For a long time now I've been making between $10 and $20 per post, usually around $15. That wasn't great but it was alright, and I could hardly complain given that it's better than many on here manage. A buddy who does freelance writing for a comedy website said he gets around $12 per article of similar length, so it's definitely still worth my time to write for Steemit at $15 per post.
However, the last five posts have made around $5 each on average. What gives? Did something happen in the market I'm not seeing when I check the STEEM price graph? Did I lose a whale recently? Has my content gone in a direction my followers don't like?
I almost can't say that there's a price per post so low it wouldn't be worth my time, but $5 is getting pretty close. Steemit came along at a point in my life when I badly needed supplementary income, and even since the big come down after that initial surge in value, it's still served the purpose for me.
It no longer serves that purpose at $5 per post, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to become some obnoxious person who begs for an upvote at the end of every post. I'm sort of putting all of that anxiety into this one article, an outpouring which has only occurred because I'm near the end of my rope.
In the past I have made cautious comments about the dwindling rewards of writing for this site, and each time it caused a brief, one-off surge. Like that specific article would make $30-$50 or something. But then it would go back to the usual amount immediately after that.
Even the two most recent short stories, "I See You Now" and "The Fading Embers of Earth" only made about five bucks each. Much less after curation, transfer fees and so on. That was startling since I consider short stories to be the best content I have to offer, they are the most labor intensive and I originally became known on here for posting my short stories and novellas.
I don't need the occasional windfall, I need a steady, moderate amount. Which is what I had prior to this recent inexplicable downturn. I really, really hate to say all this. I am not a greedy man. 90% of my writing is totally free to read on Inkitt, if I had my way I'd like to give away all my work for free. I need to live, though.
One of the reasons I've been so hot nuts for guaranteed basic income is that it would let me focus all of my energy on writing. That's what makes me happy. I don't know what I would do with a private jet, a yacht or a mansion. Probably just sit in the one room of that mansion set up for writing, and write books.
I just need to be able to support myself so I can write for you guys. If you're a whale reading this and have overlooked my articles during the past week, or read them but forgot to upvote, I beg of you, remember to upvote! I can't demand such a thing but that small act makes a huge difference in my life.
I am already living on peanuts, I can't shrug off a $10/day decrease in my income, as meager as that sounds. Some readers have pointed me to other ways to make money online, like taking 20 minute quizzes for $10 a pop, but if I'm going to do something that mind numbing I may as well go flip burgers.
What I want to do is write. I am good at it. People enjoy my writing. I feel fulfilled that they enjoy it. This is where I fit into society and what I am supposed to be doing. But I can only do that so long as I make enough money at it that I can pay for my basic needs.
This isn't a guilt trip, or at least I don't mean it to be. It's an expression of frustration and desperation. If the only problem is really that the whales following me haven't noticed my recent posts or did not remember to upvote them, this is easily solvable. I hope that's all it is.
If it's related to the price of STEEM or something else outside of any individual's control, I guess I don't know what to do about it. I've waited to see whether it was a fluke or a new trend before resorting to this, but it seems like it's the latter, so forgive me but I felt like I had to say something about it. If only to find out if it's happening to everybody, just me, or what.
I believe the downward price of Steem has a lot to do with it, but let's face it even at $5.00 you are doing better than at least 95% of the people here, my top post made $0.25, and I'm ok with that I'm a lousy writer. I really don't think you will be able to get back to big pay days, the whales seem to not be voting anymore or if they do another whale flags so their votes are neutralized. I think things have gotten stupid here, when an idiot gets to decide how much money a person should make and anything above a certain threshold is too much. I really believe this should be based on the not so much quality of a post as to it's acceptance by the voters (not bots), no reason to flag you because you make too much.
And I'll say it again Steemcleaners and Cheetah butt are killing this platform, and paradoxically or suspiciously steemcleaners' posts are of the few that keep getting whale votes.
So if a large post that is making $30+ gets downvoted, that actually increases the amount that all the other posts make. Something that was currently making $0.25 or $5.00 would go up (slightly) if a large post got downvoted. That is the main reason that the higher paying posts have been getting downvoted recently - to give more to the lower paying posts.
As far as Steemcleaners and Cheetah - how are they hurting things?? If there was no fight against plagiarism, spam, and abuse - then authors who were actually putting the time in to create quality content would be getting less rewards.
Look, I won't make an argument I will just ask you a question, how come a lot of YouTube videos get a lot of upvotes and I am sure the people posting them have no right to do so, and yet Steemcleaners or Cheetah Butt say nothing about it? And these videos have no mention of anything it's just the video.
Link sharing is not considered plagiarism.
If someone said "here is a video that I created" (when it was not their own) then that would be plagiarism. That should get flagged.
There is a very valid conversation to be had as to what value "link sharing" (when it is not the author's original content) adds to the platform. While it is not a form of abuse, whether we want to reward it is questionable. There are valid views on both sides of this argument. There is also the very important question to be had as to whether or not that is "fair" to the original poster of the content, when someone else is getting paid for 'sharing' their content.
Tim, Steemcleaners flags a lot of material that the posters never claimed is theirs, the same as these videos, for example a Chinese legend I commented on, they said I had to source it, how the hell do I source a legend, it's author is lost ages ago, so apart from everything they aren't even smart,we know a lot of articles are posted by people we know are not the authors, so where is the difference with the videos, ?
And I'll tell you something everybody infringes or plagiarizes here, for example my favorite author here is @lordvader and he is plagiarizing Darth Vader's personna, so shouldn't Steemcleaners be after him too? Would that not be silly? Yet it would be necessary for them to do it or else they are just screwing people they want to screw.
Which is why I say Steemcleaners and all of these bots have to go, or else this platform won't lift of.
Please refresh yourself with the definition of plagiarism.
There is a difference between artistic satire (allowed), content sharing with links cited (allowed) and publishing material that can be found elsewhere on the internet with no links cited (not allowed)
I don't know the specifics of your particular dispute, but it could be something to discuss with @anyx or @pfunk if you feel it shouldn't need to be cited.
In general though, the SteemCleaners service and @cheetah bot are protecting the community's reward pool from going to authors that would in most cases be illegitimately profiting off of others work.
Well that's your view, it certainly isn't mine. But going back to your original answer, do you really think it's fair that a great post be downvoted so a few mediocre posters can get more money? I'm including myself in the mediocre posters, I don't think I deserve money that rightfully belongs to a great writer.
plagiarism
ˈpleɪdʒərɪz(ə)m/Enviar
noun
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
"there were accusations of plagiarism"
synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation;
I think @pfunk I understand exactly what plagiarism is, can you tell me where I am mistaken?
I see you don't vote very much yourself. (Or at least not lately.) Your voting power is an untapped resource.
That's true, my energy is mostly focused on writing. People occupy different niches in this ecosystem, I am pretty squarely a content producer, having to also vote/curate would be too much of a time investment. That said I do upvote stuff from people I know and resteem articles I think are important/thoughtful.
Another tip I can provide. Lately the awesome abit has been upvoting comments to the tune of 5-6 dollars sometimes. Look for a hot post that has a rich discussion and make an insightful comment and you might double your daily income.
@alexbeyman I feel for you and I'm hurting, too but still grateful cause in twitter, fb, pinterest and kakao story I'm not getting any at all.
Cool down and rest if you must and come back stronger !
There are likely a number of factors. The Price of Steem is definitely one of those factors. There has also been a lot of discussion as people try to "protect" the reward pool by down voting posts they say are "making too much". This didn't happen to you or you would know it. Some of the posts from other people this has happened to were actually high quality. Yet, out of the discussions had arisen the idea of "what is too much?" "Why are you saying this is too much, but this sport posts that the comments are just people posting team names is worth $150?" So it likely resulted in some people reassessing their automatic always up votes things.
You may have lost some automatic up votes. I up vote your posts sometimes because they are good, but I have a rule that I must read what I up vote. I am no bot, and the amount of stuff to read has some days been more than I can keep up with.
Our crowd of actually active people is also not as high as people might think, so as more people post and improve with practice the few people that are actually active get spread around more thinnly.
I'm not a fan of the protect the reward pool approach, as I believe we should just vote on what we like and let the reward pool adjust itself. Yet some will indicate that would lead to certain people hogging all of the pool.
Right now that reward pool is somewhere around $5000 per day spread across curation, posts, and comments.
It was much higher than that in the summer.
So I will say I understand what you are saying. All of my actual job money is spent on bills, and by my family. I actually have close to $0 to spend on myself. Steemit has changed that. I can occasionally buy stuff for myself now. I am not a big spender, I am frugal and wait for deals.
Yet that does take a lot more work for me too. If I post quite a bit and do okay then in a good week I might actually be able to spend around $50 at the moment. That is a good week for me.
Yet, we need to remember something. This is in beta. They are still making changes, issuing hard forks, etc.
If we are looking for something stable now then we are in the wrong place. It also can be viewed as something beyond monetary. Yet this is a personal choice.
My hope is we work out some issues, we ride out the storm, and when we come out of beta the price will hopefully start to climb.
At that point the effort you have made up to this point and continue to make will pay off quite well.
EDIT: ALso some of the big whales have been powering down for weeks now and are much lower than they once were. If some of these were people voting your posts then you would see a decrease in earnings from them simply due to their steem power being so much lower. Bernie for example on steemwhales.com last time I looked is now on the second page. He's no longer even in the top 50. A lot of whales are not powering down though.
Give me your wisdoms, internet wizard. Good answers here. I wish I could bring that Summer back though, what a ride that was. It's why I even have a nice PC and VR gear to make those let's play videos with.
Hell, I made very little then. Yet I have a following. If it was like the summer then I'd make as much as I make in a year at my paying 40+ hour per week job in a month or two. It was insane during the summer.
I can feel your pain.
It's a harsh economy. This is just a depression in the market.
It's brutal, but things can get better.
But we really do need more investors. Powerful investors, that really want to help the platform more than just gain power over authors.
Let's hope the low reward thing is temporary Alex. I only started using Steemit recently, and was surprised to earn nearly $20 for a couple of my posts. But the last few haven't done great. Steem has certainly been performing poorly of late.
I love your videos. <3 I hope things improve with the rewards pool.
:3 Tenks
I personally just haven't been on Steemit for a couple of months after a car accident and an unrelated death in the family, so I haven't been reading and voting. I've noticed the same trend in the few posts I have done, though, and wondered the same things. Is the community shrinking? I dunno.
Stay tuned until the end of March at least, because if our next grant comes through, we'll be soliciting short stories for an SF anthology, and paying above-market rates.
Not that it matters short-term, but Greensboro Science Cafe is using our Earth Day session to examine a couple of carbon dividend proposals. https://www.facebook.com/events/1845262262413229/
I'd love to see some stories around those proposals, and will devote next month's IGMS column to the issue. I've never really referenced any Steemit stories (by any author) with those columns, which now seems like an oversight.
I'm sorry to hear about those tragedies in your life. :/
As the great Meat Loaf said, you took the words right outa my mouth. Still great to have the writing acknowledged with a real world reward (increasingly rare in the real world, if you know what I mean!) But it's a shame to see it drop off.
You are awesome @alexbeyman. Keep up the outstanding work. I will gladly contribute to the @alexbeyman basic income fund.
(´・ω・`)