Just Keep Swimming...Starting to see Real Growth!
| Just 12 days ago we posted that we had reached minnow status. At that point we had just broke 500sp. It took us over 8 months to reach this milestone with the growth starting to speed up as we moved towards becoming a minnow. |
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Fair warning as I've been sick with the flu this is a freewrite, so no editing after the fact. Hope it flows right as I had to come back to it 3 times to finish...just been to tired.
Here we are 12 days later with 625sp, growth of 125 SP in the past 12 days! Think about that for a minute, it took over 8 months to grow 500sp, but in 12 days we have been able to grow 125sp.
Some Thoughts on Growth
Since we tend to focus a lot of our efforts on helping smaller steemians we see so many people come and go. Some curators in the Pay If Forward Family get discouraged when they look back and notice a large amount of the people they featured have left Steemit. I try to remind people that we will never be able to help keep everyone on Steemit and that never should be our goal. The only thing we can do is give a little extra exposure, offer to have people join our community which would help their long term growth, and hopefully give some tips that will help people over time. Past that it's up to each individual to put in the effort to grow their accounts.
It takes time and effort to grow a steem account. You can grow an account from nothing to minnowhood without investing money if you are willing to put in the effort. There are other examples, but one that comes to mind instantly is @viking-ventures. She has not added any money to her account, but rather has put in the effort in terms of posting regularly, making connections, and powering up all earning since Dec 2017 until now has grown from nothing to 1,032sp. This is AMAZING! No cash out of pocket and has over 1000sp purely by putting in the effort. Hope @viking-ventures will comment below if she remembers how long it took to grow to minnow and then how long for the second 500sp.
So many people give up WAY to early. They might put in a couple weeks, a month, or even a couple months and not see much in the way of growth. But what they don't realize is it takes time to make connections/friendships with other steemians which will help their future growth. It takes time to figure out what communities fit your interests and then build some trust within those communities. It takes time to build up your blogging skills, learn tag usage, learn good vs bad behaviors, and so forth.
This really is no different then anything in life. The start is always the hardest and over time your cumulative actions over an extended period of time build up and you start seeing real results. Anyone who has started a new sport, a new business, learned a musical instrument, trained a dog, learned a new language, and so forth can attest that there is always a tipping point when noticeable progress really starts to happen. You look back at your early struggles and wonder "Why was it SO hard at the start".
As Dory would say, Just Keep Swimming
You need to keep swimming, Keep Posting, Keep Engaging with others, Keep finding new content producers, Keep powering up all earnings...just keep moving forward. Not saying blindly keep moving forward, but rather you have to keep moving forward towards your goals if you ever want to have success.
The nice part about the steem blockchain and steemit (and other front ends) is that you get to Earn while you Learn. There is a learning curve to all of this, but unlike so many other ways you can make a little side income with steemit you get to earn a little here and there to power up your account with while you are learning some useful skills. Over time as your account continues to grow giving you more influence/voting power your earnings will continue to grow too assuming that you are doing the basics of engaging with others and producing quality original content.
No growing an account without an upfront financial investment isn't easy, but along the way you are going to meet some great people, have some fun (and frustrations), learn about different cultures, and learn or at least improve on a few skills.
The masses are asses and they'd rather spend hundreds of hours a month on facebook earning nothing while looking at a site like Steemit saying why would I do that to earn so little. They'd rather keep making a lying scumbag who sells off your private information to the highest bidder to line his pockets more money by giving out little hearts to their friends dinner photos then have to potentially engage in real conversations about real topics. They'd rather play mindless games that don't reward you vs mindless games that do ( Becoming a Drug Kingpin, they'd rather complain about their financial position in life then actually put in the effort to change it. Don't be part of the masses, Steem On and Just Keep Swimming!
Thanks for tagging me. I feel quite proud of what I've been able to do by work and networking - the "social" part of this media!
I became a Minnow in August 2018 - having joined in December 2017 - so about 8 months. I only crept above 1000 SP last week, so just over 6 months for the second 500 SP. (And yes, still having only invested time, no currency of any kind - just what has been earned on Steem.)
It gets easier as you go, so definitely, people, keep working at it - keep steeming. Don't give up just because Steem crashes or another platform looks more lucrative.
BTW, the only reason I was able to start off so well on Whaleshares was because of my networking here on Steem. It's all connected.
In case anyone doesn't know..... she's a posting feind 😝. That and engagement are the 'secret' You have to work. If you review her postings, you will see how much she works.
We both started right about the same time. My activity slowed down around July last year and things picked up I was producing more articles and comment and talking to loads of people. I saw the change I'd have to go back and look on Redfish League I was in the top 25% in growth for a fair amount of time. Then I hit and ever bigger slow down. I was meeting my obligations but that was it.
So in comparison, be consistently active. Engage and talk to people. I may not have hit minnow yet, but it is my own doing. When I met my first goal which was to make enough to cover the initial starting 15SP and having my account be my own earnings was a great feeling.
It's awesome that @pifc is growing the way we are. I am immensely proud to be part of @pifc and to have friends like @viking-ventures and sooo many others that I have met through this group alone. Almost at the 1 year mark. I am looking forward to see what the future holds.
Awww, you're so sweet!
I have dropped the ball a little this week - haven't been feeling too well and we have another deadline within the household as well, but I hope to hit my writing goal today (I share between 8 and 9k words every week, so that much must be written...)
But yes. engagement really is key. And for that, the best thing to add is Discord. Okay, I keep getting too many servers over there - but there are many nice people - like @tryskele - who are happy to chat.
Awesome example and cool story!
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Amazing growth for an amazing person. Sure your next 500sp will come even faster then your second.
Encouraging progress as I have seen thay momentum builds and the amount of SP accelerates after relationships are built and communities come together for support. This is a great project which gives more than it receives and that is the key here currently as the ecosystem matures.
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Good work on this account. Cool to see accounts growing and getting big. We need more of this. Most of my account has come from investing. I feel like investing has help me help other grow their accounts though as well.
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Congrats on the growth. I hope everyone who is new (or maybe not so new but discouraged) understand this could be you. Or viking-ventures. Wow, what a story there, all with no out of pocket investment.
I invested some myself, as I was impatient and could see the math despite the slow start. In my first six months here, I was at 255.807 Steem and I had bought 153.561 of that. Six months later, I had bought a little more for my total Steem bought being 288.611. The amazing part is my Steem power had grown to an amazing 1,467.114. In the month since then I have had a phenomenal growth of 290 more Steem power.
I would urge all of you new to this to invest if you can. The stronger your SP, the quicker your growth. But if you can't and take the road that viking-ventures has, remember. IT IS DOABLE. I don't want to hijack the post with fancy math here (plus, it will be future post for me) but compounding interest, compounding stake weighted voting curation rewards, building solid relationships with the right people, it accelerates quicker than you can imagine at the beginning when everything seems to grow so slowly.
Hope you get over the flu quickly. I look forward to reading your Dolphin post in the future. :)
It's hard for people to understand the math of it until you start to experience it. But the compounding effect is real and there aren't many places in the world that the average person can really experience the single most powerful wealth building tool which is compounding interest. It's used against the average person day in and day out with credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and student loans. But most don't see the positive effects of what compound interest can do when put to work for them instead of the effects of it when it's used against them.
I might be one of the few people that live where I do who doesn't have an auto loan or a single credit card I watch neighbors struggle with money yet they earn twice what our household does. Why? Simple they "buy" a new car every couple years, upgrade their cell phones yearly to the newest and greatest on a payment plan naturally, and buy all sorts of other things they don't need to keep up appearances. They break out their credit card for every purchase and don't ever realize they are giving away their futures to the bank.
Anyways clearly I have some feelings on the subject.
edit: Here is a post I wrote back in early 2018, which is also an example of how little I made back then. 12 upvotes for 74c and steem was worth a LOT more back them so that might be equal to a 7c payout now. Anyways the post was about changing my habit of buying new cars and the effect on our household. It's a good read IMO and if I reposted it today I bet it would earn no less then $3 in upvotes which would have been like a $30 post back then....shows how building relationships and putting in the work over time can pay off.
It’s rare to know people who feel the same about finances at I do. The opinion that consumer debt is bad. It’s going to ruin a lot of lives and maybe our country.
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I'm a finance person by trade. Was a CFO and took a company public before most get out of college, then moved to the investment management side and managed people's money. Stopped all of that to focus on my family while the kids are younger knowing that there is always more time to make money. Of all the people that I helped with their retirement plans and estate management planning never once did one tell me that they wished they had worked more when their kids were young. Yes more then a few said they had invested better when they were younger, but no person over 70 looked back on their life and told me they wasted their life by taking time with their kids....but plenty told me their biggest regret was not spending time with their kids.
Seriously the song "Cat's in the Cradle" really rings true for most people as they get older. I don't want to be that person later in life.
So anyways, back to the point. Consumer debt is our Countries largest enemy. We allow the banks into every single aspect of our lives without giving a single thought. Even those who think they are being good stewards of their money still grow the banks and the ultra rich by using debit cards. Each time you swipe a debit card a bank gets paid by the merchant. That is the banks skimming away profits from those who earned it.
I absolutely HATE banks. They are a scam designed to give a false sense of security at the tax payers expense so rich people can make a lot of money with almost no real risk. Now with derivatives back in full swing banks don't even hold risk to the loans they write...all those nasty habits that cashed the last crash are in full swing again. Worse the Fed has no weapons to stimulate the economy again when the shit hits the fan this time. Their balance sheet is still massive and they can't even get interest rates to 50% of normal without already slowing the economy. reversing and going back to zero from the little they have raised isn't enough to head off any real recession. It will literally take government rebates and massive ones to jump start the economy again. But that proved to have limited effect last time as people had SO much debt most just went to paying off the banks...oh wait we are back to those greedy sob's.
It's a nasty cycle and in my family I hope it has ended with me. I'm teaching my kids about how to use debt for leverage and necessity, not for convenience or pleasure.
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!sbi status
Hi @pifc!
Did you know Steem Basic Income has a Quality Policy?