To the Facebook Bicycle Touring community: Steemit! A new way to blog and financially extend your travels?

"How do you guys earn money while travelling around the world?" A question we see within the Bicycle touring community countless of times. As a tour cyclist myself, i was always envious of those being able to blog and earn money on the go. I guess it's safe to say many others are feeling the same way as i did. But then i accidentally discovered my own solution to the problem, that in fact turned out to be just perfect for my own needs... Steemit

A lot of travelers are searching for ways to make that extra little amount of money to be able to extend their travels. For a lot of people blogging are seen as solution to this problem. Sadly this is something where you most likely are gonna work hard for years without even earning a single cent. But cryptocurrency have now appeared and slowly started to take over the world(ever heard of bitcoin?). What does this have to do with blogging? apparently a lot. Because those with a little bit of writing skills can now through Steemit earn the cryptocurrency "Steem", that you then can transform into fiat money.(more on that later)

Sounds a bit too good to be true? That's what i thought as well, but it turns out there is actually truth to the matter here. With some dedication you can achieve a financial support by blogging on Steemit and finally live your life as a digital nomad.

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Join steemit and get rich.. or is it more like Join Steemit to live?

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The very reason why people bike to all parts of the world is this very reason, we bike to feel the freedom and to feel alive. Sadly money is still a reality no matter where we find our self and eventually we all need to get off the road to find some silly job until we have enough to go again. Conveniently enough a very similar reason why so many people join Steemit! It has the potential of granting you this very freedom away from the usual job. Becoming "a digital nomad" are now much more accessible than it has ever been.

After reading this post you will (hopefully) become interested in Steemit and when signing up start to see some people actually earning quite a significant amount of money. For me personally i started from scratch on Steemit and I came with no previous experience of blogging. Yet i have by now earned much more than what i spend on a 6 months trip through Europe and to be quite honest, my writing skills aren't flawless. I have by no means become rich from Steemit as some others and so many talented people are still much more successful than me. But I am not looking to become rich, i just want to live in freedom with enough money to get some food and spare parts for my lovely bike.

Not gonna tell you that getting rich by blogging on Steemit is impossible, as you will witness some people here are doing extremely well and seem like they are earning a fortune on here(at least for my standards). But those people are a very tiny percentage of the actual community, and although they are the who we see on the trending page, it might be wise to ask yourself if this is truly what you should be aiming for? Because for a lot of us who don't need much, if you could obtain just a fraction of those peoples success, it might be just enough to live the dream on the road no other website could ever provide.

What makes Steemit an ideal choice for blogging

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There's a lot of reasons why Steemit stands out from many other alternatives of earning a little on the go. But these are my own major reason for why i still sit here writing this article right now:

It's free and "easy" to join

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Unlike the many others websites that allows you to blog, Steemit is completely free. What's the catch to this? really i tried to find one, but i don't see it. It's like a dream come true for new bloggers like myself who didn't feel like paying for a blogging site that probably no body are gonna read anyways.

Steemit is still relatively new and the sign up is not perfect. But i still found it easy enough to get through it without any troubles and within two days of waiting for the approval i was able to start writing my first post. For some people they report to wait a week, others less than a day and I am not really sure what causes this. But trust me when saying this, it is worth it and in the future the sign up will also become much easier, attracting even more people.

Steemit rewards interaction within the community

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The Steemit community is awesome, really. People are nice and pretty much everybody wants to see the website grow and thrive. You will see all kind of interesting topics being written and discussed on the website, and you can earn on joining in on that. Yes that is right, you can earn by going to other peoples posts/articles and commenting on them. If people see your well written comment they can just like upvoting your article(s), also upvote that comment and depending on how well invested they are in the website, you will receive a payout from the upvote(s) you get. Also if you are early to upvote another person's post and it gets really popular, you will receive a larger curation reward. (There's a lot of factors playing into this like how much Steem power you possess, so do some research yourself). Just remember that nobody are donating or paying anything for these payouts, it's all kind of crazy but it will make sense to you after a while.

It feels much easier to get the stone rolling than using wordpress or other blogging opportunities

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If you have a good story, some decent writing skill and a tiny bit of luck, chances are you will find success on Steemit. Here you already have people coming to read and because of that you can start to build a audience/follower base right away. But just like any other sites that offers you blogging opportunities, don't expect the greatest success right from the start. What i do think is fair to expect is that you will be seeing success ramp up much quicker than any other website. I have been blogging consistently for the last half year(with few breaks) on Steemit and i have already found more success than i ever hoped for. Have i been lucky? no i really don't think so, i think it was a very natural process that everybody who creates some kind of quality content will be experiencing.

Things you eventually have to educate yourself about when blogging on Steemit

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There's already tons of posts and articles about the questions you eventually gonna ask. I am not gonna answer them here but here's a few questions you might wanna look into eventually:

1. What is cryptocurrency and what does Steemit have to do with it?

2. What is the difference between Steem, Steem dollars and Steem power?

3. How do i transfer Steem and Steem dollars into fiat money?
   (websites such as coinbase and bitpanda is a good way to do this by the way)

4. Is it worth it to stack Steem power instead of cashing out right away? (Yes, yes it is).

Don't get discouraged about these questions if you have no idea what some of these words even mean. My message is here that there will be things you eventually will have to figure out and when they come, don't get concerned. Just take it easy and make a google search, then everything will be fine. Thousands of others have already made the answers for the questions you will be sitting with.

The conclusion

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Steemit is unlike anything else out there at the moment and very much recommended for any kind of travelers who are looking to earn a little(or maybe a lot) on the move. Personally i never thought it would be possible for me to travel without having to stop to work, but for some reason this did in fact become possible. Although not all of you will get rich by blogging on Steemit, I am sure those of you who are a bit dedicated to chase the nomadic dream will find enough success to make it a reality. If you are living cheap like me, give Steemit a try! There's certainly no risk to it beside a little bit of your time.

-Holm