How many $0.02 disappointments did successful authors overcome, before they had a winner?
Lets find out.
Who is a successful writer?
For this analysis, I have determined that a successful author is anyone that has at least 1 successful post. A successful post has $500 in SBD rewards. I have ignored the SP part of the reward, meaning that the actual rewards on the successful post had been at least $1,000.
Here is what I did:
- I parsed Steem blockchain for all users with at least 1M Vests
- I looked at each users blogging history, and the rewards for each post
- If the user had at least 1 post with $500+ SBD reward, he was in
It turns out that we have 280 authors in the "winners club".
It took them on average 13.81 posts to make it.
Average SBD portion of the reward was 1,452 SBD for the first winning post.
Here is a distribution of winning posts and their SBD payouts:
We can see that most of the successful authors made it fairly early in their Steemit careers, thanks to the novelty of the platform, and lack of competition.
Some of these had an advantage of being an already well known and reputable figure in the crypto community.
However, if we look at the bottom right section of the distribution, we can see the real heroes.
These are the people who saw their hard work turn into sub $2 posts time and time again, and they kept working hard and improving their game. Until one day, they made it.
Just look at that poor guy on the far right.
He had to write 265 posts before one of them made it.
Now, that is persistence.
If we remove the the extreme cases, the distribution looks like this:
When our authors finally scored, how big was their reward?
On average, the SBD portion of the reward was $1,452 SBD, or about $3,000 in total.
Here are the top 10:
| User | Winning Post N. | SBD Payout |
|---|---|---|
| steemdrive | 1 | $10,339 |
| infovore | 48 | $8,674 |
| jl777 | 2 | $8,579 |
| allasyummyfood | 2 | $8,546 |
| riensen | 6 | $6,749 |
| blockchaingirl | 1 | $5,236 |
| kyletorpey | 1 | $5,159 |
| benslayton | 1 | $4,635 |
| thisisbenbrick | 2 | $4,247 |
| brookdemar | 1 | $4,010 |
Note, that the payout only represents the SBD portion of a payout (50%).
Conclusion
It seems like despite the influx of new users, the number of daily posts is going down.
Whether people are giving up on their writing, or we're cutting down spam and plagiarism is unclear. Perhaps its both.
I am happy with the overall distribution. It shows that if you're good, you're going to make it - sooner than later.
If you love to write, my hopes are you won't give up too soon.
I think the takeaway from all of this is to keep calm, keep posting, and keep getting better!
I look back at my first few posts and cringe. Steemit is allowing me to find a voice and distinct writing style, and I think that alone is priceless. Getting rewarded for that with SP is the cherry on top. Your research clearly shows that sticking with it, getting better, and getting rewarded is a true feature of this system.
exactly.
stellabelle, thanks for chipping in. I feel honored to see a queen of Steemit reputation here.
Actually, you hold two first places. Just realized you're the top writer on Steemit and one of very early adopters.
The winning post was the first as well :)
@stellabelle how many posts did it take for you to achieve a big hit on other platforms?
I better get writing!!!!
Nice analysis! I've been wondering this myself. I know I had a few big hits right at the beginning; it seems I struck a chord that has been pretty elusive since. I think one minor problem is that curation rewards end after an article's first payout, which dis-incentivizes discovery of good articles that simply got "missed" the first time around.
Part 5 of my Game Theory series is up!
@biophil Your above point illustrates yet another reason that the current method of monetization may need a little tweaking . Posts are given 12 hours to make the cut before they're disincentivized. That's not even a full day and it seems like a very short window considering that the internet is a global network that operates on a 24/7 schedule. Given the fact your average person sleeps for 6 to 8 hours a day. It makes a post's window for discovery even smaller if you consider that some posts are made during off peak hours when most people are sleeping.
Yes, a global community might be getting ready for bed, sleep 8 hours, eat breakfast and shower, and get cut out by the time they turn on their computers. It should be 24 hours.
My thoughts exactly. I live on the western coast of the US in California and I have friends in both Australia and the UK. It's an -8:00 hour time difference from here to the UK and a +6:00 hour difference the other way to Australia. It's really not so unheard of in this day and age to have contact on a global scale with the click of a button and bridge the 14 hours as if we were all in the same room together.
I think the reason people are not writing as much because, well, to put it bluntly, unless you write about Steem or hammer out a 5,000 word essay, your post probably won't be recognized by the people with the most influence. After your #introduceyourself post makes a couple bucks, or a couple thousand, your options are pretty slim. Either write about Steem and get lucky, or write about what you want and no one will see it.
The #1 hashtag is steemit, by a longshot, and of course introduceyourself is also in the top 5.
The most popular posts are all about Steem:
And most days, the trending section is mostly centered around Steemit. Today there is a little more diversity, but it is the exception not the rule. Most people don't go to Reddit to post about Reddit. People don't login to Facebook to talk about Facebook. The things that are retweeted the most aren't really things that are related to Twitter.
I think you will see more posts when Steemit decides to branch out into different communities. When the trending page is full of diverse content, not just centered around a few of the same topics. When anyone, part of any community, has a chance to go trending even if their content isn't necessarily original, but is useful or entertaining, or brings any value what-so-ever to that specific community. Think about how a new user coming to Steemit feels... they see these huge essays and probably think they need to do that to bring value to the community. So instead of a short, but useful post in a topic they love, they crank out 2,000 words about Steem and then make $0.02 because no one has time to read 1,000,000 words per day and their post got missed.
The people with the most influence seem to upvote the content that is full of depth, but in all honesty, even if the content is good, I'm just not interested in reading a 5,000 word essay on the trending page. It's daunting. I just want to see good content, even if it's just someone sharing a link to another source, it's worth it if they discovered it and I was entertained by it. I don't think everything on Steemit needs to be original content, just like everything on Reddit is not original, just as everything on Facebook is not original, and everything on Twitter is not original. Some of it is, some of it isn't. But, at the end of the day, who am I to say what should be upvoted? I'm just a little guy. That's up to the people with the most SP. But I truly believe that there needs to be more power spread in every community. Whether its sports, gaming, memes, food, photography, art, beer, literature, technology, finance, whatever is interesting to you—it needs to be established as a community. All the little communities together will make Steemit interesting, and more people will post because the content is diverse—not because it's original and wordy.
I, for one, am going to do my best in establishing worth in #gaming, and #ps4, and I might jump into some #nhl posts. They won't get noticed right now, I'm sure of that... but that's what I like, so that's what I'll post. I just hope eventually a small community could be established with useful content someday.
My $0.005.
Steemit Circlejerk will come to an end...eventually
I see your point about the top page and Steemit. If you look at my blog, you will see that the only posts that got rewarded were ones about something related to Steemit.
But I do think this will come to an end. People will get bored of talking about Steemit, or we will simply run out of things to talk about.
I think gaming could be huge, and by building a reputation in your niche, you are getting ready for massive success when the shift comes.
Furthermore, I overlooked whales talk about stopping upvoting Steemit posts.
Also, we are currently working on some experimental discovery mechanisms for Steemit that would help people find all the great content that is slipping trough the cracks, as well as offload some of the pressure from whales (they will still be required to put a final stamp of approval to get on the frontpage, but the curation up to the level where they can see great content will be crowdsourced).
On Original Content
I like the fact that Steemit strives to be about original content. Its what differentiates it from other social networks. I think its a unique feature and a pretty cool one.
Its fascinating to me, how the obsession with original content came to be from the community. There was never any rule written on what can and can't be posted on Steemit. It just materialized as a belief from the early adopters. It is a part of our "company culture" now.
I agree with most of your post. One thing I'd like to expand on is original content. I just want to be clear that I don't oppose original content, I just don't think it is a necessity to promote discussion. I think any content that gets users to engage in discussion is good content, whether it's original or sharing a link. Obviously stealing content is NOT good, and I'm not a fan of copying and pasting an entire article, but I don't see anything wrong with sharing a link to something that helps users engage in a discussion. I suppose I'm thinking of it more like a message board, I use to run my own and plenty of topics were links to another source, with a small amount of commentary by the author of the thread, and those were sometimes the best discussions.
My overall point is, I think something that is engaging and promoting discussion is better to me than a long winded original content essay. However, I suppose that depends on the community, if Steemit is going to embrace smaller communities as cogs in the bigger wheel, then those communities will end up deciding on their own what is worthy of upvoting and what is not. We are a long way from there, but I can see that as the future of Steemit.
If Steemit wants to embrace the original content aspect of it fully, perhaps its better off being a direct competitor to Disqus rather than social media such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Have sites embed Steemit as their comment sections, and submit their content directly to Steemit.
This discussion is very interesting. My first post here was about a related topic - a "Steemit button" or "Steemit plugin" that could be implemented as a Wordpress plugin, for example. It would contain an upvote button and a comment section.
The problem is if the authors post all the content of their articles to the Steem blockchain, they will probably get problems with duplicate content. Search engines would ignore their posts on their blogs/websites because Steemit is much more popular.
So inevitably if Steem develops in a more website-agnostic solution (a blockchain based Disqus-Flattr hybrid) at least a part of these authors would post only a part of the content to the Steem blockchain - link, title and meta description, for example. That would not be bad however, it would be a bit more like Reddit, and it very probably would lead also to a more diverse authorship with more diverse topics.
I think diversity in content is GOOD! Anything to get Steemit on that track, I am on board with. I'm just getting bored of seeing thousands of posts about Steemit.
First, nice discussion you two are having.
Well, more or less, having non-original content linked to if it's an honest attempt at showcasing something interesting and not unethical, then I can get behind it. We are surely on the same page with not wanting copy/paste articles with low quality or non-existent comments by the reposter who is just trying to get some cash. Stealing content is also what none of us that really care about the "company culture" here wants.
I think you are right. This is going to be hard to predict. The future is funny like that. We users don't have the final say in how things proceed and some decisions may turn out to be fantastic and others disastrous. We can only wait and see and hope this project can be so lucky as to have these problems in the future.
Cheers
Its fascinating to me, how the obsession with original content came to be from the community. There was never any rule written on what can and can't be posted on Steemit. It just materialized as a belief from the early adopters. It is a part of our "company culture" now.
Absolutely agreed. I absolutely can't take the credit for it, but I can say I tried to make my voice heard on that subject to the tune of thousands of lines of text over the last 3 weeks. In hindsight it might have been a waste of time because I could have been posting content and trying to gain a reward for my time like so many others, but I feel this will pay off in the long run with a community I can be proud to be a part of.
It probably will be an ongoing fight to keep the "company culture" thinking along these lines once the influx of new users hits unmanageable sizes, but sowing the seeds now makes sense and I'm very glad I'm not a lone voice!
Stay original, Steemit!
I've always been against the obsession with original content. I think it came about in large part because many of the early adopters of Steem were themselves bloggers who didn't like the competition for visibility, attention and rewards.
In my opinion, links which provoke discussion (where the discussion is the original content) are great, and people who are great at finding and selecting the most relevant and discussion-generating links should be rewarded. Of course I love the bloggers too. We can do both.
Hi @smooth
I've noticed that you have supported a different view and I think that is great. I agree there should be the freedom to do both. Where I find the issue, and you may not agree, is when that content that is being shared is more or less copy and paste, no real value added by the reposter and the content owner of what is linked is unaware that his content is being used to make a profit.
I agree that curation in this sense is surely worthy of reward, but I feel it needs to be done responsibly and not lazily.
A month or two ago it might have been ok to "steal" some content due to a lack of quality content and real rewards. But now we can and should do better. IMO, it was not ideal to have certain "curators" of content get handsomely rewarded while someone else could post the exact same thing and get nothing.
The content was not king. It was the kingmaker(whale nepotism) that made the content king. On top of that it was pilfered and profited from in a less than ideal way. Just because FB and other social media sites rip off the content providers, doesn't mean we must follow their lead or die.
https://steemit.com/music/@thisisbenbrick/can-steemit-and-the-blockchain-kill-spotify
This is what I feel this site can cultivate ideally. The idea that content creators, not the middle man, get a greater share of the rewards. When I see a curator getting the immediate rewards for supposedly giving the creator more exposure I get ill to my stomach. That business model deserves to die and if I have any say in the matter it will die.
Having been a professional content creator for most of my life I really can't stand to see the artist getting the short end of the stick. Sorry to go on and on about this matter.
Cheers
@smooth LOL, I love the "(where the discussion is the original content)" part of your post. I have found myself on many occasions more engaged with the comments section than the original post as well.
Anyone who denies the thrill of being pulled into a good comments thread is also denying themselves half the fun of a healthy social media outlet for open discussion and debate. ;-)
Original content is king on Steemit!
However. Just because you made an original article does not mean it will be well received.
Keep trying, You WILL succeed if you set your mind to it.
Thank you klye :)
getting exposure through connections too.
@teamsteem made me more aware of your artwork, and through that connection, i found your NSFW article, which I loved. Social networking seems to be key in exposure...
It is a social network, after all ;)
thank you. everyone new here who needs encouragement: Roma wasn't built in a day, neither was your following and reputation. Keep posting good stuff and someone will notice sooner than you think!
Good post...although this means I should have made it to now... and trying harder/more will likely not help :(
Anyways, not giving hope maybe one of those below will hit it late (in the 30 days not in the first 24/12h):
Beyond the STEEM Whitepaper – 1. Blogging and Curation Rewards Fund; Steem Backed Dollars Creation
Beyond the STEEM Whitepaper –2. Where the money come from; New Users DO NOT Increase the Value of Steem (yet)
Beyond Trading – The Medium Term Fundamentals. 1. – 7.29.2016
Solution to the Curation Rewards
Fact of the Day! “93.44% of ALL (Liquid) STEEM comes from…”
Persistence and variety seems to be key. From the second i entered Steemit, I posted twice a day: once very early in the morning for US time zone, and then, really late like 2 am, to catch others in a different time zone.
I also began massive experimentation. I soon learned that my more selfish-oriented posts didn't do as well as the ones that were helpful in nature.
But, then, I focused on the Secret Writer that is aimed at giving others money, so, that model, is of course more in demand because traction is hard when you first start. I recommend dense writing, very detailed, and trying variety. But being consistent will generally do the trick, as long as the quality is good. Posting one liners is really not worth anything here. This is not Reddit, and I think people are realizing that now.
I am glad that it is not reddit. Reddit forums have too many rules. It's best to have one main philosophy, and if that is originality, all the better!
Speaking for myself, last week was pretty busy in meatland and there was no time to write.
I got back to it today, but at least so far, the reception has been nothing spectacular (also vaguely mind boggling that the first post is worth 25x more .. it is funny (or so I like to think) and all that, but todays' post is much more valuable)
Too soon to give up though ..
This is an awesome analysis, @furion! Well done. I guess one should not give up till their 250th post. :)
I noticed the post number went way down after Hard Fork 12. Seems to be have been very effective. There's much more quality stuff nowadays.
@liberosist After the last fork people who post more than roughly once every 4 to 6 hours averaged over a 24 hour period have their post rewards reduced. That change right there stopped the post shotgunning effect where would would just post 200+ posts a day and hope for a hit. ;-) It also helped to reduce the massive post clutter which would bury posts before people would even see them, making them harder to find for upvoting even if they were quality posts.
@furion: neat stats man and great idea. I think the dip in no. of posts on a daily basis is also due to the changes after the new fork where if you post more than 4 times a day you get a penalty on the payout so people posting less often.
Can you share the source files for the stats? Curios where I was in there..
But bottom line for everyone reading this. Never give up! Keep at it and it'll pay off.
Thanks!
The number of posts going down is probably due to new spam guard measures they have implemented. For myself, I just keep posting original content like I would on any other social media site. If one of them gets lucky with upvotes and $ then it is a bonus. For my photos, even getting .50 cents is far more than other places where I basically give away the content. Just keep posting and have fun.
Exactly! Then, you can start helping to curate other people's content. Make friends, too. It's silly to whine when there are massive opportunities to make money, especially with the Marketplace on the horizon....think two steps ahead of everyone else....
That's a great attitude.... I am getting pennies for my comments, but translates to much more in that Steem Power. Amazing.
All articles in which I spent 5 hours to a week did not gain votes. The article that I wrote as a joke for 30 minutes gained $ 800. It is sad. Not writing new articles a week
Where did I rank? I seem to recall about 20 posts before i had a successful one but could be worng.
User venuspcs had a payout 3640 on his 17th post. On the leaderboard you're 18th by top payouts.
Sweet jesus that is awesome!
So persistence is the key. You may have some luck, but being persistent and slowly growing your post value assures you that you will always have nice paid articles. If you have just one successful article due to luck, you may not have one again.
@furion The term lottery was used a lot to describe the "winning" posts on Steemit that made it to the top of the trending list. It's good to see that the math begs to differ. While I'm sure there's a few outliers as you pointed out, things it would seem are beginning to balance out more now that the user base has grown in size and there's enough data to make an educated analysis rather than a wild speculation. :-)
Great information and visuals. But it does seem support a problem. We find ourselves with less content (trending), but potentially better quality. The factor of time begins to work against us. As valuable content rapidly becomes stale and unavailable, due to the current design of the system, we begin to erode the overall pool of content. This is the opposite of what people want.
Can we find a way to keep good content in the system longer, by establishing some reward for authors and curators beyond 30 days? Shouldn't good content always be available to the community? Equally so, shouldn't authors be rewarded by the longevity of their work when it remains sought-after and therefore adds continuous value to the platform?
I think this is one of the most important 'upgrades' Steemit can make to strategically position itself for long-term success!
Actually:
I endorse the idea whole-heartedly. Steemit's "Iliad" or "Moby Dick" deserve a chance as well, IMO. Some works of art and literature simply don't reveal their value until decades and centuries later.
I am sorry for the scary-looking thing that happened before the edit. Is it me or Steemit?
This is very informative! I'm still a little fish in the sea but I'm not giving up just because I haven't hit my home run yet.
Great analysis there @furion. It was a motivational post, thanks.
Well, I am trying to hit on top list and for that purpose, I've been working hard from 3-5 days. I made some quality posts but they weren't noticed OR maybe I wasn't creative enough to catch attention of steem members. I hope that I'd be able to reach to my goal shortly. I am dedicated enough to do it and I'm sure that whales will notice my work sooner than later.
Thanks again for this motivational post. It helped me in increasing my motivation and dedication. Love you all steemers. Spread the love regardless of who you are, friends.
Who is the user who posted 265 times before getting a reward ?
Someone who is doing pretty well right now actually...
No more insights ?
ok, ready? its @tuck-fheman
Wait, I shouldn't upvote that, it ruins the suspense.
Building up the suspense...
I will buy some popcorn. This is better than hollywood movies.
4 out of his last 10 posts were over $1,000 in reward :)
I don't have a bot or script to check everyone out ;)
I guess it's a matter of having an original content, quality content and some luck with whales noticing you. I had some luck with a post I made about marijuana.
Now it's even harder than before to get noticed. Whales are not up voting as much as before.
Upvote,if you're interested in convert SBD to cc
see this:
https://steemit.com/money/@emmarokt/hwkko-anonymous-credit-card-rechargeable-with-bitcoins-sbd-to-cc-atm-withdrawal
Really?
You're on the money! I wrote 11 posts before I had a winner. It takes some time to get a feel for the platform, how to format/compose and find a topic that will resonate. And it's surprising how many hours are required to write a winner that is a winner because it is well written...
once you get a winner, though, you're hooked.
I think that if one keeps on doing what he does, eventually he WILL get success. I mean that just makes sense doesn't it? Somebody, somewhere, is bound to notice you! Keep steeming people!! :)
you're correct. Passion goes a a very very long way too.
Just look at @andrarchy and @roelandp. Those are my heroes, especially @roelandp who created the very first male makeup tutorial. He's a black swan.
Indeed he is! :)
👍nice information @furion
Thanks for this super informative post. I've been wondering about the same issue, and you made it easy for me to just read your analysis. So thank you! I will definitely bookmark this, and also post it in my Steemit Facebook group that I founded, so that more people can benefit from it. Everyone of you guys is very welcome to join too. https://www.facebook.com/groups/397766613731804/
The understatement
If Result inFail attempt
Please Wash, Rinse & Repeat 🚿🛁🛁🛁⏩⏪
When I saw that the number of new users per day is now 'only' about 700 and that the number of posts per day was declining I was a bit concerned. I speculate that there is more reasons for the fewer posts than just a few people giving up. (1) perhaps people are now spending more time on improving posts before publishing on the blockchain. (2) perhaps some people where just posting material that they had in their bullpen, and now they have to create brand new material.
How come @stellabelle is not among top 10 ? From what I have seen, she is consistently making good amount.
Hi @furion. Being a data geek myself, what tool did you use to gather and present the data? Tableau? Have you ever worked in R or Python for data processing? Thanks.
I my view, the Steemers are more interesting, that have continious success on the plattform. Think of @piedpiper or @infovore . In my view, they are all creating something like micro magazines, as I explain here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@capitalism/captalism-1-will-steemit-become-a-platform-for-100-000-micro-magazines
Hi! Great statistics! And if you like numbers you can also see my post about introductions: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@lukmarcus/mega-statistics-and-analysis-for-top-50-most-popular-steemit-introductions-introduceyourself
I've seen it and upvoted yesterday :)
Giving up is no option here. I will try to give as much to the community as I can and even more
Funny how mach peapols gready!!!!Yust i dont understand psihology qr whats hapen its funny.STEEMIT its coin! To make coin you mast to use power on some algoritam and with CPY GRF -grafic card depens on algo and dificylity on blockchain you get coin as filal result.Yust simple this mathematic dont posible to make simple.Just some write on facefook write for montly payment all cane to MINE or WRITE .This part mining its for noubies who learl how to make cash bat i dont see how to MINE dont WRITE this curency.Ifainded finaly and regylary normal way how to MINE bat need me some time to translate from Russian to my and ENG and i lyse my time to some learn how to mine steemit with using CPU.Sory today its my bad day.
@furion great article. I do agree steemilt does reward people who are oryginal and create value for the community.
Wow! This post makes me feel so much better. I'm being supported by my company while I try to "grind" my way onto SteemIt and it's a lot tougher and uglier than anticipated -- which my company says is actually a good thing (and is therefore throwing even more money at Steem).
And with your graph, it looks like I should be able to get some traction during the 30 days where I'm going to be supported . . . .
http://wisdom.digital
This post makes me feel so optimistic! I hope that this one puts you into the winner's club :-)
Interesting work here, thank you. Very useful content.
Thanks for making this post! This was really helpful
My passion for writing is at a all time high and giving up is not an option. Great share!
I appreciate your comment and agree!
Great post thanks for this! I am in no sense a writer and I am actually dyslexic so steemit is tough for me sometimes. However I have written a ton of m own genuine content and I think I am getting better. You decide @bitminter Thanks
This is excellent. I've had a couple of hits, and tons of misses, but I'm not giving up.
nice infographics. I have a few $0.02 and some $0.00 plus some more positive - still not much but I'm still going.
The chart looks strikingly familiar:
Looks like an impulse wave. Would be interesting to see how closely the price correlates with global post frequency.
Great research!
To give people an idea of how far steemit has come have a look at the post and more importantly cryptobro's comment!! he works for a major investment firm and it looks as if they are looking to move to blockchain technology!! with the social platform of steemit the investment doors have been blown wide open!
Steemit may have potential investment by major investment firms!