I tend to have my head in the clouds, maybe its the entrepreneur in me. When I joined Steemit 5 weeks ago I, like many others dreamed of hitting it big on here. But is that the right mindset? Here are my thoughts of the night.....welcome to the inside of my head....
The Excitement and The Curse of the Cryptocurrency Dream...
Everyone who invests in cryptocurrency tends to think the same way. They want huge gains, hopefully by tomorrow if not sooner. I know that when I started buying crypto initially I really didn't believe in what I was buying. I bought because my friend did. I wanted to hit it rich like everyone else dreams about.
It took months worth of research and trying to understand blockchain technology for the whole thing to finally "click" in my head. I went from thinking that crypto was a fad, to believing that we are witnessing a technological revolution that will impact every sector of every industry in the coming years.
I felt the same way when I joined here on Steemit. It took some courage for me to join here, having never written content before. I lurked for months reading around the site trying to decide if it was right for me. But when I did join, I made the mistake of looking at the trending page like most people do, and I saw some pretty mediocre posts paying out hundreds of dollars. I thought, if they can do it? Surely I could too right?
I own my own small business online but I have also dedicated more than 40 hours a week to this platform for the last 5 weeks, saving all the rest of the work I have to do for my business until the late night hours. When I joined here I was so hopeful, almost unrealistically about how Steemit might change my financial life, everything else has gone by the wayside.
I made a couple posts (that look horrible now that I scroll through reading them, including my introductory post) and I got some upvotes, which I was super excited about. A week ago I got some REALLY big upvotes (for me anyways.) It was like hitting the lottery. My heart was pounding with excitement.
And Then I Started Dreaming...
I started to day dream about Steemit's future success, and my future success. I would scroll through the Steemit tag page and ignore anything negative I saw, whether it was posts about how many "shit posts" there are on the trending page, or other criticisms. Surely I am no one on this website, I can't do anything about any of this, why read about the negativity? Is that going to motivate me to continue on here when I know how long the road is ahead and the bumps that will take place on the way to mass adoption?
I have a goal to accrue 1000 SP by August, which will mark my 6 month anniversary here on Steemit. It's a lofty goal for me. I will be buying some along the way when I can afford it, but I would like to earn at least half of it. I will NOT take any profits out of my payouts. Everything will be going to buy Steem Power, or modestly used for voting bots to gain visibility.
I will be spending all of my free time working here on Steemit to work on blog posts, and commenting, and reading. Reading takes up the most of my time, as I do not comment on everything I read. I save my comments for when I have something to say. I do not want to spam comments all over peoples posts, hoping for an up-vote. I want to meet new people, and encourage others.
And while all of this excites the "inner entrepreneurial" part of me, it also scares me a bit. If I continue on my path at the rate I am going in 6 months time I will have spent around 1000 hours on this platform. I used to buy crypto and store it away safely and go on with my day. But Steemit is a double obsession, it now not only takes up all of my time, and every extra cent I have from my job will be used to buy Steem Power. All this effort and who knows what the future of Steemit will be in a year.
But I guess that is what all ideas start out as, right? Especially businesses. Nobody opens a restaurant and knows for a fact that with all the work and money they spend that it will be a sure success? No one knows what life will bring, regardless of the amount of effort one puts into something....
So, I am rambling a bit. I tend to do that. I guess what I am asking is, is it better to be more realistic about Steemit's shortcomings? Should I think that this whole thing is a gamble? Or should I continue with my head in the clouds thinking that Steemit is going to change the world as we know it and by the time I accumulate 1000 SP I will be far ahead of the rest of the population when they decide to jump in? And at the very least, I will have hopefully met some really great people along the way.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this! Would you leave me a comment below? Are you an eternal Steemit optimist or a skeptical Steemian? I am looking foward to connecting with you! Steem on!
I'd say go ahead and be a dreamer - Steemit is obviously something you're passionate about, so go after it!
I was passionate about homebrewing, I put in the work, and now I'm the head brewer at a small microbrewery.
Even if things don't end up how you want them, the experience and challenge of going after your goal will be worth it!
That is awesome @jasonvincion! In my heart, I am a dreamer! Speaking of brewing, one of my friends decided to open a brewery many years ago after just taking a trip to Europe and studying brewing, and now he has one of the most popular breweries in the region, (its called Pipeworks) So, yes, some people do accomplish their dreams, i hope to be one of them someday :)
Im right there with you. I converted my sbd to steem last night as I saw sbd dropping. I should hit the 1000sp shortly. While I love steemit I'm seeing that it only works if people see your posts and like them. most of mine go unseen and make just under a dollar. I'm ok with that because I just want to build a following of 20 consistent voters or so that support each other. I've met great people here so I think it will happen. When it does I will return to long form posting. Right now I'm using zappl and it takes 2 minutes per post lol
I think that the communities aspect will help with that once they implement it. Right now all the posts are all diluted and its hard to come across new content. Have you heard about the communities feature they are currently working on?
Thats awesome that youll hit 1000 SP soon! I have my goal of August, but of course it would be nice to hit it before then.
Great achievement!
My posts also get unnoticed and most of the ime have a payout below 10cents. But this is a major improvement, cause a month ago my payout per post was 0.
I am also new on steemit. I just realized that it is not about the content if you do not have visibility. Thank you for the advice. I followed you. Please kindly follow me back.
You have to dream and at the same realize the reality.
"Someday a whale will come and give a big upvote. After that, everything will be changed. " Well, I don't think like that. If whale gives upvote, that's fine.
Six months ago I didn't know there is a platform like steemit. What I believe is that, what you are doing now will help you get to next next level.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, as always @rezoanulvibes!
I do understand that you take the business approach here and in some part of Steemit this suits well.
Treath your followers as customers, investing time and money in it hoping that it will pay off.
Comparing the time invested with the turn over or maybe some kund of ROI.
100 steem could be worth much more after 5 months.
I won’t be claiming that I’m not here for the miney because the money probably conviced us all to take the plunge.
But in contrast to a business view you can step out when the fun stops!
Maybe we would have to see the money as a nice side effect!
You make some valid points as usual @fullcoverbetting! Thats right, you never know, one of our posts might be only worth a couple of dollars today, in a couple years..who knows! I think thats part of the Steemit dream too :)
Hi @emmyem84, I love your authenticity and willingness to embrace vulnerability.
I was and am bit in the same boat about being successful on Steemit, so I dropped both those to "How can I best serve this community?"
Now any upvotes, following, or resteems are a bonus and not a "Must Have."
I spend around 2 hours a day on Steemit, because I love writing and supporting, the rest of my time is spent following my passion and heart.
And my definition of success, you may ask? The warmth of a person's heart! Nothing more, nothing less.
Happy Steeming, from sunny Bali.
Wow, Im jealous! Ive always wanted to visit Bali! Maybe I will soon :) I like your thoughts on serving the community. I tend to think of money being the only form of success but I should shift my focuses to being successful in other ways :)
Yes, focus on the quality of the service you give and the money will follow!
Bali awaits your arrival too!
Our morning view from Heaven in Bali
Your using this https://steemfollower.com/?r=12904
Right?
Just go on there upvote a few posts every few hours and your posts will be upvoted relative to how much you have upvoted through there. Completely free and it builds up fast.
Hey! Actually no, I havent started using steemfollower yet. I am going to look into it soon :)
You're doing great. Yeah, we probably all need to calm down a little, but it's good to get excited! I am excited about the ideas I have even though I don't know if they will be appreciated as much as I think they should be ;-) I've been diligently converting all my payouts to SP thinking I would just stick with that, then last night it occurred to me that my husband had some Ethereum sitting around that he didn't know what to do with, so I sweet talked him into "investing" in me! Yay! Cheers
Thanks once again for commenting @orangina! That is awesome, and a great idea....maybe instead of gifts for the rest of the year my husband can buy me some SP instead..its the gift that keeps on giving! LOL!
Right? Too bad I didn't think of it sooner! He had just a fraction of a coin sitting there gathering dust, so I gave him something to do with it. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the next opportunity!
I think we all start here with many expectations and plans, then we realize that it is not so easy, you have to be lucky too, but I'm optimistic in steemit, this is a social network but you also have to see it as a business, and despite sometimes we do not win what we think we should go on the right track the blockchain is what will dominate in the future and we are already in the only we should continue to "mine", and we are also getting to know interesting people in the process, I hope that you will soon accumulate your 1000 SP 💵💻
I think you are right! I think a lot of people will join Steemit thinking that its a social media site, and will be disappointed when they realize that its a blogging website. I hope that the implementation of the "Communities" on Steemit will help with that. Many people will try and fail, we just have to hope that we are the ones that keep trying and succeed :)
I'm sure that's the way it will be, my dear friend
This post is very refreshing. Thank you for sharing your thought. It is so truthful and very encouraging. Success comes with hard-working, determination, sacrifice, and helping others. You are all that. Thank you for your motivational words and Good luck on all your endeavors. I follow you , I appreciate if you can kindly follow me back.
Hey @vital888, thank you for your kind words! I have in fact followed you, but I would warn against asking people to follow you in your comments, as it usually results in the opposite happening.(and more so, downvoting in some cases!) Your comment alone is enough for people to follow you!
Thank you Emmyyem84 for the advise. i indeed read your article about error we make as new user.
my advice would be if your a newbie, hit 1000 posts as quickly as possible of QUALITY POSTS, after that you’ll see yourself earning at least a minimum of one dollar if not more than that.
But I prefer to be realistic, because it doesn’t shatter morale when you don’t meet expectations. Which I think is very important in a platform like this where you have to be consistent even when your losing.
I think from your post that you feel passionate about what you are doing here. So keep planting seeds, each post is a seed and so is each comment. We all have our reasons for being here and most will probably give up before they reach any real milestone.
My goal is 90 days of daily posts and comments so to me that is realistic. I love that I get to express myself and if I make money then it's worth committing to just 90 days. I think if you give it 6 months you will reach your goals. You decide what is realistic to you not anyone else.
Yea, I think that a lot of people will give up....because most people are not bloggers. Its going to be interesting to see what changes are going to be made here over the next year or so. I have a feeling that Steemit will kind of shift towards being a more casual social media platform, rather than a blogging platform. Thanks so much for stopping by and reading my post, I appreciate it!
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