My 50 days on steemit

Hello Steemians,

50 days on Steemit already! It has gone particularly fast and I feel like I have got through a multitude of posts, comments and self-growth in that time. I am so pleased that I was prompted to join Steemit and I just wanted to re-introduce myself, talk about my experiences so far and maybe offer a little advice for new start-ups.

A brief who am I

My name is Gaz. I am a teacher of English as a second language and I am also a football (soccer) coach. 9 years ago myself and my family decided to leave our home in Bristol, England and see the world. We have lived and worked in Bahrain, Thailand and Romania but have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of other beautiful places before or during our journey. My original introduction post can be found here and more details of our journey can be found here. We have a wonderful daughter that is 15 years old who is excited to be traveling and seeing the world with us. My interests are in travel, crypto and sport but with me, nothing is off the table! I am absolutely loving the Steemit experience and love to talk to anybody that wants to talk back.

Initial flurry then tumbleweed

I posted my introduce yourself piece and things happened instantly. Upvotes were happening and comments made. People were introducing themselves to me and giving me some really good advice. The total value for the post was just shooting up. I’m sat there thinking well this is great, talk about cool stuff with some cool people and get a little crypto for the pleasure. I’m in heaven.

Then it stopped. People disappeared and the tumbleweed rolled past. Wow. I’d better make a new post. Nothing! You come to the realisation that it will not be ‘easy’ and that you will have to work at it. In fact you will have to work damn hard for everything you get but there is joy and value in the process. If you are here to make a quick buck then, good luck with that! Let’s see how that ends up. It will take time to meet good people and build up a following. Do things like posting things of true value, at least value to yourself and you know the difference between value and trash in your heart. Leave a good comment on others work of value and over time it will increase. Try to enjoy the process and don’t get stressed with a lack of upvotes or response.

For the Stato's

50 days old and although I’m not breaking any records, I’m satisfied with my progress. Here are the numbers:

• Reputation – 43.7
• Followers – 288
• Posts – 457 (27 of my own articles)
• Following – 207
• SP – 114 (20 earned on Steemit)
• Intro post stats - $7.68, 29 upvotes, 17 new people commented
• Highest earning post - $1.23 (Not including the Intro)
• Most upvotes – 27
• Most comments – 20
• Longest time spent on a post – 9 hours
• Shortest time spent on a post – 30 minutes

Bots and Self-upvoting and Dust

Bots

Still to this day I have not touched a bot. In part because I’m not really sure how and whether it will work but mostly because I’m suspicious. When you arrive here and start to understand the lie of the land you get a good feeling. For instance people are kind and let you know general etiquette; you read the dos and don’ts etc. Then you realise there are bots at work! I’m pretty sure in the first few days of me being here I was trying to chat to bots! My instinct is to stay away and do it the old fashioned way and that’s what I will attempt.

Self-Upvoting

Upvoting your own work. How is this even a thing? It seems to go against everything that Steemit stands for. It’s clearly being exploited at the top level by a few but even for minnows I don’t get it. Surely our focus, from the get go, should be to upvote other people’s good work as often as our voting power will allow before needing to recharge. Instead we are allowing people to think of the best ways to spend that voting power on themselves and that can’t be good for the community. Unless one of you clever people can tell me why we need it, I think it should be removed completely.

Dust

There is a tiny exception and more a failing of the current system really and that is Dust and the .02 rule. If you receive an upvote less than .02 you will not actually get paid anything. I don’t understand this rule or why it was implemented. So I personally check my comments and at 6 days if there are any upvotes at .01 I will upvote them so they do not go to waste, or wherever they do go. Probably to Gus Gorman 😁 (Superman 3)

Interaction and Emotions

The emotion of starting out on Steemit has been intense. From the euphoria of an upvote and nice comment received to a 9 hour piece of work that just goes dead. It’s an up and down process but I’ve got used to it and regardless of the last result, I’m looking forward to my next post or interaction. The real emotion has been in writing and the process of writing. I have found it incredibly uplifting when talking about my experiences and recalling things that I may had forgotten. But mostly, I have found it an extremely therapeutic process especially when it concerns memories that are not so happy or indeed, painful. For instance, we left our family to travel, taking the 6 year old granddaughter away from them. I guess I have bottled up the guilt of leaving and it all came out when writing my post. There have been a few occasions now where I am holding back some serious emotion while I am creating a piece of writing but I actually think that my work is at its best when this happens.

In my short time on here I have met some great people, they post some brilliant work, have great advice or are just kind and considerate. I thought I would post some of the people that I have interacted with and recommend so that you can follow them too.

@corina, @johnwjr7, @madstacks, @rentmoney, @thevillan, @twowheeledmonkey, @workin2005

They are good people and post good material. They like a good chat too! 😃

Rules and tips

I’m still very much a newbie but I think I have picked up a few good habits and learned to avoid some bad ones. So if you want to be at least where I am after 50 days then here are my top 5 rules and tips.

• Add value to your posts and comments. Don’t just put great post in a comment, tell them why!
• Reply to everyone. Without fail. There is nothing worse than being ignored especially after making an effort.
• Add some of your own Steem. It adds confirmation that you are serious and thinking long term. Believe me people do check!
• Do not beg or spam! You will be muted or flagged.
• Be consistent and persistent. Don’t give up and try to be available as regularly as you can.

So this is me and these are my experiences and tips to help you get started. I hope you like the post and don't forget to try enjoy your time on this platform. Look me up and let’s have a chat. I will guarantee a reply! 😃

Thanks for reading.

Gaz