How 15 Months On Steemit Changed My Life

This Steemit journey we have embarked on is so full of surprises that it shouldn't surprise me by now, but it does. I'm sure it means different things to different people, but to me, Steemit has fundamentally changed the way I live my life.

It feels weird to me even saying that. Thinking some geeky website could change my life was as far from my imagination a couple years ago as Mexico is to Mars, but after jumping into Steemit on August 31st, 2016 which led me into the world of crypto, this precise realization slowly crept up on me like a wave of enlightenment until I woke up unshackled from needing to stay in one place to support my work habit.

What started as an intense curiosity has weaved into a worldwide network of ongoing, online relationships that fosters creativity and connects us to each other. A thriving community of like-minded people with diverse skill sets who support and encourage each other across the planet, and it pays the bills.

What exactly is there not to like about that?

I admit it. I came for the rewards at first or at least the promise of rewards. I've made good money online before and knew it was possible and have always been attracted to sources of income that are not geographically dependent, but getting rewards for likes on my post, that sounds interesting. That sounds like a fun, new toy and I wanted to play with it.

Making my first post was simple enough and it made, as expected, zero rewards. So far so good. Let's try it again.

The second post went off without a hitch and once again, zero rewards. Easy to keep track of zero. Let's try again.

Third post and I'm happy to report I made zero. At least I'm consistent. Rack 'em up, let's do it again!

Fourth post, something. I can't remember how much exactly, but something, .17 cents or .24 cents or whatever it was.

Fifth post, $12.00! (or whatever it was) Nice. I've got nothing else to do, let's try this again.

Sixth post, $100! Wow! I wonder, is this real money? (NOTE to self, check to see if this is real money)

Seventh post, .58 cents. What did I do wrong? Nothing. So much for making money on Steemit.

This went on and on for a month until I learned to stop focusing on the money and focus on the community. Here's what I mean by that.

It's only natural when you first start Steemit to wonder about the money. So when I made enough SBD and Steem to buy a BitPay debit card, I did. It cost me $9.95 and I could pay in bitcoin online. Then I sold some SBD for bitcoin, loaded the card with the bitcoin, and spent it on groceries.

Now that I knew this worked I began focusing on the community because it's the community that rewards you for helping it thrive. It's the community that makes any of this crazy experiment we are all part of work. It works for me so I decided to work for it.

Being the obsessive person that I am, once I made the decision to work on Steemit for the benefit of the community I had to think of how to do that.

What could I give to this community? That was the question but it also had to fit into my propensity for fun. I didn't want to create a job for myself. It had to be something fun or forget it.

So I asked myself these questions.

1. What could I do every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it?
2. Who could I help on Steemit in a way that can translate/replicate itself across the world?
3. How can I make it easy for people to participate?
4. What would be fun to do and fun for the community?

The answer was Steemit Open Mic and I'm working on some new ideas. 1 year and 3 months into it and I love this community even more.

You may notice the focus of the last three questions is not about me, it's about the community. That's on purpose and here's why.

Yes, this is my blog but, so what? If it doesn't add to the community in some meaningful way it's pointless. Unless you're a whale with some Steem Power parked in your account or a celebrity blogger already, you're going to have to grow your account from nothing.

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To grow a Steemit account from scratch you need to grow or be part of a community on the platform. It takes work and dedication and no amount of complaining about it is going to change that. You need to roll up your sleeves for a while and get to work. The rewards down the line will be more than worth the effort, but there is some effort involved.

While you can and should engage with people through the comments sections of each other's blogs, the real action is on Discord. There, you can engage with people in a more direct way with instant chat and voice chat. There are communities there for every niche you can imagine and you can easily start your own.

What's the big deal about community you may ask? Communities that benefit from what you are doing will upvote your posts without you ever having to ask them to. They will follow you because they want to. If you don't have money to invest in Steem Power you can invest in helping the community and earn Steem Power.

When people benefit from a community you started they will continue to follow and upvote your posts and soon you'll have a community attracted to the communities, sharing the rewards of being part of the community and bringing their own ideas and creativity to the table.

Steemit Open Mic, for example, benefits musicians who share their music with the platform. I can show you hundreds of comments from musicians telling me this or you can see what they make for entering.

This sounds great but what can I do for the community?

If you're not a coder, writer, traveler, or lead a particularly interesting life that you feel is worthy of being indelibly and perpetually blogged about, it can be hard to decide what to blog about. This is where question number 1 comes in handy.

1. What could I do every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it?

This to me is the most important question to answer because if you can't think of something you love to do and would never tire of then you're not going to follow through on it anyway. You may as well forget about it and resign to an eternal life of Facebook. At least on Facebook, you'll know what your post is worth.

I can't teach you creativity and online social skills but have 100% confidence in your ability to come up with something you love to do and would do it for free. (getting rewarded for it would just be a bonus)

Once you know what that is, go look at the tags on Steemit to see if those tags or something similar to it, exist already. Click on the tag and read the trending posts for that tag. Pay particular attention to the posts that are working, meaning they are earning good rewards, there is a high level of engagement in the comments of those posts, and they get a good number of views and comments.

I'm willing to bet all those posts have something in common. They may be about different topics, written in different styles, and come from entirely different worlds, but they will all have a thriving community behind it.

If a community already exists around a topic that answers question number 1, get involved with it. Enter running contests, talk to the people doing well in that area. Engage with the community and give, do not take.

If you're thinking to yourself, "This sounds like a lot of work." then you haven't really answered question number 1. Go back and answer that question now.

Once you get to know a few people, observe what the community needs that it does not have right now. Now, start asking yourself questions 2, 3, and 4.

1. Who could I help on Steemit in a way that can translate/replicate itself across the world?
2. How can I make it easy for people to participate?
3. What would be fun to do and fun for the community?

This thought process will keep the focus where it belongs, on the community. The larger the group of people you can help on Steemit the larger your account will grow as long as you don't stop posting. Question 2-4 helps shape answers to the former and question 1 the latter.

I mentioned earlier that Steemit has changed my life. Focusing on the community and getting rewarded for it is life changing to me in so many ways I don't know where to begin. Yes, there is an income source I didn't have before, but it's more than that.

There is a feeling of connection with people all around the world that was most apparent at Steemfest 2 where, for many of us, we were meeting people for the first time yet felt like we already knew them.

There is a sense of community where all of us benefit from interacting with each other online, showing support for the causes we believe in.

There is the joy of understanding that as you engage with and benefit from interacting with the community they are also benefiting from interacting with you. This sense of a shared journey makes it a very exciting, multifaceted adventure.

Knowing I'm part of something, Open Mic, that makes people take some time out of their busy day to sing and play music and knowing that they may be rewarded or, in some cases, actually helping them put food on their tables by singing. That's priceless. And it's just a small part of what Steemit can do.

Perhaps the most valuable thing about Steemit is it has afforded me a fresh perspective on the future and what is possible when a community comes together.

Steemit has also introduced me to the world of cryptocurrencies which has been a boon to my net worth, enough so that money is not such a pressing concern. If it wasn't for Steemit I would not have known about crypto and I owe it a great deal for the introduction.

Steemit opened my eyes to a revolution in finance happening worldwide in the form of cryptocurrencies and gave me the confidence to start investing on some of them, Dash, Steem, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Pivx, Ripple, and a few others have been very good to me and Steem was the gateway crypto for me.

The conclusion of the Steemit Blue Paper reads:

The unique rewards and incentive program offered by the Steem blockchain and token are designed
to make Steem the ultimate on-ramp into cryptocurrency for mainstream users. The
performance of the blockchain is designed with widespread mass adoption of the currency and
platform in mind. When combined with the lightning fast processing times and fee-less transactions,
Steem is positioned to become one of the leading blockchain technologies used by people
around the world. credit

Is Steemit the ultimate on-ramp into cryptocurrency for mainstream users?

To their credit, at least in my case, their mission is accomplished. This week was my second Crypto Christmas and it was joyous and profitable with a few extra gifts under the Christmas tree. Thanks, Steemit!

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