One year on Steemit

Last night I received a new badge on one of my articles, for being on this website for one year, and I decided to write an article about it, talking a little about all the things I managed to achieve in this amount of time, how I did it and to show, overall, what others could achieve on this website with only hard work and dedication.

So, let's begin!

Starting

I started, in June 2017, after finding a video made by @jerrybanfield on YouTube about Steemit. At first I thought it was a scam, but, needing some money, I decided to give it a try. After all, the only thing I had to lose was time.

So, I made an account and after around two weeks it got approved (or accepted?). That's when I started writing.

I hoped to be able to make even a few dollars a month, but I didn't have too many expectations. I knew the website was fairly big, that I was new here and that I needed to invest a lot of time into my work before getting noticed by anyone. I knew it would not be easy, yet I started and kept writing.

Making progress & meeting people

I can't even remember my first article properly. I think it was related to Graphic River and how being a freelancer and working on that website wasn't an easy thing to do. To my surprise, I received 7 upvotes and got $2.92 for it.

So, I kept writing. I was bad at it, but I had fun. More people started noticing my work, and then, something happened that blew my mind - I made $265 with one article.

It was THIS one. I was confused by all the people online who told me, several times, to "get a life" after beating them at games, and I wanted to write about that a little bit, expressing my opinion about how stupid it was to tell that to someone.

Then @rahul.stan submitted my post to @curie, and the next day, when I woke up, I saw how my rewards went from a few cents, to almost $300. I was left without words, and it was hard to believe it (thank you to both @rahul.stan and @curie for that motivation boost back then!)

That was the most popular article I managed to write, and the one that got the biggest rewards. It was also the reason I started writing more and more, knowing this website had a lot of potential to do great things for me and for others.

Writing more articles meant getting more exposure, and soon I managed to meet more and more amazing people who supported me and helped me get a little bigger. I won't mention them all, because the list would be too long, but I do want to thank @rahul.stan , @calumam , @dandesign86 , @ogochukwu , @playfulfoodie , @shawnamawna , @snowmachine , @tim3w4rp , @vladcraciun and, recently, @katharsisdrill for all the support and all the comments they left on my articles.

Thank you!

Okay, so how about the money? How about the followers?

I guess this is what most people want to hear about, at least those who recently started publishing here or who want to start and aren't yet sure that they'll make anything.

Let's be clear on this before I start saying anything else: making money on Steemit is not easy. I was lucky enough to receive some rewards when I first started, but there's no guarantee you'll be just as lucky.

If you post memes, random videos and anything you can hoping that someone will come to you and give you hundreds of dollars because you're "special" well, it won't happen. You have to work your ass off for a long time and expect nothing in return. It's worth it, but not easy.

Now, let's talk about money and followers.

I can't tell you for sure how much money I made at the beginning, when I first started. I was lucky enough to get some really big rewards, and I think the total amount was close to around $450 - $500. That was, back then, equivalent to around 400 SBD.

However, after I reached a certain reputation (the number you see after your name at the top of the screen on your profile), those rewards stopped coming in. No services were helping me out any more, and the amount of money I was making was determined only by the amount of people who were upvoting my work.

That's why I stopped making hundreds of dollars and instead, I started getting cents. I still do. I sometimes get close to $0.50 per article, and if I'm lucky, close to $1 or more, but that's all. I'm not using bots and I'm not spending 8 hours a day promoting my work, so that's why I'm not getting a lot of rewards.

I kept making a substantial amount of money even then, but only by spending a lot of time on the Internal Market, trading and trying to increase the amount of money I already had.

The amount of followers I get also varies. Sometimes I get over 10 - 20 followers per article, sometimes I don't get any in several days.

So, as you can see, if you're here to get rich and make a lot of money, it probably won't happen. You need to be lucky, you need to know the right people and you need to work really hard. I don't spend any time on promoting my work because I have other things to do, so that may be the reason I'm not making too much money, but keep what I said above in mind - this is not a "get rich quick" thing. You have to work really hard to get anywhere.

Okay, so what did you do with your money?

One of the main reasons a lot of people don't want to join this website is because it doesn't pay you "real" money. It pays you in Steem and SBD, which are both cryptocurrencies, and since crypto is not everywhere, it's hard to do a lot of things with it.

Truth be told, I didn't get any real money out of everything I made. I'm a pretty paranoid person, and I find it extremely hard to trust any of the websites I find with my PayPal and Bank Account, simply because they claim to change my Bitcoin into Dollars. So, if you want to get real money out of your SBD/STEEM, you have to find a way yourself.

However, I did manage to use the money I made here. When I first started, I had a really bad computer from 2007, and my main goal was to purchase a new one. At first, I wanted something decent, something not too expensive, that could offer me just enough possibilities to work.

But after seeing how many things I can do with Steemit, I made a decision - I decided to buy something really expensive, something that would last, something amazing. So I did. After around 6 months of hard work (involving writing AND, most importantly, trading on the Internal Market) I managed to save a pretty nice amount of money and buy that computer + a few peripherals.

You can find more details here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@raikuhen/i-got-a-new-computer-using-steem-thank-you

Besides that, recently, I managed to buy a gaming chair for myself, after the chair I had broke. It was fairly expensive, but I wanted something comfortable, something that I can sit on for even 16 hours a day without everything hurting.

I managed to achieve all that after finding an online shop in my country that accepted Bitcoin payment.

That is, for now, what I achieved with the money I made on this website. For some, it won't be a lot, but for me, it is. I never had a decent computer, but now I have this monster, which is the best thing that ever happened to me. I also got a great chair and a few games, so that's even better.

What are my plans for the future?

When it comes to content creation, I want to still do that, obviously. It is tedious and hard sometimes, but it's worth it. I'll keep creating and publishing on this website, trying to offer some value, help some people and simply give back to the community.

When it comes to money, well, I have a few plans. First, I need to save some in case my phone stops working. I'm not expecting that to happen soon, but if it does, I want to be prepared and be able to purchase a new one. After that, I'll start investing a big part of what I make into Steem Power and with the rest of the money, maybe buy a few more things I may need in the future, like a desk and a second monitor.

So, if there's anyone out there doubting that you can do anything with this website, let me contradict you and say that you can, actually, do something with all the rewards you receive here.

Conclusion

Well, that's pretty much it. I initially wanted to keep the article short, but I started talking about some things and now I'm at over 1500 words. However, I'm glad I wrote this and because of it, maybe some new people will see the potential of this website and join.

There are so many things you can achieve here and the community is so nice, that it's a shame not to give Steemit a try and publish here for a little bit before forming your own opinions. You can always find haters, for anything that exists, so the best way to figure out if something is worth investing time into or not, is to try it yourself.

Anyway, once again, a huge thank you to everyone who supported me, to everyone who upvoted my content and to everyone who left a comment. It means a lot, and I'll keep trying to post content for you!