When I first started writing on Steemit I gained quite a bit more traction than I expected to in the first couple of weeks, and my page was geared heavily towards the topic of social anxiety, frequently detailing my own personal experience as well as hosting self help guides for anyone who deals with it. As of late I've strayed away from this, because it seems as if the follower base I gained in the beginning who kept up with my content, specifically this content is either no longer interested in what I have to say, or left steemit. It's discouraging to be honest, since it seems that the only upvotes I get on my posts are either from bots or random people who happened to stumble across it and like it to never be seen again, and the amount of comments I get has dropped off dramatically.
What I want to know is this. Is anyone still keeping up? Or is this all for naught? Because as of late I've been considering just cashing out and parting ways with Steemit, since any payouts I irregularly stumble across, while nice, aren't enough to keep me coming back. It's not even that I'm looking to be making more money, I just don't see the point in continuing if I don't even have a minuscule audience. I'm going to continue for the time being, but the day when I log off for good may be right around the corner if things continue down this trajectory.
I'm new to steemit currently spending some time looking at content posted here and I stumbled upon this post.
There just seems to be a lot of spam on this site and I feel like the blatant monetary incentive of this site kind of poisons the content that is posted to it. People post purely in the hopes of making money, they create the content with the intention of it getting them money.
Places like medium are a much better place for people who are confident in what they talk about to express themselves and they post it because they have something to say, not something to earn.
See, this whole blogging type of thing isn't something I'd normally be doing before discovering this site. The monetary aspect of the platform intrigued me, and I love the idea of crypto which is a big part of the reason I joined. Even being a small account I've made more money than I ever expected to even come close to when I signed up, and it's a nice little distraction from the monotony of life. It's just not something I'm quite passionate enough to take the time to do with no opportunity to make a few extra bucks. Yet at the same time I'm not in dire need of the money enough to really want to continue to do it if nobody really cares about what I have to say, and the cash just comes from random one time upvoters. Because I put a decent amount of time and effort into 95% of the content I create. So I'm in a bit of an awkward position.
With a platform like steemit, the more users come in, the more spam there is. And it will get more and more difficult to get noticed. I almost think I already arrived too late, that's one of the reason I haven't posted almost anything
I wrote a brief post here about it, inspired by this thread
https://beta.chainbb.com/chainbb-general/@simondocherty/steem-and-the-quest-for-follows-upvotes-and-resteems
Long story short, it was you make of it. Write good content people will follow.
Have a great day.
Hmmm. This may be somewhat true, but at the same time I've come across plenty of new accounts (like made in the past couple of months new) who've already achieved an active follower base of 200 plus. So I'm conflicted.
I trick a lot of spammer use is to follow tons of people, and defollow them just a few days later. You can't imagine the amount of permanent followback you get.
I think steem is just still trying to find it's place in the world however I can relate with how you are feeling.
I'm glad someone can
Here's the way I look at if for me. What do I want out of Steemit? The money is nice but what I really want is for people to read what I write. And they do (As I write this, 14 people have read this post!). They may not upvote or comment on it but they will read it. If it really strikes a chord, they'll upvote. It's my job to start striking chords. I found to just have legible content and only write what excites me. It seems with Steemit 19 out people are a little more discerning with their voting (because you get less votes with power - that's the way I understand it.)
How can you tell how many people have read a post? It can't be the little eye in the bottom right corner... because I have posts with say an upwards of 25 upvotes and 10 comments which according to that have only 1 or 2 views
Yeah, its the eye. Remember, this is Steemit. Some people will upvote without reading the post. You can post something and have 20 votes and 0 next to the eye. They just voted from the feed. Never opened it!
Yeah I know that, but there's posts I have that I know they clicked on it because I have more comments than I do views. Plus you said you see 19 views on this? I see 17, I think that there's something wrong with that feature.
Edit: I misread your post, as looking back you said 14 not 19
Yeah, man. Things don't always work right here. Right now my notices for feed and replies doesn't work.
hope you don't leave! you're one of my favourites on here!
I appreciate it, like I said I'll be sticking around for a little while longer at the very least