Review of my first month on Steemit

As my first month here on Steemit has passed yesterday, I think it is a good time to review how it went so far.

Behaviors

The first week, I was busy trying to understand how everything works and how I should behave to get some attention. I learned that one should not always be focused on the Trending/Hot pages, but instead search for specific topics. Also commenting is the best way to get in touch with others, and build up your follower/followings.

In the first week, I did not receive a lot of attention from other users, and I was thinking about leaving my account as is. Then, however, I discovered that there is a missing piece of software for mobile users, and so I decided to transfer some of my crypto hodls into STEEM and invest in my account. At the moment, I am working on the core of that software, but it takes some time as I have also other projects besides family and my 9to5 job. Stay tuned, I will write about that once it reaches the MVP (Minimal Viable Product) state.

So I continued to search Steemit for content I am interested in, and found some really interesting users to follow, namely:

• @giantbear, who writes stories split into chapters. Following already two of his stories, and I was always impatiently waiting for the next chapter on the following day
• @laylahsophia, who is a German Egyptologist and writes both in German and English
• @akashas, who writes interesting philosophic posts in both German and English
• @dianargenti, who writes posts on social psychology and more

If you're interested in those topics, you should follow them, too. I also followed more users, but that 4 above stand out of them all, that's why I mentioned them separately.

Tools

Within my first month, I did test a good amount of tools. I think that I have found my tool combo now, so here we go:

• busy.org as interface on PC
• SteemWorld for insights into what's happening on my account
• SteemAuto for auto votings and following curation trails
• Discord for following some communities
• bSteem on my iPhone
• @steepshot as an Instagram replacement

Challenges

Within my first month, I did discover that challenges are a thing. I found two of them that I really like:

• ColorChallenge by @kalemandra: Every day, post a photo that represents a color defined by the challenge rules. I am not able to participate every day, but I did quite a few times
• 5 Minute Freewrite by @mariannewest: Every day, there is a prompt. The prompt needs to be used within your post (or can even be about that word(s)). This kind of writing was totally new to me, and I do really enjoy it. In fact, it influences already my general writing in a good way - plus, I received some nice feedback on it, so I will continue to participate and also improve my skills in this area.

Votes

The most votes I receive are 0$-votes. I am thankful for every single one of them. I also discovered that you actually have no chance to be visible without doing any interaction with others - and quite often, that isn't even enough. It may well be that I am one of that special types that do not fit anywhere in, as my profile is ... special.

So I did two test to gain some visibility on my development blog posts and bought some votes. My first try was a small one, sending 0.2 SBD to a bot called @socialbutterfly, which submits your post to other bots to maximize the reward you get. I made 0.29 SBD from that try, the result is quite ok. Due to the low amount I sent, I received also some 0$ votes. This is one of the lessons I learned - choose the right amount to invest. What I do not like about the most bots is that they comment with some fancy advertisements about themselves, so I'll not choose that route again.

The second try was already involving more money, but I got also more in return. I used MinnowBooster with 1SBD as well as SmartSteem with 1 SBD. MinnowBooster had some problems like others, but I received 1.88$ back after they fixed everything. From SmartSteem, I received 29 votes with valid 1.69$, so there is room for improvement by changing the settings, I guess.

I did also sent 0.5 SBD to the account steemvote, who promised a resteem and an upvote plus the trail upvotes, but that never came in on the post I sent. The account is always above 90% voting power, plus resteemed and voted others that paid after me, plus it pulls out SBD on a regular base. So that is another one I will never use again.

Conclusion

I did gain some visibility (at least temporarily) and received some other votes as well, so the experiment turned out to be kind of successful (as visibility was my main goal).

I did also see some not so nice things here on Steemit, namely users bashing each other. We all are here for some reason, some for making money, some for the community. So please, let us all be nice together to make the (Steemit) world a better place. I am here for the community, and the money is a nice side effect.

Happy Steeming, everyone!

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