The Ultimate Guide for making money on the STEEM blockchain.

So you want to make some Steem?

You came here with promises of riches but your posts never break a few cents.

Im here to help. Im here to tell you that you need absolutely no talent to achieve above average results, even results that would put you in the top 5% in payout.

There will be no motivational bullshit in this post of misleading half answers.

No. Thats a waste of time. Those that tell you that want something from you. They want your vote, your engagement, your support so they themselves can get ahead. Im here to tell you exactly how to make it and i dont want anything from you.
Disclaimar: Due to the specifics of the steem ecosystem you will never be able to catch the big accounts if you started just now.
After HF21 (google blockchain fork) it will be even more the case that no content creator will ever be able to ever rival any of those that that premined Steem or put money into STEEM when Steem was a few cents worth.

So...you have 0 Steem power, no powerful friends and youre just an average Joe.
Right off the bat i have to tell you that your opinion is worth exactly 0. Without a obvious talent and no powerful friends you might as well be barking at the moon. Ah, but barking at the moon can sometimes be profitable if you know where to do it.

If you were a talented obscure plankton then @curie could save you once a month (thats how much theyre allowed to vote you and they dont vote same type of content twice) but you have no obvious talent and thats basically only 10USD per month so shooting for a curie vote is a waste of time especially at these Steem prices.
You cant write novels. You cant sing well or play an instrument. Youre not a painter, photographer or a scientist.
Youre just a person thats late on their rent and pays for Netflix. (Who the hell pays for that nowadays when we all have that naive friend with a subscription)
Curie isnt interested in you.

NUMBER 1.

STEEMIT.

You probably heard of Steemit since its the most used crypto dapp by far, it gets more traffic then then top dapps of all other biggest dapp platforms combined, but you wont make any money here. With 0 SP and a empty wallet there is no money to be made on Steemit. The current mentality of the Steem community is that of:

If i vote for you, will i get more in return?

You have nothing to offer to anyone. Your SP is 0, remember?

NUMBER 2

Bots.
This is an extension of the failures of Steemit and the only earning opportunity on steemit for those just starting up.
A year ago a bot owner (@booster bot) by the name of @fyrstikken wrote, paraphrasing:

The main reason im invested in Steem is because of all the shit content around here. That means we can grow our investment.

Shit content authors that otherwise cant earn anything organically simply pay themselves though bots. Due to most investors trying to maximize profits by delegating to bots, being a talentless "twat" and buying the votes means profit for you and most of all the bot delegators. You guys win in the short run, but ultimately everyone loses. Its on you to decide how "long" you are in on Steem.

If you want to make money on steem as a talentless guy with an opinion without bots, getting to a top trending spot is an absolute impossibility. I know from my experience. lol
And that doesnt only apply to people without any obvious talent. No one can get to the top of the trending page unless they pay. From the most talented to the complete fuck ups.
Id wager that its easier to get an audience with the Pope then to get on top of the trending page without bots.

Best examples are guys like @zaku, @hatu, @chbartist, @deathcross who realized this, that regurgitate the same topics day after day and are the top drainers of the reward pool regardless of only providing rehashed unoriginal topics and motivational nonsense.

If you can stomach putting in money like this to participate in a "pay yourself scam" where you take away trending spots from any and all organic posts, drain the reward pool without guilt and make a statement:

My content is worth more then everybody elses content and i deserve to be seen more.

Then this is a legit option for you. Drop by https://steembottracker.com and have at it.

NUMBER 3

Video! Now this is where money is made with the least effort. Are you a paraplegic? Do you have to drink soup through a straw?
Then sorry, this isnt for you.

But if you can hold a phone in front of your face and talk, then youre a winner!!!

Video is the top way to earn money on the STEEM blockchain hands down. The tactic is very simple.
Regurgitation.

See, steem investors need content creators more then they are willing to admit. But thats all they need. They dont need them to be good. They dont need them to be competitive with youtube creators or the mainstream.
No. Being good requires effort and a lot of time. Searching through videos takes time and effort as well. You cant make 3 quality videos per day. You can make maybe 1, once a week.
All you need is to be consistent in your mediocrity. You might not be mediocre, but the content you create will be if you want to maximize your earnings. A thats what Steem wants. From bot owners to steem investors..
A lot of content that isnt seen as effortless, but rather shows a bit of effort just to be vote worthy.. That is the space you will fit in if you want the most buck for your work.

Some say: "strive for excellence and you will be rewarded" but STEEM tells you: "strive for mediocrity but strive for it as much per week as you can!"

If you remember 1 thing from this post, remember this.

All you need to do is make the video "good enough".

"Good enough"=the base effort required to cut a video together or talk/create in a continuously repetitive manner.

For example:(And ill try and be completely random here) You have people that do karaoke songs that cant sing or people that repeat the same motivational ideas over and over again.
A good example is @coruscate that at one point was the top payed content creator (probably in top 10 out of a million accounts).
Let me stress this. It wasnt her fault. She could be the nicest person on steem and i have nothing against her, but shes a terrible musician by any metric. I can hardly call her a musician at all. But at one point she dominated the #music tab. When someone came here to check the music tag she would be what they would see because she was what the Steem investors decided to make seen (well those that didnt delegate to bots. haha)
When you have someone like that topping the music #tag every day, what does that do for the perception of steem being a content creator platform?
It makes Steem a joke. Nothing to be taken seriously. A platform that failed at its core promise.

Take someone else as an example.... A template for you to follow.

@clixmoney. A very resourceful character. A guy that went all in with steem.
What he did is create a small community of creators that "support" his ambition and give legitimacy to his opinions.
TIP: The more it appears you are a community leader, the more people you can claim follow you, the more power you have.
Some time ago he came into the @dtube chat and yelled his way into upvotes. Literally annoyed the curators into voting him by constantly bombarding the mods and devs.
His content is for you to judge but he was extremely aggressive in his approach and consistent in his posting which would eventually bring him into the @dtube curation daily circulation.
His english is extremely basic which goes to show that the ability to express yourself in english doesnt matter, it just needs to be english or close to it..

I could make a few other examples but my point is that when it comes to Dtube all you need to do is be consistent and fill the quantity quota..
Do you sing in a shower? Can you talk to your friends in full sentences and express yourself in english above a elementary school level? You can make it.

Take one claim:

The grass is green.

Now you can talk about how pretty the green grass is, how it motivates you and fills you with joy (the motivational speakers).. or you can say how its wonderful how the grass is green in your yard and you are sad for your neighbor that has yellow dry grass (the compassionate nosey ones)... or you can say that your neighbors grass is yellow because he uses Monsanto seeds and OMFG! the government is out to get us HIDE YOUR KIDS THE WATER IS TURNING THE FROGS GAY!

Anyways.. Take a topic and you can reshuffle it a million times. Rarely anyone watches what you make, not even the curators. All they need is to remember your name/face and youre good. That takes a few dozen videos. The views on your video will be in the single digits but whats important to remember is that Youtube will never give you $10 for a video with single digit views no one gives a damn about, but Steem will!
Remember that.

NUMBER 4

Get it?

@threespeak

See, 3speak is very much like Dtube if you look at it from a content creator side. (Remember... A content creator is anyone that can post anything on the steem blockchain)

Lead by @theycallmedan and @oracle-d who i respect greatly for their contribution to Steem.
The problem is that 3speak is in its infancy and any "non mainstream" crap can get on their platform.

The idea was to create a censorship free platform even though their platform isnt trully censorship resistant. It is censorship resistant, for now, simply for being new and small but actually less so then dtube for example.

That doesnt matter really. Censorship is important only for fringe characters that post racist, insulting, socially marginalized content. Thats not you, remember? Youre an average Joe.
The worst thing youve done is pour chlorine on your neighbors lawn and mock him on facebook on how your grass is greener then his.

But right now 3speak is the place to be. A Steem whale @theycallmedan autovotes content with the 1 million plus SP @oracle-d account.
When you filled up an application there a few weeks ago (not sure if you can get in as easily now) all you needed to do is say that your content is potentially bannable by youtube or facebook and how those platforms are junk.

Right now what you can find there are mainly "freedom speakers", "Alt-right nonsense peddlers", "anti establishment speakers" and "fake news moderate conspiracy theorist nuts". Its a echo chamber of video creators that dont really watch each others videos but rather POST CONSISTENTLY TO GET VOTES.
You really cant call it an echo chamber since the focus again isnt on the content but the quantity of it.
The same theme repeats itself. Post consistently in a proper way in the proper place.

NUMBER 5

The community leader road.

Here we go into the next step a bit. If by any chance you pick up anything above and you accumulate some Steem then you will slowly enter the "reputation building phase".
That phase is the longest one. Reputation takes a lot of time to build and again it depends on consistent and everlasting omnipresence since its extremely easily lost. I know a witness that hung around every single discord chat i could think of for a time. I know a few witnesses like her. There wasnt a single discord chat that she wasnt in at times discussing with 3 separate people on 3 separate chats just to stay relevant. Its taxing but it works.

Im not talking about Steem reputation here. Thats meaningless.
I mean your reputation inside the community.

Since this is the internet you need to understand that the relationships you make here, for most part are surface level. Youre a name on a screen. Ofc this makes STEEM a fake and disingenuous place but thats what you singed up for.
Take a break for a week or two as a small account and people forget they know you, so what you do is be a "Sweet annoyance" to the "top dogs". The type of person that pretends to need help to get attention even though they know how to solve the problem themselves. And then goes forth and is helpful to everyone they meet. That makes connections. That makes people remember you. The positive feeling for the person that helped you sticks just like the feeling for the person you helped. Its all a game. Be calculative, be a ninja.

But never speak your mind, that disturbs those around you in the group.
I remember months ago when i was a part of the @helpie community (nice folks) 2 guys got into it in the general chat, really mildly, about something silly and everyone else ran away into DMs to share their outrage and concern.
So try to never stand out in a disruptive way, always follow the unwritten rules.
Unless youre good looking. Then you can get away with alot more. :D

From there you can expand your work into curation. Your SP is crap but people dont ignore you anymore. You resteem a few posts, write a few nice comments and now youre a staple of your discord group. People will pretend that its great what youre doing even though its meaningless but now you have a few points under your belt. You chip in where help is needed and after a while you create a core of your own people.
Sweet talking gets you where you want to go. It doesnt matter whos an asshole or whos an incompetant twat. Theyre all "your" people and you love all of them.
You give them all attention.

I could say the best guy at that job is @aggroed. He started at the bottom (though he started early) and by applying this technique hes grown into one of the biggest witnesses on STEEM and all that started from pandering to the "anti establishment" ideals of the Steem community through his posts.
He doesnt really have much talent above the average guy that would help him here or tech knowledge to make him a factor but he learned to be a good salesman. How to sell his brand to everyone he meets. How to create an appearance that hes there for everyone that needs his help.
Shit. DM him right now and hell answer you. You can say that for a handful of others.

Did he create @steemmonsters? No. But people will say he did.
Did he create the Steem engine? No. But people will say he did.

He did nothing but position himself in the right place with the right people around him that had the skills to make an idea a reality and thats what every community leader strives to achieve.

Becoming a community leader is the most someone without any inherent talent or skill can achieve reputation wise. That is the pinnacle
Everyone else is busy honing their talent.

The smartest person doesnt run @steemstem. The best dev doesnt run @utopian, the best musician doesnt run @openmic, the best artist doesnt run @ntopaz.

CONCLUSION

Pretty simply, this is how you make it. I gave you examples to follow and things to watch out for.
This might sound ridiculous that the platform works this way but its the honest truth. Its ridiculous that anything like this can exist and be sustained for a longer amount of time.
I personally believe it cannot, but for now its still standing and theres money to be made.... So what are you waiting for?

PS: @whatsup, new Steem , old steem, this is just Steem.