's fine, there are plenty of places online where you can do odd-jobs for crypto. Anything from software programming to translating to proof reading to making banners. If this is off the cards for you too, that's fine, you don't need Steempower to start getting some success in Steemit.

Quality posts
I must admit, there are some types of posts that really annoy me and I know I'm not alone here. These are the posts that are guaranteed not to do well:

Plagiarism
Guys, writing a post isn't hard! There is no excuse for ripping off somebody else's work. If you want to write a rebuttal or comments to somebody's work, that is a different story, however simply copy and pasting an article you read somewhere is unacceptable and the Steemit community really should start downvoting plagerists. As a side note, just because you give a link to the original source, does not mean you are off the hook in my opinion. If a post isn't at very least 50% your own work you should not expect a reward.

Video Only
I might be alone with this one, but a post without a single word written and a link to a video is something I find irritating. Look at the more popular Youtubers that post to steemit, they at least write a summery or comment on the subject of the video.

The tantrum
I've seen this one a couple of times: people getting annoyed and posting a blog about how they are going to quit if they don't get X amount for the post. Guys... life is hard, you have to try hard for a long time to get lasting success! Throwing your toys out of the pram doesn't help you (it actually makes you look rather childish and stupid) and it doesn't get you the rewards you wanted.

Incorrect tags
I get that in some cases it's hard to narrow down the subject of your post and it's never black and white. however a picture of a grumpy cat doesn't need the "cryptocurrency" and "bitcoin" tag does it.

What IS objectively a good post?
Well if you look at all the most successful posts in your feed, you might see a trend. Most likely the higher paid posts have original and well thought out content, are longer, have pictures, are well formatted and don't have spelling errors.

Commenting
If you plan to make a few extra dollars a day, interact with the community and comment on other people's content. Meaningful comments are most likely to get upvotes. Simply saying "upvoted" or "good post" is not going to get you very far. Funny or informative comments are the most popular and upvoted comments so make sure if you are going to comment that you actually have something to say.

Follow for follow
Guys this gets you nowhere. Begging for upvotes and follows wastes your time and gets you nowhere. You can have 25,000 followers but if they are all there because of your follow for follow system you can almost guarantee almost non of them are interested in your posts and won't upvote them. Don't waste your time begging for follows and upvotes and use that time to write the best post you can! You might end up getting more interactive followers. This is the differentiation between readers and followers I made above.

Curation rewards
Possibly the most overlooked aspect to earning money on steemit. There are plenty of great ways to figure out how to earn more with curation from using Steem upvoter to making your own upvote bot. There was a great post I read the other day by @Inertia on a bot that detects posts that are about to get a vote from randowhale, booster or whaleshares and upvotes the post just before. This allows you to earn some pretty good curation rewards. Read more about this in the post by here and give some support.

Post promotion
If you have spent an hour or more writing up a good post, don't just leave it there doing nothing! Promote it! There many ways to promote a post, you can use the promotion tab here on steemit, you can also let people know on Facebook/twitter/instagram/discord/steemit chat and other places that you have posted a new post.

Final notes
Steemit is about having fun and earning while you do. Making friends and having a laugh is part of the journey. If you are only here for the money or you are not enjoying it, just power down your account and leave! There are plenty of places you can go to make more money in the crypto space, it's not like this is the only place to earn. If you aren't happy here find a place you ARE happy and work at that.

Any comments are welcome and I look forward to them. Just to be clear, this post is my attempt to do my bit towards improving Steemit and it's community, I'm not trying to put people down, I want Steemit to be as good as it can be and carry on getting better and better! Credit to @gridcoinman for the image used!
Full Steem