Hi Steemians,
Last month, when I was introduced to Steemit by one of my friends, I was sceptical; not towards the platform but to myself. I've never stuck to blogging longer than a week, so this would be a challenging task for me. Now, it has been a month, I've made lots of progress and now it's time for an update. In my introduction post last month, I've listed a few of my objectives, that I wanted to accomplish by the end of June 2018.
By the end of June 2018, I should have at least:
- 500 followers
- 100 Steem Power
- 30 views per post
- At least 500 words per article
- Post at least once per day
In this article, I will be giving some tips and motivations to the new Steemian, proving that, you can do anything if you are determined, persevere and have specific goals in mind. It's good to have some objectives so that, one day, when you became tired and hopeless, this goal would jump-start your determination and motivation.
In my opinion, the follower's number in Steemit platform is not important. You can have 10,000 of followers, and none of them will notice you. It is because very few people scroll down their feeds. Usually, they will straight away go to a specific tag which doesn't require them to follow any of the user posted using that tag to see their article.
However, the most important thing is engagement. You need to engage as much as you can with the community. You need to make yourself useful by communicating, reading other's article, give some constructive comments and finally upvote them if you like their content. Ask yourself, what you can do for the platform, not what the platform can do for you.
Even though I've mentioned follower's number is not that important, but it provides the first impression to someone who is new to your blog. Honestly speaking, the first time when I joined this platform when I discovered a new great author, I will go to his blog, and then pay attention to his follower's number. I thought follower's number was proportional to your contribution to the platform, i.e. the more you engage with each other, people will be tempted to follow you hence the high number. Now I know, it doesn't matter; with some site providing a "follow for follow" system, followers are just numbers.
My point is, focus on your engagement. Make sure that you read at least three articles per day, gives some constructive comments and reward some great user. I know, as a minnow, we can't do much, unless, you have a million dollars to spend on steem power, but the most important thing is to reinforce good habits and attitudes. Show some support to the new author and give them some love. Now, let's get to my objective:
By the end of June 2018, I should have at least:
- 500 followers
Right now, I have 206 followers.
I have completed at least 42% of my overall follower's objective.
Powering up by investing your hard-earned SBD and steem, in my opinion, is important but that will depend on an individual need. Every single individual joins this platform with different objectives. Some of us saw the potential in this platform to be something bigger in the future but some of us, just need some part-time job to make some extra money.
Not everyone has the luxury of financial stability, so the best option that we have is to collect some SBD through producing great content and cash it out, pay some bills, house rent and maybe set aside some money for a car loan. You can do anything with your hard-earned SBD. You can cash it out, you can keep it in your wallet, or you can use it to power up your steem power, giving your account the capabilities to gives a better reward to others. Don't complicate things.
Your steem power can grow organically, keep on producing good quality content to achieve that. One thing I would like to point out is, it is better for you to choose 50/50 payout rewards instead of power up 100%. If you want to power up, no problem, choose the 50/50 payout and power up later when you're paid. If you do some calculation, you will realise, you will get more steem power with 50/50 post-payout compare to the 100% power up option. Now, let's take a look at my current progress.
By the end of June 2018, I should have at least:
- 100 Steem Power
Right now, I have 47.639 steem power.
I've accomplished 47% of my total steem power's objective.
How frequent should I post? Should I post every single hour to maximise my income? To be frank, if you come to steemit without any help from any communities, then you will earn as much as 5 cents per day. That will depend on how good your article is and whether or not dolphins or whales notice you. If by chance, they do notice you, then you're lucky but don't expect them to find you the next time you produce another article. Usually, the highest reward you will get for the first seven days on Steemit is your introduction post.
Your article is your work which is equivalent to your integrity as an author. You need to put some of your times and thoughts into your article. My principle is if I wanted to make an article today, I would ensure it to be at least 500 words. You can't expect to write an article halfheartedly or plagiarise from other sources and then expect the community to reward you with that kind of "work". It's unethical.
If you think you are not that good in English, you can use a cloud-based English-language writing-enhancement platform such as Grammarly (free version is sufficient enough). Learn to use Markdown Editing to make your article look nice. Let see some of my progress.
By the end of June 2018, I should have at least:
- 30 views per post
- At least 500 words per article
- Post at least once per day
I think I have completed the first two objectives, but the third objective is a little bit difficult to do. Sometimes I missed a day in a week, but I think the longest I have been without blogging is three days.
As you can see, I haven't unlocked either weekly or monthly author. Both achievements require me to post every single day for a specific duration.
I've achieved at least 30 viewers for every single of my post, and the picture above shows the highest view I have received recently.
I'm pretty satisfied with my progress so far, and if this continues, I will achieve my objectives faster than I thought I would. For all the new Steemians, this is the time for you to contemplate your purpose of coming here. Don't do things halfheartedly and give everything that can to make this platform flourishes. For those of you who want or plan to write on any STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related topics, use the tag "steemstem" and your article will be curated by the steemstem community. However, I would like to point out that this doesn't guarantee you will get an upvote from the community. You need to be patient, learn from your mistake and improve yourself. Maybe someday, you will be rewarded for your work. Follow 
