My view on the future of Steemit and suggestions how we can improve as a community.

Steemit has become an integral part of my life, it is very important to me. The last 3 months I did a lot of research, worked on building ties to the community and providing value to it. Slowly I have been building up reputation, putting in about 8 hours a day to hone my skills even further.

The last 8 days however I had taken a longer break to focus on the piece I present to you today. It is a topic I think is important to discuss and I wanted to provide you , my reader with the best version possible.

There are things happening on Steemit and i am not always sure if others notice it as well. I think at least @ned should see it coming. I might be wrong here, but i think that most things that i will talk about will make sense.

Right now you need about 250-300 SBD to fund a post and have it reach the high spots on the trending page. Some people can afford that, especially if they truly believe in their posts. Others like my self cannot as we just do not have the income to spare or have not gathered such earnings here on the platform yet. In my time here I have made a total of 50 SBD earnings in my 3+months on this platform.
This amount would not bring me even close to any good rank on the trending page.

You might ask yourself, “what are your concerns?”

Well, let me break it down for you. This system allows people with $ to dominate the trending page. At the moment, the amount you need is around 250SBD. What if Steemit goes mainstream? I mean, what if more companies decide it's time to do some promotion on Steemit? This would be awesome for the platform, but what about the trending page? I think the minimum will be set on a far higher number than 250SBD required right now, this will make it a lot harder to nearly impossible for most people to ever hit the trending page unless you get a lot of whale votes

If you want to be successful on steemit you need to lay a solid foundation. One good way to do this is to write a solid introduction post under the tag of #introduceyourself. Make it clear in this post who you are and why you came to the platform. Sell yourself without over selling. It's your first impression and just like in th real world first impressions go a long way.

The second very important post is your first content post on the platform. Many people botch this because they do not research the platform before posting. You need to understand that this first post sets the tone of your work here. It is basically the first sentence you speak. Make sure what you have to say counts and is memorable.

The second post is the post that has to hit the trending page. Most people might believe (i do) that when you hit the trending page, your post will get the most views and upvotes/comments/followers. Your post will be seen by people who would normally never notice you and if you write something really good, people will appreciate that and write comments about your post. This might get you some followers that could upvote your posts sometimes which would cause you to earn the money you have invested back over a period of time. Although this is not a guarantee that anyone can give us, it is certainly a possibility.

While it's semi-possible now by investing 250SBD in a post, it will be close to impossible to do it once a trending page spot will be alot more expensive. Companies promoting their product or just rich people with good or mostly low quality posts would dominate the page. In my opinion, this would make the trending page completely useless.

Double standards

As mentioned above using upvote bots to promote a post can help you hit the trending section. However i do have to say that these bots might be the reason that people will stop writing quality posts. I think that the upvote bots are not the problem, it's the people using them for low quality posts. Also it's not just the post quality, it's also the frequency of the same people boosting their posts to the trending page. The bots are not the problem, it's human nature. When said person smells the smell of $$$, they stop caring about other things. How much should they care if they are making $ anyway?

Since we can't change human nature, the bot owners could think about changing the bots. Most people will not care about what anyone says about them as long as they are being successful and are earning money.

What can we do?

Here are some ideas I came up with and believe to be viable options. I am hoping that the people in platform management actually get to see this and might find the ideas useful.

1. Bots should not allow the same person's posts more than x times a week.
2. Bots could have a rule that they will not vote for a post once an x amount of bots have already voted on it.
3. Maybe the platform could have moderators, trusted and self-proven whales which would think in the best interest of the platform. These could be assigned by @ned and they would have powers to moderate the trending page.
4. People who don't have enough money to invest and get to the trending page could use some help. Maybe the platform could offer users a boost once they have been actively using this platform for a x amount of months?
5. Something like #4 but without rewards. A post would be boosted so people can see them for an xx amount of hours/day(s) but the author would not earn any $ from it. (This could prevent abuse of this system maybe?)

Like many here I truly love this platform and want to see it thrive and expand.

We all spend a lot of hours on this platform which in itself shows a certain commitment to it. It provides us with ample opportunity one can make new friends, some from places far away one would otherwise never would have met. One can make a lot of money and one can learn a lot here as people from all walks of life post here. All this makes this platform valuable to us and most who use it love to be here and have interest in maintaining it. As we are a community and this is a community based platform everyone's opinion or concerns should be worth a looking into. there will always be those who destroy the hand that feeds them , the leaches and users but they are not in the majority and it is up to us to make sure that they do not gain traction.
For example i am really committed to the platform. I know 3 months does not look like much in the grand picture of things, but I have been putting in my 8 hours a day. i have also worked on helping others on the platform and have in return been helped and learned from others. This is how community should be and I really want to do more, be more of service in future .

My family owns a domain registration/hosting/dedicated server company where I am more than just a simple employee. I could give away free domain registrations and hostings for projects that will help steemit grow. Hell, I could even do something with servers which some witnesses could be interested in.

As soon as our new website is done, there is a lot I could see myself doing here for the steemit community. I'm sure there are al ot more people like me, they should have a shot at getting more exposure for what they could offer for the platform. how are we to find each other and make things happen if it is so hard to become visible and because of this so much opportunity is lost.

Thank you for reading

In closing I would like to thank you the reader for bearing with me. I know some of you might have differing opinions , or ideas that might compliment my own. I would love to discuss this with you . Please feel free to do so in the comment section. Once again thank you for your interest and support.