My First 3 months on Steemit! (Do's and Dont's for minnows)

My first 3 months on Steemit.com has been like a roller coaster journey, from studying the nitty gritty of it, to frustrating days when my content was not being viewed or upvoted by people, to one day earning 200$ on my Dsound upload. Now I wanted to check if I can really convert and withdraw this money into Indian rupees? Yes I did.

I did. I traded my SBD for BTC and then got it transferred to my Indian bank account, through Zebpay. I have been paying my restaurant bills through steemit money lately. I do not claim to be an expert, I am still learning and dizzy of the roller coaster, but maybe some new comers could benefit by reading this article.

My friend @dpatcher introduced me to steemit. We in India are going through a stressful financial turmoil since 2016 and here he was, withdrawing hard cash from the bank, all by being a part of steemit. Cryptocurrency is the present and the future and the whole idea of earning cryptocurrency by posting your content on blockchain seemed fascinating to me . I am a digital nomad / writer / filmmaker myself and steemit looked like a great platform to create original content and also get paid for it. After 3 months, a lot of my beliefs about steemit has changed.

Here I leave you with some tips that could make it easier to understand the steemit community.

Introduce Yourself - I see a lot of newbies avoiding this step and they prefer to be anonymous and in the background. Dpatcher recommended me to write an introductory post and I got a fairly encouraging response. I remember @theaustrainguy, a doctor who gave me a 3$ upvote and also my first Steem Backed Dollar. 2-3 SBD seems like a small amount but it's not, you can do wonders with that and hence if you are new, I advice you to post on #introduceyourself to get that initial boost.

Participate - This is the key word 'Participation' that is what steemit is all about. It is very depressing when your first few initial posts go unnoticed. I had uploaded my film's trailer and got 0.30 $ and 15 viewers out of it. I was losing patience and enthusiasm about steemit. I saw all the stuff that was trending, people with thousands of followers and 100's of $ on each of their posts. Where was I going wrong? I read a lot of articles written by the whales and witnesses to understand the game and to make my ride a bit easier.

Contribute to the Community - I realised that however good my content was, it was not relevant for the steemit community. It is important to understand what steemit stands for. Even I thought of uploading inspirational quotes and sunset pictures everyday but it does not work that way. Steemit community respects content that takes some time and effort to bring into existence. Contribute in whatever way you can, its a great place to explore your hobbies and hidden talents. I am an amateur bedroom DJ and I decided to mix a track about Blockchain and upload it on Dsound. Even my friend Dpatcher had got recognised and paid well for his music. So I decided to give one last shot.

Secrets of Steemit - I was aware of this quote from the tech world "He who has the Bots, Calls the Shots." So once I uploaded my first track on Dsound, I used my 2 SBD to use bots and certain resteeming services like @resteemable , @hottopic , @superbot etc. I am not a techie and also do not promote the use of bots, but let's be honest, we minnows need help to be seen and acknowledged for our content and Steemit is afterall a platform that connects creativity with the cryptocurrency market, so 'Trade' is also a very crucial aspect of this game. If you send SBD's to people in the community then they will help you grow aswell. (You can watch tutorials on Youtube by joeparys and jerry banfield on how to use steemit bots)

The Jackpot - Bingo! my first upload on Dsound and my first investment in using Bots got me a 110$ upvote from Dsound (@dsound cheers for that) the post got a 220$ upvote out of which I got 150$ post payout. It was a big deal for me, it made it clear, that my content could get accepted and promoted in the community. I thought I had it all figured out, but this was just a tip of the iceberg.

The Bot Market Loss - I saw it as a quick and easy way to success, create content and then use the bots to get higher upvotes. I got addicted to steembottracker.com. I invested almost 120$ on bots for my second track 'Crypto Revolution'. I thought that I would get higher upvotes from bots if I invest more money in them, but I was wrong. I ended up losing a few dollars as I only recieved 70$ from it, post payout. So now it was clear to me, there is no short way to success. Bots could get you some eyeballs but it is not always a profitable option. (Invest wisely in Bots and do understand the rules of the game before investing) Anyways, it was a week ago that I planned my brand new strategy on steemit.

Moral of the Story - So here are the lessons that I take back from my journey so far. There is no shortcut to become a Steemit Whale or Witness. The people who are in commanding positions with higher Steem Power will always benefit more than newcomers like me. Even those people have worked hard and spent some insane hours on steemit to reach a level where they are. Nothing happens in a fortnight. So it comes down to this :

1. Keep Contributing to the community with relevant content
2. Learn from your mistakes and from achievements of others
3. Make new friends and followers and it is a step - by - step process
4. Upvote, Resteem and Comment on eachother's post (We underestimate the power of this. DO IT)

I have not been receiving any profitable payouts recently and I have been contemplating about Steemit. But I have decided to stick around and see how this evolves. I wish more power to steemit and wish that this open source technology finds its way into uplifting more and more people in a fair way.

Do Follow, Comment, Share this post and let's get in touch. JUST DO IT!

Any senior members are welcome to comment and correct the mistakes, if any.

Love.
@prat.chi