Is Steemit just another get-rich-quick scheme?

Some of my favourite Steemians – people whose posts I used to regularly look forward to and upvote – have dropped off the radar recently. Their accounts have become inactive and they haven't posted or commented for months, despite having appeared to be very enthusiastic, regular posters.

It could be due to a major life event, or just burning out and running out of steam… (sorry, I couldn't resist!).

Or maybe their expectations of Steemit were just too high from the outset. I'm reluctant to say that they might have seen Steemit as a "get rich quick" scheme, as that sounds vaguely insulting.

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But I wonder how many people's first impressions of Steemit are formed from looking at the Trending page, seeing some glib nonsense earning $700, and thinking… "I could do better than that!"

The disappointment comes when their carefully crafted post earns just a few cents, or nothing at all!

And if they do persist, start to build a following and actually earn some Steem… when a big dip comes around, with the value of Steem plummeting, some Steemians just give up.

There's no guarantee with any investment. Steemit could disappear in a puff of smoke. But even if it does – and I think it's unlikely, even if Ned really is powering down – I still have copies of the material I've published, and I see that in itself as an investment.

Dips can be opportunities

Wise traders "buy the dips" and invest for the long term. Even if you're disappointed in your progress on Steemit, surely it's better to keep posting, but not as frequently, or even just continue to curate, maybe with a bot, rather than dropping out altogether?

That's the way I see it anyway.

I can see where these "dropout" Steemians are coming from, as I went through this process myself. If you look at my profile, you'll see that I joined Steemit in August 2016, but didn't post anything until November 2017.

I heard about Steemit on YouTube, thought "Wow – I could make money from social media!" and signed up.

The interface was quite different at that time, and there weren't so many quality posts. I was very busy with other projects, and I just couldn't get my brain round how it worked; where the money to pay for upvotes came from. I thought it seemed a bit weird and nerdy. I quickly lost interest, and never posted.

In doing so, I might have thrown away the opportunity to be a dolphin, or even a whale by now!

I came back to Steemit last November, attracted by the success of Dtube. That's when I noticed the vast amounts of cash that many quite mediocre posts were earning – and I started posting in earnest.

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By letting my account stay dormant for over a year, I may have thrown away the opportunity to become a dolphin, or even a whale. Or maybe I just postponed that opportunity…

One or two of my posts made a lot of money quite early on. This was at a time when Steem dollars were quite highly valued. At the time I didn't even realise that I'd received Curie votes - I just thought that I'd stumbled across a way to make money by doing what I loved - writing. So it was a bit of a disappointment when other posts I'd written only made a few cents.

I realised there was more to it than money

However, by then I had started to really love Steemit, and not just for the money. I was seeing the bigger picture – the decentralisation it offers, the lack of censorship; the opportunity to read and share quality material published without corporate influence and propaganda.

I also became excited by the massive level of development going on, with DTube, DLive, zappl, 1Up, Steem Ocean, Steem Basic Income… there are more projects on this platform than I can imagine, and it seems to be growing exponentially. And the quality of published work is jaw-dropping. People seem to be throwing their passions into Steemit.

It's like the early days of the internet!

Back in 1994, I was working for a company called Teletext, in London. Teletext produced television subtitles, but the medium had expanded into a TV text service that offered news features, games, "Service Pals" (a feature to link up army veterans), and most popular of all, holiday offers. My job was to produce women's interest features.

Teletext was about to become superseded by the internet. There were four of us who were fascinated by the internet at the time, and we would excitedly discuss our new discoveries. This small group included the boss of the company, a supervisor, another section editor, and myself.

I remember the other section editor excitedly calling me over to his computer to show me an online shop based in the US, offering a range of teddy bears. I thought that was a really bizarre thing for anyone to want to purchase online.

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The first online shop I ever saw sold teddy bears.

I remember excitedly telling my friends about the internet and getting blank looks, or comments along the line of "I prefer to have real friends whom I can talk to face to face," – the implication being that I was a sad weirdo who preferred the company of my computer to real people.

It was a bit weird. I'd been saving up, and I was preparing for a round-the-world trip. I had a Psion Organiser, and using compuserve.com, I'd put a message out on a message board, asking if it was currently safe to travel through Pakistan.

I was astonished when someone living in Pakistan posted a reply!

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This was my internet screen back in 1994.

There were no online images on my screen at that time – it was just text on a black background. I spent the next couple of years on and off travelling round the world, and in those few years, the world wide web took off exponentially.

But as we all know, the corporates began to reassert control of the internet, with a few enormous players pulling the strings.

Is Steemit the new internet?

I think it would be excessive to see Steemit as "the new internet", although in some ways, given the level and variety of development on the platform, it seems to be going that way. I suspect that other Steemit-type blockchains will come along, maybe improving on the concept. EOS might take things to a whole new level. But I think Steemit could be paving the way for a new era of decentralisation.

There are so many quality posts of all kinds being regularly published on Steemit that it would be impossible for one person to reward all of them, even if they had an enormous amount of Steem Power. That's why communities are so important – communities like The Steem Engine, The Alliance, MakeItHealthy, the SteemitWorldMap.

Communities like Make it Healthy serve an important purpose on Steemit.

Working with communities is the best way not just to build a following for your own work, but to find good content to curate, as curation is an often overlooked aspect of Steemit. And it's a great way to meet like-minded people and make new friends.

This is another way that Steemit reminds me of the internet in the early days. I would welcome better search and organisation facilities to help people manage the content and find material that interests them. But I'd hate that to be a Google-type system that becomes the overarching controlling power.

A good search engine for Steemit would be brilliant, but not one that wants to take over the world.

Another thing I love about Steemit is the more equal voice it gives to people living all over the world and from all walks of life. I think that aspect of the web is being lost, with the increasingly centralised control of social media and search engines, so that what you see in your news feed is based on your previous "likes" and interactions.

The monetary value of Steem is comparatively higher in less "developed" countries where the cost of living is lower, and as a result I think people from those countries are more likely to stick around during the dips. Their accounts will perform better in the long term. This is another way that Steemit could be seen as an equaliser.

Steem Basic Income – paying it forward

I often find that I'm too busy or disorganised to look into even a tenth of the projects on Steemit that I'd like to investigate. One of these is the Steem Basic Income scheme, which I first heard about a couple of months ago, but I've only just got round to investigating further.

This project sets out to award a basic income, in the form of regular upvotes, to Steemians, so they can publish their passions, without worrying about where the next upvote is going to come from. To participate, you buy "shares" – one for yourself and one for another Steemian of your choice. You send one STEEM (not Steem Dollar) to @steembasicincome, and in the transaction memo, you put @[name of the person you want to support].

As with most worthy projects, I can see a few potential flaws and abuses – but at the same time, it's a positive idea which will hopefully give many under-rated accounts a boost. And I think its "community engagement" premium (awarded according to the amount of engagement undertaken by the recipient) should make the scheme less susceptible to bot abuse.

I was recently nominated for a Steem Basic Income share by @sultnpapper, and I would like to pay the compliment forward to three Steemians who I think are producing great work, but not getting the attention they deserve. Despite this, they are sticking at it, and not giving up – and I hope that continues to be the case!

And the SBI award goes to...

The first Steemian I am nominating is @hafizullah. He lives in Bangladesh, a country I have never visited, but the short videos he publishes regularly on DLive and sometimes on DTube give a really interesting insight into life there. I find them really fascinating, and very entertaining.

It's not yet possible to embed Dlive videos, so the link to the video is here

Another video producer whom I think deserves a much bigger audience is @percyjules. I'm very impressed by the quality of his work, and by his engaging and professional delivery. I think he could be a DLive star of the future if he keeps at it and doesn't get disheartened. Not that he shows any signs of doing so, despite the fact that his videos have not been getting the attention they deserve.

PercyJules: a DLive star of the future? Link to the video here

The third recipient is an account that came to my attention after posting an intriguing comment on one of my posts. When I looked at @artzo's account, I was very impressed by the quality of his writing. Art Zo has been a Steemian for almost a year, but posts sporadically. However all of his posts are interesting, insightful and beautifully written. He clearly sees Steemit as a platform for self-expression and possibly long-term investment rather than a get-rich-quick scheme.

I like this attitude. Rather than trying to beat the record for amassing Steem Power, actually enjoying Steemit for what it is, not taking it too seriously, posting at whatever frequency suits you, and having a life outside it.

And talking of having a life outside Steemit, I'm off on another sunny long weekend hillwalking jaunt, so I'll probably have no, or very little internet contact and therefore no, or very little Steemit until early next week! Until then... Steem on!