That's stupid.
Yeah I know that seems stupid, it's kind of the point of the site right? But here's the thing; people are more and more creating posts for the purpose of getting paid, trying to cater to the interests of the ever popular whales. And when we do that, it creates a narrow band of topics that almost everyone posts on. We become bootleggers trying to capitalize on the success of others by looking or acting similar, which kills originality and diversity of topics. And why the hell should you care about that? Well, keep reading.
But I wanna make money!
Yeah, but are you? Are you making money with your attempts to copy the work of others? Is your "Nkie" or "Guccy" style knockoff post getting as much interest as the originals? No, of course it isn't.
Maybe it goes a few votes, sure. Sells a couple of copies down in chinatown, maybe makes a few bucks, but nowhere near as much as those others. Why? Well probably a few reasons.
1. You're not interested in this topic, you're just trying to copy it so that you can make money. This lack of interest is almost always gonna be apparent in your writing.
2. You might be making stuff up. Not all of us have stories of whirlwind adventure or great economic success to share. Not all of us have Crypto expertise or the knowledge needed to comment on the technical aspects of Steem or blockchains. So it's tempting to either copy someone and change details or fabricate a story to make your posts seem more interesting. But this is also obvious in most cases.
3. You bore the whales. This is the big one.
What do you mean, I bore the whales?
I mean that whales sit here and they look through steem for interesting content. They upvote things that they think might draw more people in or widen the demographic or just stuff they enjoy. You know what doesn't do ANY of those things? The 8th rendition of some message that a trending topic already talked about. You think they like coming on to steemit and seeing the same crap posted over and over? You think that fills them with the desire to throw money into your grinning face? No. It doesn't. It makes them scroll right past you in the search for something worth their dang time.
So what do I do?
You stop worrying about making money and start talking about stuff you want to. If you make a good post about a subject you actually give a shit about, there's a hell of a lot more reason for people to look at it. Stop acting like steem is a job and something you're entitled to a payment from.
THIS IS NOT A JOB. STOP ACTING LIKE A PAYCHECK IS OWED TO YOU
Instead, treat this like a normal forum and post about things you wanna say, subjects you wanna talk about, and comment on things you like. If you do that, then something weird might happen. You might find other people who like the same thing! Yeah, weird huh? And you might get upvoted a lot by those people! You might even make some money for doing nothing but talk about things you like! Steemit isn't designed as some sort of bizarre marketplace of catering to the needs of a handful of users. It's a place to make quality posts and maybe get rewarded for them.
And that's what the mindset should be.
"I'm gonna carefully craft a knockoff of a popular post I saw earlier today and make a million dollars like some sort of Chinese bootleg master!"
NO
"I'm gonna make some friends and talk about what I want! Maybe I'll even get some money out of it!"
YES!
So me, I'm gonna go post about medical school, anime, Table Top RPGS, and my personal issues. Will that make any money?
i hear you @ecto. but it's hard to ignore the fact that the reason why we are here in #steemit is mostly because we want to get some sort of a monetary value out of what we post. but i totally agree with you. sometimes thinking of the rewards before you can even begin writing something of value clouds my mind and ending up writing useless stuff. so yes, i'm taking your advice.
Nice post, I just keep posting and commenting lol
I hope somebody will hear your idea and start follow.
I can not stress enough that users should not make posts to just get paid. Users need to generate quality blogs and eventually other users will notice and the bloggers will gain the credit that they need.
I think write to get paid is the most important different between here and reddit.
people come here, they want to get paid and Steemit want to pay them too
Yeah, but people are letting that desire to get paid overwhelm them and, as a result, they produce bad content and then get angry it doesn't reward them. That's the problem. If you go in expecting to make big profits, you have a 99.99% chance of being disappointed.
Interesting post. I have been urging people to take a long range point of view and to think over the long run. I love to write and I sort of feel like do what you love and the money will follow. I think my post https://steemit.com/steemit/@iamwne/persistence-approach-to-steemit-a-practical-guide makes some of the same points.