What I've learned in my last 5 weeks on steemit

Hello Steemians!

Here I am, 5 full weeks of steemin behind me. I've skipped few posts on few rare days after I got home and was unable to post anything because I was tired and just wanted to sleep. Through these past 5 weeks I've learned a lot. I have an idea what steemit is all about and I've gathered few tools which I use on a daily basis. I will share those tips and tools with you in this post.

This is something for all of you no matter how long you've been on steemit.

What I've learned on steemit so far?

Introduction post

If you haven't done it already - make one. Introduce yourself. Make it as best as you can. Share your interests, give others some little detail about it. Introduce yourself. That is an opportunity to get your first followers.

Here is a good information about making a good introduction post - link - thanks to @shayne

Content - pick something with a lot of meaning to you

Create content that you like. Be yourself. Blog about the things that matter to you and you can pretty much ignore everything else. If you like drawing, blog about that. If it is cooking, blog about that. If you have more than one interest like I have, pick something that makes you most happy, or excites you, or whatever makes you feel the need to share the most. Concentrate on that as you develop a habit of sharing. Do that one thing until you learn the ropes, engagements and rules of steemit. Pick that one thing! Ignore everything else (for now)! If you don't ignore it, you will become overwhelmed as steemit is rich in content. There is good, there is bad, there is mediocre, and there is spam as well. Don't get lost in all that sea of content. Create what matters to you, follow the people that talk about things that matter to you and you will do well.

I've personally picked drawing - I thought of a challenge for myself and I have been drawing almost every single day since I started blogging on steemit.

Consistency - do it, repeat it, don't give up on it

When you have the idea of what you want to blog about just start doing it. At first try to concentrate on quality because it does matter. It should become a habit. Give it at least your 100%, and give it a little more if possible. If you can have fun with it. Trust me it will show and people will pick up on it. After you've started, there is only one more thing to do. Keep doing it. Do it daily. Do it weekly. Do it monthly but do it consistently. Do not give up! Make a plan and follow through. Keep it up!

I've tried to post a blog and a drawing once a day. There were few days where I was unable to do that, but I tried hard to do it. There were days where I was able to do it more than once and I did. But I tried to give it my 100% best.

Follow others - upvote, share, resteem, comment

Follow people that create things you find interesting, or share the same ideas as you. If you stumble upon useful and helpful post think about rewarding them. Follow those people, leave a comment or upvote, you can also share or resteem that post. Form a network of your own and reward those people in your network with your presence, your following and a little effort. It can change for them with your vote or comment or resteem. Your vote may look insignificant at first with only being worth 1 cent. If you vote a lot it can even be 0 cents but it will show. Imagine 100 of those votes. If you vote for something that you find interesting and 100 people does that it can become a dollar. That is a difference. It may make that someone's day. 

If you know the answer about something that the person in the post was asking, reply to them and share what you know. Be helpful. To them it means a lot and you might be rewarded with a thank you, or maybe that person can upvote you, or follow you, or even mention you in their post and it may bring traffic to your post. Share the knowledge and be helpful. It's not that hard.

I've decided to check all my followers once per week and see if they have mentioned anything interesting to me. If I find it entertaining I upvote and sometimes comment. If I can give advice, I do. If I really enjoy their work I follow them back and check their blogs more than once a week. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to do it on a daily basis (for all the followers).

Patience

Probably the most important thing after taking all the previous advice into consideration. You won't make it over night. You may get lucky and have a post or two at first and you can think you know it all. You may think how you're invincible. But it will fade. Without patience, consistency, effort, love for what you do and hard work you will not be able to have steady results.

I've seen people joining and on their 1st post getting 20-50-100 dollars and they kept spamming similar types of posts. Or they saw what's popular and started doing that themselves and spammed it. After few days all they had were 1-2-10 cents as people started ignoring them. They jumped from topic to topic and spammed and were loud. They lacked patience. I don't see any of them anymore. They are gone.

I learned patience through Eve Online. Years and years of waiting, planning and training. Eve, what a silly game (I love it and I hate it). I've applied it here and my plan is long term. I plan to grow slowly. Grow my knowledge, develop my drawing skills, practice drawing and push myself as much as I can. I want to have fun while doing so. I plan to learn about crypto currencies and many other things and I have decided to pursue drawing as my main career and do what I enjoy doing the most. As an IT guy I can say yeah, I flipped!

The links and tools as promised

Thanks to @penguinpablo we have this https://steemnow.com/
If you're curious about your upvotes, post and curation/author rewards. Add your username and check it out for yourselves. There is even a calculator to help you see how much SP (Steem Power) you need for a certain  amount of reward.

Thanks to @shaunmza we have this neat tool https://steem.makerwannabe.com/
If you're curious on who followed you and then unfollowed you you should check this tool. Just add your username and it will show you all you ever wanted to know.

Thanks to @dragosroua we have this tool http://steem.supply/
This is my favorite tool. You can see how much SBD (Steem Dollars) and SP (Steem Power) you will receive in the next 6 days for your posts or for your comments. It is fairly accurate - much more now than a month ago (the voting power have settled and it is almost 100% stable now - only fluctuation caused is the SBD/Steem price).

I'll end this one with a quote which I find more and more appealing:
"Figure out some way in which you get paid for playing."- A.W.

Keep steemin and have fun doing what you like!
@zneeke