How Much Value Have You Brought to the Table? What’s Your Steem Effort?

in #rewards6 years ago (edited)

One of the things encountered most often on Steem is that people say that they should be rewarded more for their time invested.

As if there’s many other platforms which do such.

Writing, blogging, and social media are mostly social capital to most and only a small subset of those practitioners actually manage to make a reasonable dime from their efforts. Usually those are also only those who put in hours and hours first getting to grip with the challenge and learning.

#flearn first mostly. Fail and learn.

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As far as I’m aware there’s less “write whatever and earn” platforms online than I have fingers on one hand. Personal hosted blogs not included. For most the alternative to writing on Steem, is spending their time writing for likes, [not financial] upvotes, or claps. Many would never even manage to turn it into genuine profile social capital.

Yet, I’m not here to bash or to burst bubbles. At least not 100%. ;)

So before anything, let’s not forget these two important posts:

  1. You are not entitled to an audience
  2. Your content ain’t worth **** to me

And, of course, don’t forget that if it weren’t for this platform you were now most likely tapping photos on Instagram and having your data sold. Or trying to stand out on Medium and receiving some claps. If you were really lucky, your posts in popular Facebook Groups would receive hundreds of passive aggressive comments and even more debates.

Glad we got that out of the way.

Challenge Your Own Steem Effort

With the market rates being back to where they were around last September (these are golden times!), many have dropped out already and from my feed it seems that even more feel they are underrewarded.

Rather than trying to convince you that this platform is a rather unique opportunity and that your time would most likely not be rewarded if right now you were doing something different than contributing to the Steem blockchain... I have a little exercise for you:

Dare yourself to highlight your best content and write about it.

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Imagine you were to build an own, not on Steem website, and that website is the one you want your future employer to see about you. Alternatively, imagine you were given the opportunity to pitch your best content to @curie (fictive scenario). Do you think @anomadsoul would upvote those articles? Would @blocktrades have upvoted them when they still actively curated?

Go through all your Steem writings and assess the posts. Forget about what they earned but instead assess them on content, creativity, and effort put in.

Show the World

Not one to merely ramble, I went ahead and did exactly that. Keeping in spirit with the ‘personal site’ element, I did not select any Steem related content or articles about tech news. For me those are low-hanging fruits but at the same time (for now) timely written content. While there are several of those posts I’m very happy with, no matter whether they were well rewarded, they all were ephemeral and may be totally irrelevant come September 26. Or in some years.

The content I chose was a very small number of articles posted to the Steem blockchain... probably my most eclectic content topics too. Personal attempts at creative writing mostly.

I selected only few posts, but that’s also because I tend to write more about Steem, tech, and privacy than personal writings. Yet, this is my “corpus”.

Being entirely objective, and with a background in publishing online, when I look at the Steem earnings those posts have generated I am baffled. Most went “flat” but one was curie’d and another post was resteemed by @ocd. On a personal blog, those posts would for most have made... noppes, nada, zilch.

Zero.

Yet, some Steemians would think I was unlucky. Unlucky because I was curie’d when Steem was $0.88 and SBD $1. No $400-$600 payouts for me.

I have earned more on Steem than those posts generated combined, yet I can say that when it comes to #mysteemeffort these are the evergreens which were massively overrewarded. That’s right... overrewarded.

Even when some made only $2.50 or $3.50 they still made more than they would have anywhere else.

Ask yourself now: “How does #mysteemeffort look?”

Sort:  

Over the last few months I have been throwing in a lot of steem because, that is where I think there is some value, not just for me but my audience. It isn't the type of stuff that shills too much nor, is for the technical, it is so some people can see more of what goes on here and perhaps build an understanding to create their own space on the chain.

However, if someone was going to look through my content like an employer or investor, I would likely put up some of my more controversial posts that demonstrate a willingness to think where many others may not. As I see it, developing the ability to broaden thinking has value and therefore, helping people do it should have also.

I almost added a footnote saying you were excluded from it. Mostly because of consistent effort and that... errr consistency. Especially, longform consistency.

You have written a lot of philosophy gems.

Man you make me feel bad when you put up these posts as I know I'm not putting in enough to score more, but I suppose I also don't bitch about how little I'm getting because I know what my weakness is.

Use that weakness and turn it a strength, in a showcase. ;)

I selected only less than 10% of my Steem content (probably 30-50% if I wouldn’t count the Steem/tech related posts). My weakness is grammar yet it was an interesting exercise to select those posts and even not try to improve them grammatically. Because they were genuine efforts, posts I’m “proud” of.

But like you, I don’t complain about what I earn on Steem. It’s much more than such eclectic content would bring elsewhere.

Hey you can now fix any typos even past the 7 day window ;)

When condenser and busy implement it. I saw a lot of witnesses switched to 0.19.10 but I hoped the interfaces would also bring it.

This is a great initiative! I do remember some of those fkn hits.

One of these days I'll hunt mine and I think I'll probably end up embedding them on my GitHub page since it's static. Hum..

Github static pages are cool. :D

I've brought the same amount of value to the table as everyone else here: absolutely none.

I sorta disagree when you say that. But I agree, obviously.

When I disagree in your case it is because you could leverage something on a platform like Wattpad.

Caveat: when I look round at the complainers and what they probably think is the worth of the current STEEM platform, then Wattpad’s valuation even doesn’t register on that radar.

Yet, I’m still to see much content on Steem longreads.com (a pretty philanthropic venue) would pay $1-2k for.

Luckily, we can always point people at cemeteries. Those places full of people who thought they were irreplaceable.

Undervalued post right here imo. Something I have been pondering awhile about upping my game here and doing a few other things.

I often find we think alike on topics and this post gave me a mini kick in the ass.

I often find we think alike on topics...

I think that can be easily explained by being in this world since before “social media” and definitely long before the mobile generation.

We aren’t the youngest anymore.

We know “the other side” and how much effort it takes. And most importantly... we haven’t forgotten that.

I think it would actually be interesting if people like you, artists, would/could tell the community how much you made from years on say DeviantArt and then now on Steem.

Everything we do is for most first and foremost social capital. Earning from what we like doing is just a bonus. That time invested would most likely not be rewarded elsewhere either. Unless maybe by actual (physical) sales. But that again requires more effort or knowledge.

So very true. A few days ago I remembered Procreate saves each brushstroke into an mp4 format. I then used Dlive for the first time to post the video. The video was of me sketching some hands not even a “finished” piece. Without me paying for any votes etc it organically made $17 dollars. I still think holy cow I made 17 dollars from some practice sketches that 20 years ago no one would have saw and I would not have made a penny off of. This platform continues to blow my mind even after a year here.

On that note, I would love a WIP community here on STEEM. Especially in the (digital) comics niche.

Imagine such community could lead to the next Stjepan Šejić.

I shoot for engagement not Shakespear, but variety is good and I think it is fine for people to do their own thing as long as they don't complain with the audience reaction whether it is ignored or flagged or upvoted.

Engagement, tribe “building”, is the real currency. And always was.

We didn’t earn from content back when there were no CMS (or early on in that era). For most it truly was only with Blogspot that it started and they could make $1-2... per month. If those complainers would know CPM averages... they would still complain I fear.

I love me some great longreads, with an awesome narrative, but Steem still isn’t the place I visit for that content. And the sites who give me that satisfaction... they all complain about cost and revenue of such.

On a personal blog, those posts would for most have made... noppes, nada, zilch... zero.

People still do not get that there has not been a platform like this before, and how amazing it really is. The countless hours wasted on regular social media can actually be rewarded... and yet people still bicker

It truly is an amazing platform.

And more often than not those genuinely underrewarded and undervalued are the real curators/upvoters.

Contrarily to when I submit content to Steemhunt, this post has almost only real upvotes. When I hunt I have 35-50 bottom feeding faucet accounts frontrunning the Steemhunt upvote. Bottom feeders receiving more than actually appreciative readers.

As with any social endeavor, you have to make people care.

Highly rEsteemed!

Bacon Steems.png

I like this @fknmayhem :-) I don't understand most of the complaints about not getting rewarded enough... Like you said: be grateful for anything you do receive, as you would nowhere else be rewarded anything. I'm very content whit the 1 dollar rewards I get usually, even though my posts are "good enough" to have been curied multiple times and resteemed by ocd-resteem and picked up by several other curation groups. Those I see as an extra extra bonus bonus on top of an extra bonus ;-)

Great post! :-)

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