Four months on Steemit.....my reintroduction....what I have learned.

So since I started in November 2017, steemit has had many ups and downs for me. I first started out and went out to follow 200 a day. Just a random 200. The next day I would go through and weed out those that I did not understand their language and do it all over the next day. It is hard for me to read or up vote a post, if I have no idea what you are talking about. I made random posts without any real idea of what I wanted to post about. It was a blog I thought. A place to put down my thoughts for all to judge. A lot of random worthless shit. Which regardless of who you are, there is a lot of useless shit on this platform. A picture of the grass, with a 5 SBD post or up vote. No meaning, no writing, no explanation....Just a picture. On another page a picture of the markets on a crypto blog, with a whole lot of nonsense with the post sitting at $795 SP. Then there is my posts, 4 or 5 pictures, with a long ass explanation usually about 500+ words on how to do something. Growing Cannabis, if you must know. $2.50 SP. So not saying that my post was bad or good. Just showing that its not what you write, but what your followers think. That is what gets you the most hits. Did it get resteemed, which I still do not understand why something is resteemed. If it comes from a friend or fellow steemian that interact with on the daily, chances are that it MIGHT be seen by someone that they are not following.

I thought that this platform would take money to make money, like everything out there and it does. Do not let anyone say that they did not give something to someone to make them where they are today. I personally think that this is an abusive attribute to the platform. For us little guys, it takes someone backing you to make it on here. I have had multiple friends that thought I was crazy to stay at a place that my vote was worth $.001 and others were at $300 per vote. Well it takes time....Time is defiantly what it takes, as well as money to make it on here. I have personally not invested any cash my self on here, but my wife has. She has the time to do the things on here, as I do not. My vote is worth $.06 now, thanks to her and some others. But it has taken damn near 5 months to get there. Back in the day....lol, like December, January, you could come on here with $1100, give it @blocktrades and get 20,000 SP (voting power to $10.50) for 30 days. We felt that we should not upvote our own posts, but give it to posts that were worth while....What did that do for us....Some things, but defiantly did not get our $1100 back. I would change that if I could. I would have upvoted our posts to get the $1100 back, then go forth and do good. You know like a human. But there is no going back, so no reason to cry over spilled milk. You would think that we would have learned. Nope...Dropped another $1700 for 3 months up voting power, but at least we know what the heck to do with it. Next time, we are not renting it, we are buying it straight up.

Now I used to post 6 days a week and take 1 day off. After about a month, I was out of ideas. Now I am not getting rewards as big as I used to, so in a sense it is my fault that I am not making what I was the first 2 months. I come on here every day and look at others posts, up vote them, getting small curation points and such, so I am still making a little bit, but not what I was. I do not want to seem like I do not care, there is just other things that have higher priority over what I do in a day. My kids and wife come first, then work, then Steemit. I cannot devote 12 hours a day to this like some people and the lack of devotion shows. I still do a weekly post about my grow blog, but that will ramp up here in the next coming weeks, because the there will be a lot of changes in the flower due to blooming.

Now not everything is a flowers and rainbows on here. There is many a wars going on here and I will not name names, but its bad. Lets say that "Jimmy" writes a blog with nonsense, "Mike" upvotes to get curation and boosts Jimmy. Mike ONLY upvotes Jimmy and that is all. For some people that is how it works here. So who is in the wrong...Mike for upvoting or Jimmy for writing shit context. BOTH. You should never upvote a shit writing, just to boost a buddy. That is going against the platform 100%. In doing so, a few things will happen. You will get FLAGGED, which means your reputation will go down as well as your rewards for that post. The more people notice the more people will start to realize that you are draining their reward pool. Which is supposed to be for everyone on here, but a few get a MUCH MUCH higher percentage, as they are writing more posts a day every day about the same shit, that make no sense and is shedding light on BS material and the fact that you dont know what the shit you are talking about. When that happens, the movement of people against you will raise up to destroy you. Its a vicious cycle and happens all the time. Be very cautious of who you upvote. You might think that you are going to get some curation points, but others might think that you support the shit content and will come after you.

Now Yes I like this platform. There are many benefits to it for people that would other wise be screwed in their current situation. Some that I know where homeless and because of the GOOD WRITING and help from others, they are no longer on the streets. Some where hungry and now have help, some where greedy ass clowns and wanted only for themselves and found that they had enough and more to help others. All of this has come through steemit. Some tags that are my favorites are:

When you write your post. Think about it, make it original...side note, if you take anyone else's work, cheetah will come after you, informing you that you took the information from somewhere on the web, without crediting the source of your material. Cheetah also warms you, with this warning, others that might have voted for you will back off, because its not your work. This happens a lot in other countries, and they think that we do not see it. Especially when the post that you are coping came from someone that we know GOOD. Like taking someone else's pictures claiming to be your own. If you have a computer, you have a camera. Do not be lazy. That right away will get a down vote and be Flagged. You do not want to be flagged. Tag the post by picking the 5 most matching tags that go with your post. If you are talking about hanging out with friends and being merry....ophumanangels, might not be the best tag. If you are talking about Crypto, walkwithme will not be a good one either. If you are reading this, neither of those will be in here, but you can see at the bottom what I chose.

Lastly....be honest and kind. We all know that other platforms have keyboard warriors, we should just try to keep it off here. If you think that you are going to get into a heated discussion about nonsense, just walk away. There have been a few times, that someone was coming at me. Do not care. I am not here to piss anyone off per-say, this is loving place and should be treated as such. I am here to help knowledge on electrical, because I am an electrician. Growing whatever, because I can grow anything and I tend to help the less fortunate once a month, which warrants the#ophumanagels tag. So please take some advise. Don't rape the rewards, don't upvote silly posts, be nice and just all around dont use the wrong tags. Common sense I know is hard for people, but come on.

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