A Year on Steemit — How Fast Time Flies By!

Today marks the first anniversary of the Red Dragonfly's start here on Steemit!

The whole thing snuck up on us rather suddenly — amazing to think that it has already been a year.

A Year of Progress

All in all, being on Steemit has been a positive experience. We may not have managed to achieve everything we set out to do, but we're well on our way.

We've managed to build a fairly solid "style" of art related posts, and have gained almost 1100 followers in the process! A heartfelt thank you to all of those who have followed along with our joys and hardships. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

We're particularly grateful to the @sndbox creative organization who admitted us for membership last year, at a time when things were not going too well for us.

As recent "graduates" of the Sndbox program, we highly recommend it to anyone who's seriously interested in building a long term presence, centered around a creative field!

Another high point — albeit a much smaller one — came when one of our posts last July "went viral" and made it to the now infamous "Trending" feed purely as a result of organic interaction. Being a 5-week old account with a $260 post was quite a shot in the arm!

There were Setbacks...

The year was not without it's challenges.

In October last year our little gallery suffered major flood damage as a result of a freak weather event, and we had to be closed for ten days. Then we wrestled with insurance claims for months and months, after learning that our own store insurance would NOT compensate for the damage.

Eventually, we — and our shopping arcade neighbors — ended up settling with the city's insurance provider... but not until we'd been strapped for cash for almost six months.

2018 got off to a rocky start as we found ourselves "fenced in" behind a major road construction and city infrastructure project that made it all but impossible for people to get to the gallery, or park downtown, in general. 

It's tough to stay enthusiastic with this at your front door for five months...

This project is ongoing but thankfully nearing the end, just about in time for the majority of our busy summer tourist season. I will be posting a final update on that particular "adventure" later this week. 

The project caused its problems, though... for about five months we watched our monthly sales decline 30-60%, month over month. People do NOT like to shop where there are construction barriers and dust. And no accessible sidewalks.

Going Forward

As we move into the second half of 2018 and towards a new year, we're hopeful to continue building our social media presence here on Steemit... and we want to result some of the "art support" projects we found it necessary to temporarily "mothball" for financial reasons.

We're still looking to create our first art show at the gallery featuring a Steemit artist; that's definitely still in the hopper!

We plan to bring more exposure to our existing artists through a new "Daily Art" feature, which will be partly educational, and partly an opportunity to create more visibility for the artists we represent. We're planning to develop this feature to work with one of our selling web sites, so it would also be a chance for members of the Steemit community to see and purchase new art!

And, of course, we want to continue supporting art on Steemit, through upvotes and encouragement for those who share their new work here in the community. We only have about 950SP built up, but a 12c upvote is better than nothing, right?

Thanks again to everyone who helped up make it this far!

Thank you for reading! Red Dragonfly is a proud graduate through the @sndbox creative incubator program, part of the "Cohort 1" team of May 31st, 2018. Please support Sndbox and the @sndbox-alpha curation initiative!

The Red Dragonfly is an independent alternative art gallery located in Port Townsend, WA; showcasing edgy and unique contemporary art & handmade crafts by local and worldwide artists. All images are our own, unless otherwise credited. Where applicable, artist images used with permission.