Another Dumb Story About When I Was a Minnow
I told myself I wasn't going to write about Steem today. (I lied)
After having a really enjoyable conversation with a fellow Steemian. I started reflecting on how I went about being a minnow and why I was terrible at it.
I got here August, 2016 the mood was ecstatic. Back then I could start at New and look at all of the posts in a few hours. I literally read or at least glanced at every post on SteemIt. Back then short posts were frowned upon as were most controversial subjects. There were no memes and even short or funny posts were questionable. Steemcleaners did an excellent job of keeping the site pretty sanitary. It was also boring and dry with only a handful of people who felt free to challenge ideas or say anything negative at all. The trending page posts earned $5000 or more regularly, while minnows often didn't earn a penny even with many votes.
On the other hand it was also very interesting and I learned a lot from the posts about Crypto, Freedom and of course SteemIt. We didn't have the ability to resteem, the reward pool was curved to direct the rewards towards those who received the highest weighted votes. Even back then was little manual curation as SteemVoter was already up and running. I've mentioned several times now that I made 95 posts that didn't earn a thing. (Some of them. deserved exactly that, but a lot of them were pretty good) Many more posts made a few pennies to a dollar.
We didn't have bidbots yet, and like the current minnows, we got frustrated with the voting bots, I made some snarky posts, and trolled the whales. It didn't do any good.
On a personal note: I would like to acknowledge that I think it would be smart for some of the larger stakeholders to use their stake to build the community, but it isn't a moral requirement.
While I think it would be good for the economy if we had more stakeholders curating and spreading the steem around - that wasn't happening before or after the bidbots. The rewards just went to a small group of people who mostly only upvote each other and friends and family.
I am strongly opposed to putting the curve back in the reward pool, however, if it happens I will accept it and learn how to work in the new environment.
The greatest equalizer for those who say unpopular things and those who have gone unnoticed is the bidbots.
Call me names, accuse me of being whatever, I am on the side of the platform! I believe in Steem and my actions show that whether you agree with my position or not.
I support the stakeholders in owning and using their stake even when I don't like how they use it.
I want minnows to have the ability to be seen and discovered, but I also want them to understand it isn't an easy path and it isn't likely to get easier. This isn't a free money machine.
When the promotion tab was released I had a vision of a time when money bought votes and that the highest bidder would get the votes, maybe that is where we are headed, but making up arbitrary rules about what people can do with their stake doesn't change that, it only changes how it is achieved.
I came in here trying to change this system instead of learning how it works and giving it a try.
No matter what, I don't believe that content and current fiscal policy are what brings value to Steem. Stakeholders, bring the value. If we get investors it will be because of traffic or technology, not because we have the best darn content on the Internet. There is not a shortage of great content on the Internet.
In my opinion we have the best group of new users ever and it is reflected in their content and in the comments. I am seeing the biggest jump in quality yet. Give things some time to sort out, I think we are on the right track.
To the Minnows, YOU WILL LIKELY NOT ATTRACT WHALES, build an audience.
I think right now it is very easy to get steem. You can get like 2 or more Steem in one hours worth of work here in the USA. It seems like eventually that should change though.
The current economy will change for sure and probably often. :)
I am a minnow right now, 80 days in the pond. I guess you might not be surprised that I find this whole "eco-system" a bit confusing. I appreciate your post because it speaks from a voice of experience and gives me a little more understanding that this whole thing is a work in progress and there are likely to be other changes coming.
The thing I struggle most with is feeling like no one is seeing what I'm posting. There used to be a views counter but it seems to have disappeared. If I have to guess now how many people are seeing anything I post by the up-votes and comments it's kind of depressing. I've tried using a couple of bot-services, mostly with poor results.
I know that things take time and that finding and connecting with real people of similar interests is key. I recently shifted from a focus of creating content, to searching out the content of others and trying to add to that conversation. I have had much better luck with this approach. It lets me be more proactive instead of hoping to be found. I'm still trying to generate a post of my own a day but I honestly feel like I should take my time and try to keep my expectations in check.
I really do enjoy the concept of steemit because it makes me more aware of things going on around me and whether things in my life might be of interest to others. Or the big one, am I personally or the things I think be of interest to others.
I guess I'm not speaking specifically to the point of your post except to say, "it's hard to be a minnow these days!" I will be testing the bot waters again soon. And that I'm going to keep following posts like this to learn from others. Keep an eye out for my fins, thanks.
It is difficult now and then. I couldn't debate what is harder, but I want to fully acknowledge it is difficult being a minnow. It is difficult to get visibility.
What we are talking about here that makes it hard in part is to come in and earn with little to no investment. Why should that be easy?
It takes time and effort everywhere to earn money of any kind.
I like your strategy of making comments and I followed you the other day, after I thought you made an excellent comment.
With your ability to communicate, I bet you will see your account growing quickly.
Thank you. When you say, "investment" are you just talking about time and effort or do you mean also investing more $ when getting started? BTW, I appreciate your follow and support.
Investment can be either or both time and money. But putting the time in takes time. lol.
I'm glad you are here!
I agree, but minnows see Trending and they think they will get 1000$ for first post.
P.S. Congrats for reputation 70.
Thank you for noticing 70!!! It was a long time coming.
I understand them thinking they can achieve trending levels, but I am stunned at the willingness to fuss about it, before they even understand the system.
I agree with what you say but I also think it's important for the stakeholders to realize that they need to invest in the minnows in order for the platform to take off.
I know that many large stakeholders have a tendency to upvote good full length comments at something like 1% or even $0.01 when they have a ton of available VP and SP.
This comes down to what you were talking about when you said that SP was an asset.
It's true that minnows need to build an audience, so that they too can become stakeholders.
However, we as a community need to realize that the reward pool is for rewarding good posts and comments. I don't care if you circle jerk a little bit, as long as you remember to reward good posts and comments.
I wish stakeholders would see rewarding content as a higher priority as well. :)
I just don't think that is their concern and after 2 years in, I doubt that will change. Having accepted that... I control only what I control.
Nobody is going to make it easy, I'm in anyway. Others can make their own choices.
That is another bitter pill to swallow. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, regardless of how bad it's content is.
Locally, we have started a group where we can support each other's content and meet the people who are upvoting our stuff.
Perfect! Everyone might want to consider making a little group and helping to support each other. Whales and Dolphins are in short supply!
I never thought about it like that - back in Aug 2016 I thought Steemit was very cool but it was like landing in geek world and I wanted to make geeks heads explode - I had nothing to lose and most of my posts earned less than $1.
Now I'm much more conservative and I'm not mentioning several controversial subjects as much as I would have done in 2016. For example, if I'd thought that the CIA had it's fist right up Steemit's sphincter back then I would have said so loud and clear. Now I'm just hinting at it in comments!.
My payouts have dropped from $50 ish to $5 ish this year, and part of me is saying bidbots suck, while another part is saying if I can't beat them join them.
Two things I disagree with you on - quality of new users - half of them, if not more, are fake accounts, zillions of the comments are moronic, and the quality of the good posts is similar to 2017. So no improvements there.
But if Bidbots are the only way I can get $50 for posts saying WTF? - hell you are making me consider it. It will be your fault if I turn to the dark side...
PS - this stuff is like WW3 isn't it?
https://steemit.com/transparencybot/@booster/killing-transparencybot-a-message-to-spammers-with-no-sp
Come to the darkside.. or not. :) It's your choice.
Other Interesting Thoughts..
The people who mined get to use their stake and keep it invested, but they have less control over the content.
People who are actually willing to purchase something instead of complain about earnings are getting paid, gee that sounds terrible! Who would want that!
Yes there are middle men being rewarded, but at least it isn't the old SteemGuild Crew.
I acknowledge the bots create some problems, but for now I am thankful for a new and interesting view on the Trending page each day!
You are free to disagree. It is a rock and hard place situation.
You spit pretty hard truths. I wonder how you can be so bullish about steem's future though.
Google was not the first search engine.
Facebook was not the first social media.
But what do I know.
How much money did you make on Google and Facebook? lol
Lol... Wrong analogy. Facebook vs Myspace. Steem vs eos. Not steem vs facebook. That's if you even get what this conversation is about.
lol It looks like EOS is finally launched. Yesterday is was still not up.
https://eoscountdown.com/
Maybe next week I can compare it to Steem.
And yet, people at Myspace are still making money today. :)
Half bread better than none huh. Too bad i'm a greedy bastard who wants to be where the biggest pie lives.
I love reading your post because it's worth it.
Being a baby on this platform is not easy in this era, presently if you expecting to get an Upvote from a whale then you are just deceiving yourself. I believe you need hard work, consistency, getting the right niche and a bit of luck.
Have seen people with good and quality content but the issue is once you are not into #cypto then no one wants to hear about you, dolphins are stingy with votes etc
I have being on steemit for some months now, I must testify its not easy, you post good content but hardly see an Upvote.
You almost feel discourage but I have promise myself never to give up but to walk my way to the top.
At sir @whatsup thanks for dropping this and your support so far
It isn't that we are stingy with our votes, it is that we have very few of them just like everyone else.
We need to change the expectation that the goal of steem is to get large votes, although they are nice.
A more reasonable goal for most is to build an audience and gather stake and use it to support yourself and your circle.
I agree with you that you are not stingy with yourself. I am a witness to that.
What am just trying to say is if there is anyway we can encourage babies with quality content but less than 2cent on their post.
You are trying personally I must confess
I'm not really concerned about this happening, largely because the supporters think it will kill vote-buying and the reverse is actually true. If they get close to making it happen I'll take a few days off and write a free exponential vote-buying script and offer it to all the services.
lol, that is exactly what was happening before the hardfork that allowed them to gain visibility.
Every stage of evolution has its own problems. People who complain, will always complain. Others will keep working and grow.
This ^ I need to just start ignoring it. I guess I feel some call to explain how it works and where we have been, but I should just let them learn for themselves.