Make 250 Minnows Insights and Observations - STEEM has a big problem
The Make 250 new minnows is a month event was a fantastic success. It involved a massive outreach to redfish, which gave me some interesting insights to what's going on here on STEEM. So, I thought I would share some of this in a debrief type post.
We spent a lot of time asking people to power up and finding out their views on becoming a minnow was very insightful. We contacted over 400 accounts, and these are some of the findings. This was a massive outreach that enabled us collected a lot of information, personal opinions and data.
Insights and Observations
1. Many people have not found the support of a community.
Communities are a long-awaited feature of STEEM, however the spirit of community does exist with the people of STEEM and there are many communities house on discord. Its also well known that Search on Steemit is not fantastic, so finding communities could be rather hard for a new comer. If we look to the communities, they too find it hard to find people on steem so they can grab them and nurture them in their community.
2. It takes to long to grow
A mindset expressed by many. It takes a long time for many to grow to minnow status and if you keep powering up there is no liquid gain for their efforts. People don’t want to post and earn to keep leaving it in the platform. People want to post and earn and spend.
3. Lack of understanding/awareness
There were also quite a few people that had no awareness to the benefits of powering up. Some people didn’t even know how to convert SBD to STEEM.
We also found many people just didn’t respond to us. Maybe they considered our invite to pump them as spam, however personally I feel this is unlikely. What is more likely is that people just don’t read their comments or know how to find their mentions.
STEEM needs a healthy balance of user types. We need creators, we need consumers, we need curators. We need people spending and we need people saving and investing.
One of the problems I see is that we have to many spenders and not enough savers. Lets face it, I don’t blame people that have earned STEEM or SBD for their efforts wanting to enjoy the fruits of their labour. How many people are really prepared to continue posting and engaging for years to grow their accounts to dolphin or higher status? The ugly truth is that for most, by posting here on STEEM, it will take years.
The table below shows some stats taken while running the 250 new minnows in a month campaign
During this time we had a net reduction in SP of 0.65%. Although this does not seem much, considering we are producing more steam each day, we have a larger cash out flow than inflow. In fact for every 1 new STEEM we generate 1.6 STEEM is leaving the platform. Could this have been why STEEM prices haven’t rallied like some of the others and we have slipped back down to rank 50 on Coinmarketcap?
Another observation is that accounts were powering down almost as fast as we could create them. Much of this can be tied back to how long it takes to grow, and it gets to a stage, people want to spend the rewards they have. We had a massive intake of new users in the second half 2017 and early 2018. Many of the accounts powering down, were set up during this time and have not been active in a number of months. The problem now is that new accounts are not coming in as fast as they were, and the new accounts coming in, are also not growing as fast because the prices are all down so much. We are not replacing what we are losing.
Conclusion
We have a lot of work to do here on STEEM and what to focus on first is a case of which comes first. Communities and a better search facility I believe will make a difference. We need a plan so we can take some action on bringing new users to steem. Recruitments and onboarding should be made some sort of priority. We need to replace what we are losing, and the current rate of new sign ups is not providing that. When people do sign up, we need to find them, and we need to be able to cater for and support the spenders and the savers.
Make 250 new minnows in a month gave me a better understand of the life cycle of a STEEM users. And we very much have cycles. We need to be able to expand the duration of each cycle and we also need to try and increase the %’s of each cycle moving forward into the next.
Many people on STEEM already thought is was how things are going. The outreach and data collected during this event solidifies this theory. I hope we can highlight the extent of this problem and that we can address it as the spiral right now is downwards.
It’s a long road ahead. Good job I just Powered UP :-) We need to take some action. Whos up for a challenge???
Let's face it. If a person is not willing to invest fiat into his account, they will probably never reach dolphin status. 98% won't reach it.
But I don't see a problem with this. When the next bullmarket hits, they will be biting their tongue and screaming "Damn, I should have bought 2000 (or X amount) STEEM when the price was just 21 cents. Now it's 10$!!! I am an idiot for not recognizing the potential."
I cant help but feel if people powered up more that $10 price tag would be a lot more attainable
I've been in the trenches helping baby fish since I got here in June 2017. I think the best people to work with are those who post daily or more. I have no luck with others.
I've seem a lot of this recent effort to help redfish go to those who post sporadically. They are not going to change just because they get to 500 sp.
On the other hand, we have lots of people in between 100 and 400 sp who work hard here. But no one looks at them after 100 sp and before 450. Then they get dropped like a rock again after 500.
I think your target market is active and eager people under 500 even if they are not close to 500. Then have ways to help them after they crack the minnow floor.
Additionally, I do not recommend directly powering up until you have at least 500 of your own sp. Much better to spend your money on delegations so you can be somebody faster. 3.750 steem gets me 50 sp for 24 weeks. Boom! I'm invested. I need to keep working at least that long. Then the next time I have the money - do it again. 3.750 steem power up when you have only 50 sp is meaningless and depressing.
Take a look at my @fitifunfood account that I started on Jan 1 2019. I would still be flopping around at 50 sp if I did not lease. Instead I am over 500 with almost 200 of my own.
Also - everyone tells new people not to think of making money here, which is outrageous. I tell people how they can make money here and have a few active posts about this right now with more to come.
I'm on a mission updating my minnow tips from the last time I did it a few months ago. You can see all the old ones at the bottom of my posts (except share2steem.) All my tips are about how to maximize earnings and connections. Part of the reason I am doing this now is because I finally see big guys helping, so please don't stop.
And yes, you are so right that people do not know what is offered here. You need to learn 1000+ things and if no one helps you, you never will.
We have plenty of active communities in Discord and Chat. Use them until the mythical "real" communities somebody is working on become reality. I'm in at least 20 communities that I help and that help me even more.
Finally - I have three blogs here and have never once powered up. Instead I power down and live off this money since Dec 2017. Even with that - my sp is growing. The new account will start powering down soon too so I have more money to live on. Sure, it is a life of poverty, but it's a better life than most have. My 4th blog will start in May.
I'm sitting here in KL Malaysia in a room in a condo with a pool and a balcony, healthy food, and tons of steeming @teammalaysia folks nearby. I live off my blogging at steem and try to be an example for others. Who can ask for anything more?
there is a part of me that envies you. Every month for the last year I have said, right next month liquid is liquid and I need to start paying myself and there will come a day that I do. This is the life steem can provide for people and you are right, who can ask for more. the only problem is, right now STEEM can not sustain this for everyone. If the price of steem dropped to like .01 cent, would you posts give your enough to live off? and that what we have to prevent from happening by getting the balance right.
I was here at 20+ cents a few months (?) ago. I scramble like mad and try to stay as cheap as I can. In Dec and Jan I wrote posts to say the rent was due and I did not have it - steemers came through for me and still do.
If the price goes to 1 cent, I am screwed like everyone else. I read your stuff and others and know this is a complicated mess. But I cannot starve and go homeless while you figure it out (or not.) I still barely know what a witness is or a token or an smt. I'm a weight loss coach and author, supposedly, even though I write minnow tips here. You big guys cannot expect us down here to do much more than post and interact. I did not even know what crypto was when I got here and few content creators do.
But I am also a nomad and something good will happen like it always does. I don't worry about the worst happening - ever. I am too busy and optimistic for that.
You are right about STEEM not being able to do this for everyone, but what job does? I have all kinds of strategies going here, and all kinds of balls in the air. I'm counting on the mainstream to get here and I am watching them come now. I feel like crypto is the future and it has far to run. In here, the dApps are the future and I am making good rewards from a few of them that were not even here last year.
Coingecko and rt got here. And a few others. This is a good place to post even if flawed. Will we get to a tipping point where people flood in? I hope so and I cautiously think so. One of my author friends came this week and a lot of my other friends are having friends come in. Drip, drip, drip.
In my case, I have a lot of supporters, sbi, autovoters and great places to post things I care about. And thousands of connections on multiple platform besides here that directly came from here. When I stumbled into Malaysia broke last August, @teammalaysia saved my butt and still help me daily.
Back when the price was high, I got enough money out to live for over 6 months. I was screaming at my friends to take money out and some did. Some of them turned around and put it back when the price was so low. Now they just about doubled it again. Other people watched the price go up and come back down again without taking a thing.
I take money every Tuesday no matter what the price and have since Dec 2017. This week I spent 9.40 myr (2.30 usd) on a delicious restaurant meal and my @tasteem post will get at least $4 in rewards. I feel like I live a charmed life, and I will do everything I can to help more little guys succeed too.
The project for 10K minnows is one of the best things I have seen since I got here two years ago. We need the baby fish to thrive and I am so glad someone is finally seeing that from the lofty heights.
You should definitely pay yourself @paulag, even if it it 1% a month. Something!!!! Go out to dinner and post your review on @tasteem. You can do it if I can, and your post will get more money than mine for sure.
Tasteem reviews are gold and you can take that to the steem bank!
Thank you @fitinfun ...
... for the investment of your time to give your fellow Steemians the benefit of your perspective. There are a lot of questions I see "in here" about why people don't "follow the script" and power up all they can. Including in this post.
You have provided everyone with one answer. Seems to me, in a "free market," this is as it should be, i.e. everyone is going to do what they deem to be in their best interest ... Perhaps, as they learn more, they will change their approach. Then again, even then, they may not ...
For myself and, I suspect, many others, they view their activity on the Steem blockchain as a long term investment, since they do not need the "active income" right now. But I know some for which that is simply not the case. Many of our fellow Steemians, in Venezuela, for example, need the "active income" now!
Thanks again for writing!
Exactly! And I know people using this money all over the third world for housing, medical, food etc. I am not some freak, but one of many. Just because we use the money now does not mean we are leaving.
My rent is $85 usd per month. My dinner I'm feasting on this moment is less than 50 cents of ingredients and I am loving it.
The world is not only made up of investors with long-term goals, big houses, and fancy cars. I am playing the long game at steem even if I am not doing it the way some people think I should. I post this message of what I am doing here all the time, and I am glad you saw it, @roleerob. We need our babies to thrive and the 95% kill rate needs to improve. At least I give people hope.
Most of the time, little guys cannot even get follows from big guys, much less votes or delegations or anything else. I beg for follows on my post footers since I post on busy. I get 20 people a week following with under 50 sp and maybe a few a month over 500.
If anyone does not need the money now, find some minnows and invest 1-3% of it in them somehow. If they do not work out, move on to the next. It's not like they are not here trying in droves. If we get to 10K minnows - and we will, let the next goal be 25K.
Very good @fitinfun ...
... I appreciate the additional input and perspective. I've "tweaked" what you have to say a bit, since many of us are far from wealthy (although well aware "wealthy" means different things to different people ...). At least in the way you have described. For example, I am investing for the long-term in hopes of providing a means of supporting my wife and I in our old age ...
The challenge here, at least for me, is the time commitment. But ... That said, I will commit to taking a closer look at how I might be able to do better ...
Thanks again for your contribution with your "real world" view of the Steem blockchain.
Have a good day! 👍
P.S. If you'd care to provide me your Discord name @fitinfun, I would like to ask some questions "off line," but I see there is more than one "Fitinfun" in there ...
Agreed. Community building up through various ways like discord, steem.chat is better way to expand
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The idea is that the more you grow your account, the more you earn. So powering up actually improves earning.
You are fortunate as you have a pretty large delegation that allows you to earn from unowned SP, even when powering everything down. This is not the norm for most people.
Powering up = more returns
It’s not to bash those who doesn’t power up, its to show the additional earring potential of doing so.
I do not have one large delegation, @llfarms. I have many small delegations on three blogs, and I pay for them all through minnowbooster. Only one of them is free and I won that for 90 days. The rest are 24 weeks and I renew then constantly.
Powering down = pay the rent
Op, apologies, it looks like the delegation I was thinking of is no longer there.
Yes you lease SP, which gives you a return based on the SP... because the more SP you have, the more you earn.
Leasing is of course an option. It requires money out of pocket.
The idea here is to power up, to increase earning (just like you do by leasing).
Both options require an investment: either paying to lease or investing in yourself. Both options can result in higher returns.
Just was trying to point out the whole goal here is not to bash anyone for powering down, but to show them the additional earning potential of powering up. Which you clearly know, and it’s why you lease SP.. because the more SP you have, the higher your return.
It's not money out of pocket. It is money earned by blogging here.
And the point I make to little guys, is that they can grow much more quickly by leasing than they can by directly powering up. For less than 4 steem you can get 50 sp for 24 weeks. 4 steem added to 50 steem is depressing and a slow path to nowhere.
After you lease with all the steem you get for a few months, then you can stop at some point if you are not powering down, or keep leasing and grow faster still. If you spend 50-100 sp on leasing, then you will have your own 500. If you spend it to directly power up, you will still be under 200.
Little guys who have taken my advice are now big guys. On the other hand, many blog for a year or more without leasing or attaining 500 sp.
This is something I've wondered about since I joined Steemit. Outside of RC and preferring to be able to vote for those who support you, why do you choose to still rent SP at your size?
In my own case, currently at 500 SP, I usually choose to just use my liquid for things like minnow booster and delegate my SP to smartsteem for the daily payment (rather than having to manually keep track of various delegations on the minnow booster market). Is delegating SP less profitable than vote selling? Is following a curation trail more profitable than vote selling/SP delegation?
I haven't seen someone whose run the numbers on all of this, so I'm still a bit in the dark as to how they stack up to one another despite being here for a while and would be interested in your thoughts, thanks!
It's partially because I have 3 blogs, soon to be 4, and we all vote each other, so this is part of the reason it works for me financially over 500. But it is also to have a higher vote on all my blogs so I can vote the people who interact with me for a decent vote. Most people I deal with and vote for are tiny fish and if I don't do it, no one will.
I choose not to go the delegation route of letting others do my voting for the most part - maybe later. I have not run numbers, but I am associated with people far larger than me who still lease.
I plan to do it until I am at 5000 sp in case I ever get that far. I was buying votes as you mention but stopped that as not being profitable at all.
I do not find keeping track of delegations to be hard at all. I am only sad when people pull them unexpectedly and this is why I am moving to 50 sp leases instead of 100, so that a loss does not hurt as bad.
I think it is an individual choice, @ribbitingscience. i want the biggest vote and biggest sp I can get while powering down. I find this works the best. If you have only one blog and do not power down your choices will be different. I still recommend it for all under 500 sp.
Communities on Steem do exist in the form of @tokenbb forums. Https://drugwars.tokenbb.io is a prime example, anyone can order a custom forum community, there are also packages where forum owners earn a percentage of all beneficiary rewards.
Yes this is an option for communities, and something i need to look at more
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Sound great. Will check it out more fully!
I agree with all that you said. If I had not found the #needleworkmonday and #beersaturday communities, I would have left from boredom. And leveling here is tough. I will invest my time to post and interact to generate value but I won't buy Steem with real money, I am not a crypto-geek. I have no idea what half the cryptocoin postings mean and I am not here for that aspect.
I think of Steem as points towards rankings. I just this week got to 100 and that means that I am 1/5 of the way to the next rank/level. The nice thing about the level system is that once I accumulate enough value, I can reward other players for good posts with more than just a meaningless upvote.
Right now... you are thinking... Jamethiel- you have completely misunderstood the whole website! But have I? Or am I looking at it from a non-crypto point of view?
It took me forever to figure out the power up stuff and I have to use steemworld to find mentions and basic information about my account since Steemit is so crypto focused that the developers don't seem to understand the simplest needs of their potential customers.
And no, I haven't bothered trying any of the dozen alternative interfaces- again, not a crypto geek and the options are hard to identify. Plus they didn't always look very secure. And I would need a lot more time in order to even try to identify an actual user friendly interface.
There is a significant difference between the power users here and the casual users and the deadfish. If the interactions you hoped for did not happen, why stay and play?
And Steem is interesting but too hard for most people to "get" the basics and get started if they don't join a community and engage with similarly minded folks pretty early on.
I feel lucky that I found communities that were interesting to participate in. Without them, the site is simply too hard to get noticed on and it is a struggle for new users to break past the lower levels.
I love how you think of steem and points towards rankings, this is an awesome outlook and has that element of gamification. you are so right, there is a significant difference between the power users here and the casual users, and we need both for a healthy economy and society. the problem is we need to get the right balance and right now we dont have that
Thank you! It definitely is tough to get the right balance of users on any website. With good communities that reach out to new users we will see a better retention. Just have to support the smaller communities so they can grow...
It was nice to read your comment as a social user sometime content dropper, our type are growing on steemit. I enjoy helping people and seeing/perusing a lot of different content. Not easy to find sometimes, right now I do it mostly with tags, I have found a lot of different content to look at and enjoy. On the crypto side, it is taking me a lot of time to learn even the smallest part of it, but I did learn how to power-up, and since I am looking at the long term 5 year plus side of things I have been in no hurry to learn how to convert my steem into fiat or how to buy steem with fiat.
I agree too @paulag! Community support is so important for one to continue to want to be here and make things work for themselves and in turn, make it work for the community/ies they are involved in.
When I first started here, my main support and motivator was the #needleworkmonday community and I guess I was lucky that I found it by searching a word "crochet" and in the list of the many results returned, needleworkmonday was in there and I decided to give it a try. I think without it, I would have been a headless chicken, earning $0.00 in every post and would have felt demoralized to continue, like what I see with some Steemians. It was nice to see the upvote earnings grew little by little throughout the year. And it is also a very nice feeling to be part of some nice Steemians' autovotes.
I also think contests are a great way to grow and build our account. Along the way, when I discovered colouring contests, googlyeyes contests, comments contests and #ccc contests, it became fun and exciting to post here, especially when we win little here and little there and we expand our horizons.
Many a times, chatting with some newbies, they do not know what to post, and are shy to post. I will encourage them to join contests and keep building their account here. Even if they begin with earning 0.0001 a post, little by little, they will grow for sure if they continue to post and join communities who support each other.
At least by being a part of a community or joining contests which in turn becomes part of a community, there are reasons to post, to engage, to learn, to be here and to explore other communities and grow from there.
And I am so grateful for your support too and the #tenkminnows project for I am now getting upvotes I have never gotten before. I will continue to share and contribute what I can here to the rest of the lesser SP Steemians through my Thursday Favourites contest and encourage others to participate in any contest for that matter. I also noticed that there are Steemians who earn their living through the little that they earn here because life is hard for them. But at the end of the day, it really is up to them how they choose to invest or spend their earnings here.
Thanks so much for sharing and I love the project.
Like to share how I experience it:
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the difference with going to twitter or facebook or other traditional social media platforms is that you already know people there. that makes a big difference as there is not the necessity to search out communities.
"It takes too long to grow... typical issue for unexperienced creators." I hear ya. having worked online for the last 10 years creating content, I started as many on steem start. I publish my content and the masses dont come. there is a lot to learn when starting to make money online, be it on steem or off steem.
A bit from me, by joinning community, the small acounts will be supported to move on and steeming on. They are brave to powering up their accnts to growing up with those community members together. They know they are not alone. Thanks
we are all in this together and even if everyone does not agree at times, we all want the same thing. for steem to be a success and for us to be part of that
Bravo. Those words are very meaningful. Keep fighting to bring changing in steem. To day steemit blogchain is in the fuorth year. Means we are strong to break obstacles . 👍
I am very grateful @paulag for all your support, how difficult it is to find a community and look for people who are kind enough to give their votes, all of them require a very long struggle of course with patience
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The one thing I remember after the last fork is how my upvoting comments went from 10 cents to 1 - 2 cents. Before the fork, I could upvote 10 cents. That was fun.
Also, there is a lot to learn once you come to Steemit. If you are into crypto and many aren't, or a computer whiz there is much to learn.
Once here in Steemit you find everyone's power and value to be here is based on how much they have in their account.
Hierarchy systems tend to leave the little guy feeling out. Also, everyone tends to tell the little guys what to do all the time. If you speak out or make waves could be trouble. Just sayin'
before the fork the price of steem was higher and impacted the value of a vote. there is so much to learn its nuts, but really not every type of user needs to know everything.
yep. We are lucky to have someone with your skill set in here. Numbers people are surely needed. My solution is to spend more and buy tips. lol here you go
!tip
deadly, love it, thank you for the tip
🎁 Hi @paulag! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @rebeccabe!
@rebeccabe wrote lately about: The Epic Formula To Say What Is On Your Mind Feel free to follow @rebeccabe if you like it :)
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide :)
I am about to power up some more soon as well to keep accumulating! These are great takeaways and I believe it comes down to the interface. Interfaces like @partiko are making this much easier to engage with as comments and mentions are clearly available to reviews. Others, like SBD to SP are more difficult with current interface. I hope that the new @steem.marketing account by @andrarchy can take these findings into consideration for the podcast in addition to the recent feedback from the wallet split itself.
Ohhhh @steem-marketing, i was not aware of that account, nice!!!!! I must admit im a partiko fan myself
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