Steemit - Realistic Observations After 6 Active Months
I've been fairly active on Steemit since August 2017. I always like a good challenge and am determined to win. I'm also stubborn when competition is involved, so I put the time in and grind away.
While I can't complain with all of my SP being earned, the time-to-reward ratio is horrible. I've seen people self-upvote themselves for half or even all of my SP in one week, so it doesn't set a good example for others when meaningful rewards are hard to come by. It REALLY pisses on the wound. We've all seen absurd posts earn more than we do in a month because people tend to scratch each others' backs, or their own. We've all seen people hoard their Steem Power because ... ... ... [insert one good reason].
It's coming to a point where if it weren't for just a few active supporters I have fun interacting with, I'd earn practically nothing, even with over 850 followers. I'm almost to the point of delegating all of my SP and forgetting about the site to find something more positive to pursue. That's disheartening for me, especially when I want to believe, but the lack of distribution of rewards via active voting downstream is written all over the wall. Maybe @dan was right.
Leaders proclaim that a faster sign-up process and fork will be our saving grace, but their lack of voting and curation effort down the ladder is the true roadblock. Bot delegation rewards are too attractive, preying on the flaws in the upvote ecomony, wherein people are being conditioned to pay for exposure, and naturally for profit. Just another way to make money off of minnows!
There are far too many takers out there. Those people are selfish and lazy, yet continue to post away to continue to take without giving back. If you have time to write or vlog, you have time to vote. PERIOD.
Content is not giving back. Sharing rewards at the click of a mouse is giving back. Everyone knows this, but greed is blinding. This really needs to be balanced if this platform will live up to its hype and be what everyone wants it to be.
If I'm feeling this way after being a Steemit enthusiast for half a year, I can't even begin to imagine what newer adopters are feeling when they see the reality of the towering pyramid wall in front of them. When I first started, I was so close to buying a lot of Steem, but didn't strictly because I saw hints of what I'm writing about today. I decided to earn it to prove the principles and learn the site from the ground up. I didn't want to pay to play. I could be sitting pretty right now, but I'm at peace with it. I also couldn't justify making an investment into a system that thrives off of new adopters buying Steem, while watching whales ironically bash BitConnect.
I want to use this as an example for my post here...
I run a daily fitness challenge with 82 straight posts, accumulating 176,630 total exercise reps done by 30 Steemians. I'm proud of this accomplishment and have met plenty of great people because of it. It's also helped me gain 15 pounds of solid weight for my upcoming baseball season, which I'm thrilled for.
In terms of Steemit, I feel that this is bringing enormous value in the form of health and commitment. Every day, I spend the time working out and updating everyone's cumulative counts manually, and it's not difficult to see that effort poured out everywhere.
Sadly, over 82 straight days, the post rewards have NEVER exceeded $2.50, except maybe 5 times. Because of this, and while sexy fitness pictures and videos get much more rewards, it's hard to feel that many people here respect and appreciate true content and value. Do I need to show more skin?! Do I have to show my face to get views? Do people even read posts anymore, or just click because they like a picture and its opening sentence in their feeds?
People say consistency and quality will make you successful on Steemit. I'm losing faith in that.
While I put this physical and manual effort in to keep my accountable for my fitness goals, it's mainly because I love seeing people of all walks of life believe in the spirit of teamwork and push themselves to become better. I want to be able to reach more people because I've seen people grow and develop a newfound passion for fitness before my eyes. It's more rewarding than Steem, but it's a shame that barely anyone on Steemit seems to want to support it. Every effort to promote my initiative has been for the sake of helping people be healthier and have a sense of accomplishment. If they can get a reward for it as positive reinforcement, then that'd be icing on the cake.
I do believe that the Steemit platform and Steem blockchain will continue to grow, but as someone who doesn't like to wear horse blinders, I wanted to share my opinion on something that our ecosystem should address.
Observations:
If you don't have a whale or two consistently voting for you, your rewards will most often be relatively insignificant.
@DMania and @DTube owners understand that giving attractive rewards fuels growth and mutual prosperity. DTube has taken some authors under their wing and single-handedly made them successful. Many whales seem to forget that this is much of what Steemit it all about. If my videos would ever load to DTube, I'd focus on it instead of Steemit because the platform gives back.
You could have 100's or 1,000's of followers and your blog rewards will still be small because 90% of SP is held by 1%, and our beloved minnows simply don't have the SP to reward as much as they wish they could.
You are NOT a failure or bad at blogging if you don't get rewards. The system is not equitable right now. I suggest you align yourself with other "givers" who can help support each other and keep each other motivated.
The more I type, the more I feel like it'll be a waste of time. That's not the way Steemit should make me feel, and that's how lots of people are feeling. I've witnessed it first-hand with energetic and talented people entering and falling off my fitness challenge. It's not because they stopped working out, it's because they dropped off of Steemit.
Maybe some investors will get a reality check from the front lines and change their behavior. It costs nothing to upvote. Changing peoples' lives at the click of a mouse should be the best part of this platform, but it's hard to find.
This picture always inspires me...
Thanks for reading.
Here's the last fitness post if you're interested in joining forces: Daily Fitness Challenge
Spot on! Though hard work, consistency, and quality content is essential, its hard to keep motivation to write when you consistently get 65 cents a post. I have to say that @punchline, @trafalger and @hanshotfirst and all yall generous humor guys are the reason that I have the motivation to keep thinking of stuff to post here. If more whales were generous to more minnows it would make this a much better place. Awesome, thoughtful and amazingly true post!
Thanks man. You're young and can change your life if you hustle to earn with this platform while other people are lost in their phones.
Even at the level I'm at, I still face many of the same challenges. Many of us want to climb the ladder, and continue climbing. We hit a wall. I'll continue to chip away at it. I came this far.... It didn't happen overnight either.
Thanks for your support and feedback. While we share the same spirit, I feel that we're the type that whales need to keep the site reputable (and should more actively appreciate). We're not here for the quick buck.
Hands down, it's simply time for large SP holders to step up their game and give back. You deserve it for all of your hard work and the value you've constantly created with original material. I deserve it on my scale too.
I too agree with you, but I do understand how frustrating it can be to see day after day countless hours supporting others and barely make any money off a post. I think this is a great platform and the future, but I do feel it goes back to paying for your reputation, upvotes, and possibly friends. The rich get richer and the poor gets left out. Us minnows frantically search for an opportunity to be noticed by the BIGS at the top. One thing I cannot stand is when people upvote a crap post in which you can clearly see they did not even read the blog or watch the video. Yet the whale will at times upvote them and give them good money. I guess I am just ranting too, but I really wish us little guys could get noticed.
Hey bro definitely feel your passion and pain in this post. I remember first starting at a reputation of 25 and working my ass off to post quality post and try to engage users. I met great people around the same reputation and a few days later I finally got to 26, I was super excited. Then I noticed someone who joined around the same time and reputation level explode to a level 30. I did not understand what those people could have possibly done in a few days to make their reputation explode. I later found out they had purchased Steem to improve their reputation level. I was pretty pissed off that here I am like you busting my ass and bandwidth to get peoples attention and here someone took the easy way out and bought their reputation.
I would be sad to see you go, but I understand how difficult it can be for someone to keep updating stats and work their ass off with little rewards. I wish I could upvote you and actually give you money, but my vote is not even worth .01 yet. Although, I am guilty for buying into this notion of buying Steem to give me more SP, I just was tired of not getting anyone to notice my post and like you busting my ass off in the fitness community.
You are a great inspiration and a leader who motivates many people to keep working at their fitness goals. Hope you finally get that whale or dolphin to support you and your efforts with our fitness community.
100% agree. You not only elucidated my ideas but also, so many others. In reading the comments here and in other blogs, so many agree with you. It is good to bring these points out. Now we need some constructive ideas.....how to make the change? How to make it better?
Recently I wrote a reply to an @adsactly blog post regarding a similar situation and suggested that the original developers of Steemit make some changes to the code. But she said he (I think Ned?) won't and he controls something like 40+%.
There are some whales who do make an effort to distribute their upvotes around to a lot of people. They recognize that for Steemit to continue and to grow, they need to reward people to keep them active in Steemit.
What we can do is what you said. In our group of Fitness Challenge we support each other by upvoting others in the group. That gives both some financial reward and added motivation to continue to workout and stay healthy. @the villan posted this idea and you have been generous in upvoting the members of the group. This creates a good feeling in everyone.
Thanks for sharing your feedback here. Fortunately, we're of the mindset that if we can't beat 'em we don't have to join 'em. The playing field will level off in the long run if the platform succeeds.
I think you hit the nail on the head around the voting incentives. For the average minnow you get basically no reward for curating content and taking the time to read through others posts.
I wonder if the voting rewards were just less weighted towards the big guys that would help. That and giving a little more of the rewards to the voters (maybe 35% goes to curators?). At this point if a whale creates a post and then upvotes themselves they get 85%+ of the rewards which does not seem very sustainable.
You just typed everything I've been thinking. I started right after you in September. I haven't been as consistent as you, but I find that the content is hard to follow. Some days are good and I find awesome things to read and want to comment on. Other days It's all annoying memes on dmania that have bogged the internet down over and over again. Or everyone has their own opinion of what the crypto market is going to do. It's overwhelming and repetitive. I get frustrated when I see people commenting on a whales blog with meaningful content and there are no upvotes on any of them, but they say at the end of their blog to upvote and resteem! So crazy! I'm excited that I started your challenge. It will keep me motivated to continue blogging and hope people read it.
Thanks for your comments. To keep you on track with your motivation, please visit the fitness blog again so you can have a positive interaction with the blockchain at least a few times a week!
I am very recent to Steemit, but I have already witnessed many of the same sentiments that you point out in this post. In fact, I have said the very same thing several times over, and I’ve only been participating for a few weeks. If 1% of the users truly monopolize 90% of the power and financial holdings of Steemit, then what makes it any different than any other oligarchy? If the founding users, who became Whales back when it was easy to do were really concerned about the future of Steemit, or were the liberating, even playing field, generous, voice of equality, kind of people that they profess to be: they would push for changes that would make the entire platform more equitable for all. At any rate, I don’t see that happening any time soon, and when people like us point out the disadvantages that we see in the current system, they get defensive and the finger pointing starts. It is not an even playing field at all, especially when flagging and downvotes are only provided to those of a higher position/reputation level than you. I’ll keep plugging along with Steemit, but it really is nothing at all like I heard it was. As for you @steemmatt, keep up your great work, and keep your chin up: You are not alone in how you feel. Best Regards, @Gregcar48
Thanks a lot for taking the time to contribute with your thoughts here. You have the right character that will pay off in the long run.
It does happen here alot..even if a person works hard to make content ,work for hours , and after posting this is what s person gets ..this is really disappointing of steemit....tktally the opposite what rules steemit is based on.....secondly these bots...i dont understand if a person is cretaing a good content why does he need to use bots.....introduction of these things are totally contrasting the rules on which steemit is based on....feeling sorry for you...and to millions more..
Bots have become profit centers. The bot organizers get a % of the profit and the people who delegate or sponsor the bots with voting power make profit from the rewards pool. It's like they're printing money!
But this things really gets most of killing to the minnows.....
How much time does it take to get a good recognition here , if you are good content creator
hi sexymatty, just catching up with your post, i really like this one, but i can only give you a 90% upvote, there are many other issues that you have not address nor have you factored in with your journey in Steemit
here is just a few:
incremental improvement (I can think of half a dozen things you can do to improve the readability and promotion of the exercize challenge that has not been tried yet), you have to admit, we all could do things better
having skin in the game: a person from the 1st world country with means, should try to invest into Steem. If one was to keep saying, i have this and that crypto investment, but don't want to put any of their time and resources Pre-Steem into Steem is speaks of a lack of commitment to others who have done so, it's the 'like respect like' mindset scenario, even the Orcas and Whales here that have mined Steem have put in monies that is pre-Steem when they bought very expensive hardware to mine Steem in the early days with no guarantee of return (honestly when Steem was $0.09 someone calculated that it was cheaper to buy Steem than to buy the hardware to compete with the top 6 miners). Note: As a Steem investor, I'm an exception, not the norm to that rule. I happen to believe in inclusivity, and I consider myself reasonably open-minded, and you have to respect that other people's prerogatives is reflected in their upvotes, and like it or not it has to be respected by you as well as we all live and piss and drink from this ocean called Steem.
the great importance, and prestige and recognition that comes with experimentations - in fact one could crassly summarize proof of brain as a merely creativitiy in experimentation, how fast one experiments, how fast one is willing to make mistakes, and how fast one wants to commit, give first without knowing if they will get back....determines success.
playing safe, i think the early days of earning purely from post is over, i think we have now entered a hybrid of investment and return vehicle as well as a growing ecosystem. An investor can grow their pot at around 40% per annum, but even after 5 years, it's a stunning 200% gain without negating fees, flags, and inefficiencies, however if Steem goes from $3 to $100, that's a 30x growth, that's a 30,000% gain, all investors will need the education that some portion of the return re-invested into the ecosystem will bring significantly greater return...I'm not here to address it, just pointing out the missing 10% your post could have earned ;)
Well done....Muuaaahh!
Excellent constructive feedback here. I debated upvoting 99% because I don't know what you look like, but I went all in anyway. Thanks for taking the time to share this leveling message.
One concept you know I'm biased on is that the platform still promotes itself as a vehicle to blog for money. It is admittedly evolving into a business/banking platform, but the primary hook for adoption/social media rewards is becoming misleading. While I was sold on that initially and am too stubborn to cave on changing my belief there, it's not fair to new users who are given a bait and switch.
As for the workout posts, I didn't want to sell out by using flashy pictures (for privacy too as you can understand), or paying for visibility. I'd love to hear any ideas you have that could help it get more traction.
Thank you for your insightful post. You give voice to many of the thoughts (and some frustration) I’ve experienced since I entered the Steemit society in November 2017. I regarded Steemit to be a democratic platform with quality content and supportive members - and in addition, a place where one could earn some money from posting quality content.
I try to work seriously with the content in both my posts and comments to other’s posts. As a non-native English speaker, translation is also an issue (and time consuming). Therefore, it disappoints me to experience very little responses and up votes on my posts and comments. In addition, it’s demotivating to observe that a post with (what I regard as) poor content (and some flashy pictures) earns a huge amount of USD from votes. Authors of such posts do neither bother to reply to comments. To me it seems to be an “elite” of whales, with a lot of steem power, supporting each other and making themselves richer – but with little or none interest in supporting quality content (from minnows). I don’t like this attitude.
Please forgive me if I’m wrong. I’m still unexperienced and quite new to the society, and I hope I got this wrong. That’s why I will hang on.
I also want to point out an important reason for continuing with Steemit: the exceptions from my above description, all the good folks I have “met” posting interesting content and caring for others contributions. E.g. @steemmatt ‘s #fitnesschallenge
I know that “Rome wasn’t built on one day”. Wanting to climb the ladder one must add a dose of patience.
Thanks from @kristihh
Thanks for sharing and also for all of your translation work! You speak very well. Right now, early adopters have the leverage. In time, we may also be early adopters, but with more values and respect for the overall community than people who were fortunate enough to be here before us to shovel in Steem Power from the rewards pool, mining, or dirt cheap prices (although those that bought early did take on high risk). Just keep working on growing your follower base and fostering relationships so you develop your fans. Keep posting about your passions so posting is fun and easy for you. The people will come and then the rewards will follow.
Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. I will try to follow your advice. I still enjoy writing, reading, replying and up voting good content. Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to engage as much as I want on Steemit. The work week steals most of my time (and energy). But every time I find a moment, I really enjoy this society.