Hey crew - I have nothing but good news to share with you today.

This book is part of the Musician's Guide Project:

and in this post, before sharing the second draft of the book, I'd like to briefly focus on our biggest asset: Our PEOPLE.

The Musician's Guide Team is One of the Greatest Teams on Steem

That's right, I said it. We are taking immense pains to only bring on the best candidates for each role. From graphics to cover art to book design to research, in every case we are being patient and waiting for days or even weeks to find the right person.

As a result, our team is populated by some of the kindest and hardest working members of Steem. Steem itself is a phenomenal community so it's all the more impressive that this team stands out.

For starters, consider our proofreading team (perhaps "developmental editors" might be a fairer title in retrospect):

• @rockchickjen
• @scuzzy
• @olyup

Each person on the team gave incredible feedback which has already influenced the book. I removed one section and radically updated two others, adding more actionable information early in the book to help newbies start on the right foot.

Our all-around logistical dude, @kryptik, continues to overdeliver with excellent work on every task. He has provided excellent research and logistical assistance that is directly improving the book. If anybody is thinking about hiring a personal assistant, I urge you to reach out to kryptik. Be aware that he charges 5 Steem per hour - a bargain price that will undoubtedly rise as demand for his talents goes up.

It's been great to work with @fivefiveeleven, the designer of our logo (seen above) who is now working hard on the cover art. He's been calm and understanding in spite of my own disorganization on this subject, and we are currently working through several different concepts in search of the perfect aesthetic. With this alongside @granturismo86 digging into his role as layout designer this week, I expect the visual look of the book to come together soon.

Finally, @thegalavantgirl is beginning to edit the book today! The next time you see the book, it will be in a nearly final form, and it will be thanks to Elise's talents that it will read 10x better than it does now. I'm looking forward to this!

What's Changed in the Second Draft

We removed chapter 7, on mentorship. The early draft readers did not like this section, repeatedly citing it as the most confusing and least useful - so it's gone. The other major update is that the first part of the book - chapters 1 - 3 - is massively updated, with significant improvements to readability and a greater focus on actionable information.

If you are able to read the first few chapters of this book and let me know what you think - all feedback is greatly appreciated. I suspect the beginning of the book is MUCH better now, but I'm open to being told otherwise.

OK, that's it for the pre-roll. With no further ado, I now present the second draft of the book.

The Second Draft of "How to Get 1000 Followers on Steemit"

A Quick Note on STEEM and Steemit.com

STEEM is a blockchain. steemit.com is a website built upon the Steem blockchain.

Using steemit.com to post content is like using Gmail to send email. Just like how Gmail is built ON TOP of the email “protocol,” so too is Steemit built on top of the Steem “protocol.”

With that said, most of the time when I am talking about Steem or Steemit in this book, you can think of them interchangeably. Most importantly, all of your followers on Steemit will also be following you anywhere else on Steem’s blockchain - such as the websites busy.org, D.tube, and others.

If you want to dig into the details of blockchain technology, I recommend that you visit coindesk.com (not affiliated with us) and check out their introductory series on Bitcoin.

Introduction: Is This Book For You?

This book is for everybody on Steemit who wants to do better.

You can see the big success stories of steem - all those high earners on the front page with thousands of fans - but you aren’t sure how you can become one of them. Your audience is modest and your rewards seem stuck at a few bucks or less per post.

You work hard to create good content. You might have some friends on Steem and you may hang out in Steem Chat or Discord from time to time. Yet, you feel like you aren’t one of the “lucky ones.”

Does that sound like you? Don’t worry, as is this a normal part of the growing-up process on Steem. Most of us had to experience the dull lows of early Steemhood before we reached the kind of prosperity that you see on the front page of Steemit.com.

It turns out that growing your account on Steem is about “leveling up” over and over.

——

Level 0 (Green Slime At Start of JRPG Status):

[Green Slime Pixel Art]

The newest Steemians know nothing about this platform. As an absolute newbie, you want to learn how to navigate the site and make posts/comments/votes.

——

Level 1 (Plankton Status):

[Plankton Pixel Art]

Pretty soon you’ll be posting, commenting, resteeming, the whole works. You’ll follow some accounts and even have a few followers of your own. You have evolved from a confused newbie to a real-deal plankton. This is where the journey really starts.

——

Level 2 (Minnow Status):

[Minnow Pixel Art]

After the first few weeks or maybe months, you start to feel at home on Steem. By now you have a few hundred followers and a 2 or 3 digit SP number, happily voting other people’s content up by $0.10 at a time. This is often the first plateau where progress becomes difficult.

——

Level 3 (Dolphin Status):

[Dolphin Pixel Art]

Some people get here quickly through buying SP with cash… but for most, it’s about a year of work to reach the 1,000 follower mark and earn your first few thousand SP. If you cash out some SP to pay for things (rent, debt, music gear), you might not be a real “dolphin” - technically you need 5,000 SP to be a dolphin - but once you hit four digits of real human followers, you’re definitely a dolphin-sized influencer on the Steem blockchain.
——

Level 4 (Whale Status):

[Whale Pixel Art]

Behold the mighty whale. It wanders the earth, bestowing massive $10+ votes with its 100k+ steem power, making huge delegations, launching gigantic projects. We will hope to build relationships with a few whales in our field, as this is useful in all kinds of ways.

——

The path to 1,000 followers consists of taking the initiative to add value to the Steem blockchain. You don’t need any programming or technology skills to do this. Non-developers can contribute to Steem’s economy by creating great content and helping other users in time.

It won’t be easy. Becoming a real Steem dolphin means letting go of your minnow-like naivety and learning how to get some bigger stuff done.

To climb to higher ranks of the Steemit ladder, you’ll have to push yourself past your current comfort zone. It will require a lot of hours of work. You will need to find the bravery to try new things - even though these experiments may result in short-term failure.

Are you ready? If so, I wish you good luck. Let’s get started:

Part One: The Philosophy of Steem Success

01: The Reasons to Pursue Steem Success

With great effort comes great rewards.

You know how I was just saying that it’s going to be a big challenge to achieve dolphin status on the Steem blockchain? That first thousand followers won’t be easy - but the rewards can be huge.

Once you build up an audience of 1,000 real followers, you have enough of a platform to seriously pursue a full-time income off of the Steem blockchain. That means you’ll already be earning a part-time income of $100+ per week, and you’ll be able to start reducing your hours at other jobs to focus more fully on Steem.

Or you could simply maintain & enjoy that part-time income forever, never letting Steem impact your steady full-time employment. That’s a great outcome, especially for those who prioritize stability in their lives.

If you compare this to other platforms - YouTube, Twitch, etc - it is quite astonishing. If you have 1,000 casual fans on Twitch, which might earn you 10-25 concurrent viewers at a time, you would earn very little money from that.

On YouTube, well we’ve all heard the horror stories there. Even if you do earn money, your videos might get demonetized for ridiculous and inconsistent reasons.

Thus the fact that 1,000 followers on Steem is theoretically enough to survive off of is astounding.

This relates to the famous “1,000 true fans” theory. To briefly summarize this idea, first thought up by Kevin Kelly: If you have 1,000 true fans who each spend $100 per year on your creations, you will be earning $100k per year. This is a strategy that artists can use to build an income.

Kevin Kelly’s theory is about having true fans, people for whom you are their favorite person, the ultimate inspiration, a rock star. That’s awesome but way harder to do than what I am describing.

On Steem we can think of our followers less like “true fans” and more like “true acquaintances.” They might not be spending $100 per year on us, but if we can earn even $5 per year on average from their upvotes, then we can still build an income with their support.

Of course you want to get true fans, and that can happen in time. In fact Steem will give you a stable income that enables you to do the bigger and more difficult kind of work to get those true fans. Imagine your income was coming from Steem and you could finally take a break to start that company or write that book you’ve been thinking about. Think of your Steem audience as the first step of that process.

All of the work and occasional discomfort will be well worth it when you begin cashing in a few hundred bucks per week in Steemit rewards. Trust me :-)

One of my early draft-readers disliked this section of the book. They told me it is unreasonable to advise people that $500 per week is a good goal on Steem. I must respectfully disagree with this person’s opinion. In my personal opinion, it is highly doable to achieve an average income of $500/week within two years for anybody starting in summer 2018.

In fact this is probably the easiest it will ever be to build an income stream on Steemit. As time goes on, more and more people will become successful but the competition will increase even faster.

And for sure, you can take what I say with a grain of salt. I could be wrong. Whenever you are in doubt about any major financial or life decisions, please consult with some smart friends or family before you listen to me.

However, from this point forward, I will be speaking with total confidence as I guide you through the process of building a Steem account.

This eBook will teach you how to get your first 1,000 followers on the Steem blockchain. We’ll do so via the most popular application/website on Steem, called steemit.com. Let’s get started.

02: Your Content Creation & Marketing Strategy for Steemit

There are many ways to build an audience on the internet, and some are much more effective than others.

In this book, we will use a slow and somewhat conservative strategy. This is designed to be affordable (completely free, in fact, as long as you have a computer) and doable alongside a full time job.

You’ll need to spend about 10 hours per week working on your Steem blog. The goal is that within your first 6-12 months, you can start earning enough to reduce the hours of your other job(s). With that in mind, 10 hours per week feels like a pragmatic commitment.

Spending 10 hours a week working hard on your blog is how you gain entry to the amazing opportunities of Steem. Even with all of that work, it will still take time to start coming together.

When in doubt, remember this: The slower and more patient approach is usually the better one. After all, you have a lot of skills to learn.

Be humble and be patient. This will balance the hungry ambition of our goal: To achieve at least $500 per week in Steem income, thereby allowing you enough money to support yourself independently via Steem (assuming a healthy single person in their 20’s or 30’s - the number will be higher elsewhere, especially for those with a family. Even then, success is achievable, but more time will be needed.)

Here’s a brief list of excellent strategies for long-term Steem success:

• Post high quality content once per day
• Leave relevant comments on other users’ content
• Make friends, join a few chats on Discord, Slack, or Steem Chat
• Explore Steem: Live streaming, video, audio, memes, microblogs, longform content, and more
• Save up Steem Power over time, even if you don’t spend a penny of external money on it.

You can probably see how these strategies are so good. Posting great content, engaging with other users across multiple mediums, and saving up Steem Power are all clearly good ideas.

What is great content? We’ll go into more detail on this later, but here’s a quick overview:

• 300-500 words per post, sometimes more
• 1-2 original photos or images (but stock images can be ok in the beginning)
• High quality video or audio can be a bonus
• Great formatting - make it look good on steemit.com with headers, bold/italic, and more.
• A consistent theme - regular posts about one or two topics you specialize in.

It seems obvious when you look at this list. Why doesn’t everybody use Steem this way? The challenge comes in the patience. You will have bad days and even bad weeks, during which times you will be temped to look for shortcuts.

Indeed, putting up your third high quality 500 word post with good images can be a real bummer if you’ve only earned one dollar so far this week. Can you be humble and persevere through these low points at the beginning? If so, there can be big rewards just around the bend.

Unfortunately many people lack this patience and humility. They seek Steem “shortcuts” to get rich quick. This is a bad path to go down.

The Danger of Steem “Shortcuts”

Anything that seems to earn you a quick advantage “for free” will usually be a bad thing in the long run.

The most obvious example is spamming. You could post “Please Follow Me!” hundreds of times around steemit.com and you might get a bunch of followers in a day. However all of these followers are probably going to be other noobs who can’t upvote you in a meaningful way. You may earn a few cents per day this way, but not much more.

Meanwhile, such spam would deter powerful users from supporting you. The last thing any whale wants to do is upvote and encourage more spam.

I don’t want to waste either of our time thinking about dumb ideas for getting rich quick on Steem. Whenever you hear something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do heavy reasearch on all opportunities and avoid anything that goes against the core principles of success.

Would you enjoy it if your favorite Steem users started doing the thing you are thinking about doing? If not, be wary of it.

Using the proper tactics feels slower at first but it is actually much faster in the long run. In a few years you could be gaining hundreds of high quality followers per day - this kind of thing dwarfs any short-term gains you can get with spam.

03: How Long Does It Take to Reach 1,000 Followers on Steem?

The answer to this question is different for everybody.

It took me about 8 months to reach my first 1,000 followers and another 4 months or so to get to 2,000. It felt slow on a day-by-day basis but I was happy to cross the four-digit threshold once it happened.

I’ve seen people get to 1,000 followers within 3-4 months but that is not normal. Most people who achieve quick success have useful connections on Steem prior to joining.

Some users do not accrue followers as quickly. If you do not post at least five times per week, it is certainly possible that you won’t reach 1,000 followers in your first year. It’s possible to build your audience more slowly, although a lack of momentum can be a challenge that requires some creativity to overcome.

For the slower approach to Steem, community engagement is all the more important. You will need more “true fans” to make up for your lack of consistent posting, so be active in the chats.

Try a little bit of everything as you explore how to grow your audience. Posting more often, having better posts, or leaving more high quality comments on other peoples’ content can all help to increase your follower growth rate.

The worst thing is to get discouraged and post less often. This will only make a slow growth rate become even slower.

You will need patience to succeed on Steemit. It never happens as fast as you want, even if it happens pretty fast. If you are setting goals, give yourself at least six months to reach your first thousand followers. Remember that quality is much more important than quantity especially in the early stages of your Steem career.

Part 2: Strategies to Grow Your Steem Reputation & Followers

04: Leading Your Steem Tribe

Your true fans are the people who don’t just upvote or read your posts, but actually respond and engage with your content regularly. A true fan knows your story and knows what you’ve been up to for the last few months. They recommend you to other people and love to see new updates from your blog.

You will start to earn true fans as you develop the habit of posting great Steem content daily.

This is crucial because the ultimate goal of any content creator is to develop a stable base of true fans. As the previously mentioned “1000 true fans” philosophy from chapter 1 suggests, if you can get 1000 people to spend $100 per year on you and your content, you can earn $100,000 per year off of what you do as a creator.

When you start accruing true fans, you are becoming the leader of a tribe on Steemit. We all organize into tribes throughout our lives - as fans for bands and TV shows, as members of political groups or dietary ideologies or participants in clubs and conversations.

People naturally separate into these tribal groups of like-minded humans. On Steemit this happens when readers flock to their favorite content creators.

The newbie who first visits Steem will begin by clicking on some of the top articles on the home page. Thus the most popular users gain even more fans. As an up-and-comer you will have to fight harder to earn that kind of attention.

By the time you reach 1,000 followers, your tribe will start to feel real and tangible. You’ll have some of that momentum that makes it easier to get even more followers.

Cultivating Your Tribe

There is a lot that you can do to engage with your fans and build your tribe. The key thing is to never take any of your followers for granted.

Anybody who gives you their attention is your most important person of the moment. They are the people who make what you want to do possible. Treat them like the VIPs of your career, because they are.

How do you treat fans like VIPs?

For starters, respond to all of their comments. Leave a thoughtful response when possible, and at least a “Thank you” or a small upvote when not. By responding to comments, you give your supporters the personal attention and public recognition that they crave.

This task of being good to your fans gets harder over time. When your posts get 10+ thoughtful responses every time, and you’re spending 20+ hours a week writing, editing, posting, engaging… the whole thing becomes much more overwhelming.

This is a good problem to have - being overwhelmed by support! Enjoy the early stages of your journey when you have some time for this stuff. Eventually it will be hard to find time for all of your fans.

05: Joining Other Tribes: How to Engage With Communities on Steemit

Steemit is a large online ecosystem with about 50,000 daily active users and new people joining every day. This is a perfect time for them to join. Here’s why:

(1) Steemit is big enough that there are many community projects designed to help newer users get votes and support - from @Curie to @OCD and well beyond.

(2) It’s small enough that there is still room for new users to grow an audience. Anybody who joins Steemit in 2018 is still in the “early days” of the site if you think about it.

Unfortunately many users make a big mistake that hampers their ability to succeed on Steemit. They join the site with the goal of making money as fast as possible.

The awkward truth is that money obsession will hurt your ability to earn here. Be smart with your money, not obessesed over it - and spend most of your energy focusing on people and ideas.

If you focus on learning and engaging with other people, you will go far on Steemit. There are sub-communities for a lot of different interests - from poker to sandwiches to homesteading and much more. That’s where you can enrich your life and make new friends, both of which will lead towards greater earnings over time.

The process of meeting other people is both an art and a science. While you can’t predict the outcome of any one interaction with another person, you can use a basic method that ensures some social success.

Joining a Community on Steem

There are many communities on Steemit. Even though the official “communities” feature is not yet implemented, ambitious users have formed large organizations themed around certain goals.

Why join a community?

Being a part of a community on Steemit is the key to real success on the website. In fact I am not sure if it is possible to be truly successful on Steem without being a part of at least one sub-community within Steemit.

Taking part in a project will do so many things for you. For starters, it gives you something to actually do other than wander around hoping to get upvotes.

If you are a part of a Steem community, you’ll have some idea of how to proceed with your day-to-day Steem activities. For example by joining the open mic community you’ll now have the option of posting one or more Open Mic entries throughout each week.

Even more importantly, taking part in a community will connect you with established Steemians. As soon as you get into a Discord channel relating to Steem, you’ll be in conversations with users that have been here for months or even years.

Many of Steem’s biggest influencers hang out in the community chats and threads that take place around Steemit. That’s how they got so popular!

Here are a few of the different kinds of communities on Steemit:

Curation Groups: These are the groups, like @Curie and @OCD and @sndbox-alpha, that seek out great content each day and reward it with powerful upvotes. The biggest projects can give away $100+ in one vote, while smaller ones may offer a few bucks apiece.

Contest Groups: There are many opportunities to compete for prizes on Steemit. Steemit Open Mic is the most popular contest with hundreds of entries and five people winning big prizes each week, on top of dozens of consolation prizes and goodies. Smaller and similarly entertaining contests include the weekly Steem Sandwich Contest and the Steemit Poker League.

Interest Groups: Some communities aren’t projects - they are just tight-knit groups of users who blog about the same thing. Homesteading is one example of this - and it’s a high-earning category on Steem, including one of the most popular and high-earning Steemians: @papa-pepper.

Incubators: A Steem Incubator is a lot like a Business Incubator: It’s where promising Steemians and steem project teams go to find funding and mentorship for their work. With Steem, these incubators can offer upvotes, rather than direct funds, allowing for intriguing new models. Right now @sndbox is the only incubator I am aware of (and they funded most of this book), but more will probably pop up with time.

Start out by focusing on contest and interest groups. These are the easiest to join, with many of them encouraging new users to participate.

Here are two communities on Steemit that are particularly good to check out early in your Steem quest:

(1) Minnow Support Project

The Minnow Support Project, or MSP, is one of Steemit’s largest projects. The purpose of the MSP is to help “minnows,” aka new users, get started and find success on Steem.

MSP is an awesome resource centered around a large Discord channel full of users from all around the Steem ecosystem. You’ll encounter other newbies like yourself as well as powerful whales and Steem influencers.

By seeking out opportunities within MSP, you will start to earn upvotes and followers. For example there’s a 24/7 MSP radio station which often has 10-20 people hanging out in the chat, so that is a good place to go. The main chatroom is often the best opportunity, just waiting for conversations to happen and chiming in when you can.

You can find more information about the Minnow Support Project here.

(2) Steem Chat

Steem Chat (found at https://steem.chat) is where a lot of Steemians hang out to talk in real time throughout the day. It’s arguably the “main chat” of the Steem network.

When you first join Steem Chat you will spend most of your time in the general chatroom. This is where all users go when they first join the platform. It’s a great place to meet some new people so be sure to introduce yourself.

Over time you may discover some other good channels on Steem Chat. General chat and its offshoots (like the shapeshifting General 2.0, a rumored invite-only chat for regulars) are the most active chats, but some others can be good too.

The Steemit chat landscape changes often enough that I won’t recommend specific channels. Instead, meet people on Steemit Chat’s general channel and ask them for up-to-date recommendations.

Communities Will Take You Far

Being a member of a larger group within Steemit is the key to making a lot of friends and building up a strong “home base” to rely on. You’ll get new followers, setting yourself up for successful content as soon as you start posting original topics of your own.

Participating in a community is not a one-time activity. You will naturally find new groups to participate in, and may stop participating in old ones, as time goes on.

Keep an eye out for new groups to be a part of. Once you have a full schedule, you can scale back on this - but not until then. Finding strong communities to be a part of is one of the most important things you can do on Steemit.

06: A Deep Dive on Steem Content Creation

In this section we’ll go deeper on the ins and outs of content creation on Steem.

Here is the list of basic guidelines to follow while creating a steemit.com blog post, as previously seen in chapter 1:

• 300-500 words per post, sometimes more
• 1-2 original photos or images (but stock images can be ok in the beginning)
• High quality video or audio can be a bonus
• Great formatting - make it look good on steemit.com with headers, bold/italic, and more.
• A consistent theme - regular posts about one or two topics you specialize in.
  The truth is that many users break these rules and do fine. There are a lot of different strategies on Steem. Rather than obsess over the specifics, let’s look at each rule and see why it matters.

(1) 300-500 words per post, sometimes more.

Why shouldn’t you use less than 300 words per post? It turns out that most users on Steem prefer to upvote longform content with their strongest votes.

This makes sense on an intuitive level. Larger pieces of content often take more time to create and therefore might deserve a higher reward. On a more nuanced level, it is also much easier for whales and dolphins to check how long a post is rather than how good it is. Therefore it’s a basic fact that longer posts tend to attract bigger votes, even if they aren’t always as good.

The best case scenario, of course, is to have content that is both good and reasonably long.

We aim to keep it under 500 words most of the time for the opposite reason: People are busy, and if the post is too long, they may not want to read. It’s also hard to pump out more than 500 great words per day. Focus on quality over quantity after you reach the 300+ word mark and you’ll probably be in the sweet spot… but feel free to experiment with these ideas in mind.

(2) 1-2 Original Photos or Images (Stock Photos are ok at first)

imagery is the most important thing about your post. No matter how good you are at writing, your thumbnail image is going to be a big factor in if anybody even clicks on the post in the first place.

Stock photos are OK because they’re free, easy, and legal. You can use them to have professional content immediately on the visual level. However, they are also generic and lack personality. Most stock photos that are any good get overused to a ridiculous extent.

Therefore, in the long term you must move on to original graphics. You could draw them yourself if you have that skill… but a better plan is to find a few good graphic designers to work with. If you can work out a rate for 1-2 thumbnail images per week - perhaps allocating some of your Steem earnings to pay for this - you can at least have some original imagery.

I like to pay people to create reusable thumbnail “logo” images for broad topics. I’ve commissioned original thumbnails for “Personal Finance,” “Drums,” “Entrepreneurship,” and other common topics on my blog.

This way I can have original branded images but I don’t need to pay for something new every single day, which I can’t afford yet. You can find your own style, both art and business-wise - these ideas are meant to get your brain moving in the right direction.

(3) High Quality Video or Audio Can Be a Bonus

It’s not easy to include high quality video or audio. If you don’t already own equipment and have skills to do this, I do NOT advise trying to start now. Stick with text and photos in the early days until you are a master of that, because video and audio will be even harder.

With that said - if you want to take it to the next level, think video. Video content is amazing because you can chop it up and use it all around the internet.

One ten minute video blog, properly edited and with subtitles, can turn into dozens of pieces of content around Steem, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and beyond. This is powerful but it is an advanced tactic. This is best for people who already use video/audio content (musicians, videographers, etc). Otherwise, again, I’d wait until you get comfortable with text.

Think of video and audio as a powerful “level 2” strategy to start learning about as soon as you become a master of text and photo posts on Steem. It’ll be amazing for you, but only when you are ready.

One exception: Musicians may be able to get away with sharing iPhone (or similar) chips of their musical ideas. Use your common sense and aesthetic taste to get this to look and sound decent if you’re gonna do it.

(4) Great Formatting (headers, bold/italic, etc)

Your post format can be your secret weapon. If you look any popular Steemian’s blog, the one common thread will be that it looks perfect within the steemit.com interface.

Firstly the image will fit perfectly into the picture box next to the title. The title will be snappy and catch your attention, with the sub-text beneath it also drawing you in. Upon clicking the post, you’ll see clear headers over each section, with proper grammar and good imagery breaking up the text.

Text and images are centered, shrunk, enlarged, and otherwise moved around to wherever they’ll look best. Images are credited to the original source if need be, perhaps using sub-text and footnotes.

You can get a mental picture of this kind of post. It is professional and pops out amongst the noise of other less-properly-formatted posts. Aim for awesome formatting at all times.

(5) A consistent theme - regular posts about one or two topics you specialize in.

Feel free to explore in your first few weeks. There is no need to immediately pick one topic and focus hard on it. Instead, explore many topics to see what works for you.

Once you get a taste for a few topics that you love to post about, focus in on those themes. Try to post at least twice per week on two different themes that never change for your account. Use the same themes for at least 3 months each and see if an audience arrives to consume the content.

If you stay consistent with your theme, you will be more likely to lead a steady tribe of true fans. If you switch topics too often, the opposite might happen - it’ll be too sporadic and you will have a hard time. There is an art to knowing how heavily to focus, when to switch / introduce new themes, etc… but at first, once you are done exploring in those first few weeks, try to pick two topics and really obsess over them for a while.

In time you’ll get your own sense of style around having a theme. To be honest I still ponder this a lot, my own blog is a bit too unfocused right now with content on music, blockchain, travel, philosophy, and some other stuff… Nonetheless, I suspect focus is a huge part of success.

For one example of an extremely focused and succesful Steem user, check out @penguinpablo. He posts twice a day with the exact same theme every day, to immense success.

That’s the end of the deep dive. This chapter only addresses text and image style posts as these are the most affordable and accessible kind of content creation. If you want to do a video-focused content stream, I encourage you to seek other users and resources to find information on that. It’s definitely possible to start with video… but that is beyond the scope of this book.

07: Start a Steem-Powered Project

Once you pass 500 followers and are getting a consistent 3-5 comments on most of your posts, you can consider starting a steem-powered project.

You might feel like starting your own project - from idea, to recruitment, to funding - could be too hard. That’s something for fancy businesspeople, right? You may want to relax and just do some simple work each day.

On the other hand, you might be overestimating this. It’s hard - but no harder than writing a great song or making your first great meal. If you have the ambition, there is a way to do it.

If you think about everything on the internet, it’s all the result of individuals starting projects. Every single website has to be started by somebody, and every piece of content on those websites are also spearheaded by people.

It’s people all the way down!

I remember when I was younger I used to participate in a message board themed around the reality show Survivor. At first people just used the forum to talk about the show. Then, as the community grew, we started having games of Survivor on the forum where we’d actually vote each other off of the “island”. If you have ever played the party game Mafia - this was similar.

What started as a simple conversational forum became a thriving community with dozens of members and multiple games running in parallel.

Steemit is a lot like that, except with way bigger stakes. Steemit has money attached, making it a more powerful vehicle for real positive change in the world.

You can think of Steemit as a new source of money for projects, an alternative to the “old school” method of crowdfunding as popularized during the last decade of web 2.0.

What could you accomplish if you had $2,000 for a useful project? Steemit makes that kind of thing possible almost on a whim. You can spend a few weeks (or months, if needed) fundraising until you have the money and then execute the project.

This book was a Steem project!! We raised money to fund the creation of all the graphics, to finalize the book design, hire a professional editor, and much more. Everybody was hired from within the Steemit community.

Other examples of Steem-powered projects include Steem Park, a park installation in a popular area of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn, and a college level history course in Philly that utilized Steemit to engage students on a new level. Both of these stories demonstrate different use cases for using Steem to improve your local community.

Don’t think about this selfishly - instead, think on the community level. What could you do to make a visible impact that improves people’s lives around you?

With Steemit, we are moving to a new era of the internet. It won’t be perfect - nothing ever is - but it’ll be a whole lot better at allocating funds to valuable projects that help our communities. This will be true on the local, regional, national, and even global level.

Hypotethetical example: One day you might be able to visit a “Steem Charities of the Day” page and give a few upvotes to the best available causes of the moment.

You’d be able to help fund educations, medical treatments, and new research. One day you could feed a hungry child across the world, the next you might help a teenager in Nebraska raise funds for a recording session.

Whatever your inclination - Steem is a way to improve the world. Starting a project is not easy, it’ll take a lot of work and trial-and-error but in the end it is the most rewarding way to use this platform. And as a nice bonus, you’ll gain a lot of new followers and community clout if you pull off a great project.

So what do you say?

Epilogue: Where to Find Help for Starting Projects

This is the biggest and most difficult step in the book. That’s why I would like to invite you to reach out to me directly if you are trying to start a project.

I promise to read and respond to all relevant, non-spammy comments on my Steem blog: https://steemit.com/@heymattsokol. You can ask me anything and I’ll give you the best answer that I can. This basically means I’m available for free consultations, within reason, all the time.

With that said, the flip side is this: I cannot accept private messages from people I have not met. I’m sorry about this, but it is inevitable. Even at this early stage of my career I’m already overwhelmed with messages, so I will be blocking anybody who messages me without prior permission / already knowing me.

In the future I hope to improve on this system, so you should have even easier and clearer access to me… but for now this is pretty good.

On that note, we’ve reached the end of this eBook. I hope that these tactics help you reach 1,000 followers on Steem and far beyond.

We are creating more educational eBooks for Steemians in the near future. They will be free to download. If you want to receive these free books, just drop your email [over here] and we will send them to you. [author’s note: email link to be added soon)

END OF BOOK

What do you think of the second draft? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Peace & Love & More Updates Soon,