Today happens to mark my 50th day on Steemit; the 50th day of an interesting adventure for a little black cat, helped along by his blogging Human!
I'm 50 days and 30 posts in, and so far my most successful effort earned $2.28 in rewards — not a whole lot — but it was still pretty cool because there were 58 comments on that post!
Little kitty on the tall stairs...
A Nice Welcome!
Steemit is a lovely and quite friendly community, for the most part! I have felt a warm welcome here, and I've been helped along by several marvelous Steemians who put a lot of effort into helping newcomers.
I have been pondering whether I should set goals for the next 50 days, but have decided not to. After all, I AM a cat, and cats mostly play life pretty much by ear!
I know I want to continue to expand my circle of friends/followers... focusing on people who create real "hand made" content, and those who actually enjoy interacting and being part of the community that is Steemit.
Chilling in my Human's lap while he types
I'm fascinated and intrigued by the way some people seem to get large sums of money for their relatively ordinary posts all the time; makes me wonder what it's even like to get that much for blogging?
Not that I really envy them, as such — but there seems little rhyme or reason to it, a lot of the time. Sometimes it is well deserved, a lot of times it seems like little more than a group of people's private "Game of Upvotes."
Will I ever have a $200 post? I wonder... my next ambition is just have one that makes $10.00!
What IS "Quality," Anyway?
The whole money and rewards thing is clearly a hot potato issue around here.
Seems that "People will be People," and they get very wrapped up in the wrong things — like money — very quickly. And then they forget what the bigger game is about.
Steemit seems to me to be a SOCIAL content site, and in order for that to become anything in the long term, you really have to look at what to do to make this place attractive — not just to those of us who are already here — but to those outside the community. Will what they see on a casual "drive by" be attractive enough that they'll want to join us? Or will they take one quick glance and think "no thanks, this place is a JOKE!"
Posing on my perch...
"The Rewards" won't matter one whit if 95% of them are being made by 5% of the people who have "been here since the beginning."
I hope some of the power brokers here will realize that a "vote" to limit voting bots, self-votes and abusive "circle jerks" isn't a vote AGAINST their pocketbooks, but a vote FOR their pocketbooks... in that they get to keep getting nice rewards not just now, but also many years into the future.
The Funny Thing Is
The rewards are nice and all, but I don't actually care all that much.
Well, let me phrase that more accurately — I have been powering up all my SBD earnings (and prizes from contests and challenges) because I DO care to the degree that I want to at least build my SP balance to the point where I can give people more than a fractional "dust" upvote.
And I like the idea of just "doing well" in terms of gradually building a stake in Steemit, so my vote — for witnesses, for example — becomes "worth" something.
Well, this is a bit of a jumbled and unfocused post; better stop here and go about the rest of my day and visiting some of my friends' posts!
Have a beautiful day!
The funny thing about vote bot-upvoted posts, is that it often leads to genuine votes, not because the people think it's the best content, but because they are trying to be strategic with their curator rewards; there is supposed to be some maths regarding the more popular a post is, the more curator rewards you get by upvoting it too, I think; it also depends on WHEN you upvote it. I am not sure how it all works to be honest. But I wish people would just genuinely upvote what they LIKE or want to support. All of that coattail-riding seems like a high school popularity contest to me, just with money! 😂
Thanks for the explanation! I do agree with you; in a way it's like the very early days of MySpace where it was all about "who can get the most friends, fastest." It seemed silly, because none of these people EVER interacted.
So, NOT my approach here. In fact, I am increasingly a supporter of the #nobidbot initiative; If you can't make you content stand in its own through your own social proof efforts, then it doesn't deserve the rewards. UNLESS you legitimately PROMOTE it via the @null account.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
=^..^=
Remember that Steemit is an experiment, a proof of concept of a blockchain technology and truly global. Everyone is here for various reasons but money is the overriding concern and some are greedier than others. As in life, it's not what you know but who you know that counts. I think that there were noble ideas in the creation of steemit but all you are seeing is human nature and laissez faire capitalism at work. People only care for each other in communities and I hope that the launch of communities helps somewhat. Right now, I'm getting powerful upvotes from a family member who also used Steemit to get himself out of financial trouble. Thing is, he was a very early adopter and he had faith in the platform and kept posting when Steem was only worth $0.06 and it is only in the last 6 months that that has changed. So those there at the beginning also took a gamble. For me, the need exists and I'm grabbing the opportunity with both hands because I'm on the brink of a massive financial hole and I'm grateful to have the lifeline. Would I try paying for even more upvotes just to be greedy? No, although that would solve my problems quicker. Clearly, I am dumb
Clearly, you have ethics, values and morals.
My Human was also here, posting through 6c Steem... and there was definitely a more idealistic attitude in the early days. And — in many ways — Steemit has gone further than 99% of "rewards for content" sites over the years. Anyway, pretty much any opportunity will attract the exploiters of the world... most "pure" ideologies only work within the constraints of intellectual and academic echochambers. Sadly.
I'm happy for you that this opportunity has enabled you to claw your way back from the edge of the financial black hole-- that's awesome!
"Communities" have been on the horizon for a long time, it seems. It's interesting how groups of Steemians have already "self-organized" into mutually supportive groups... "bloggers," "curators," "artists" and so on.
=^..^=
I recently saw a post that had over 50 upvotes but only made $0.96. It doesn't matter how many upvotes you get, it only matters if you get votes from the right people.
Good words. I look forward to seeing your way on Steemit with all your lovely cat stories.