I was reading the comments on Taskmaster4450le's post today and thought I would share some of my account growth story which may help inspire some new users who are struggling or lost. Starting out on HIVE is not something you forget and ever will forget as it is that hard. HIVE is the biggest personal challenge I have taken on in life and everything else outside of HIVE seems easier these days.
I do believe HIVE is one of the hardest things to wrap your head around and one of the most rewarding things you can do in life. Giving yourself the chance to understand HIVE is the key however and a bit like reading instructions to a tricky assembly as without them you have no clue. I spent the first 3 months learning before jumping fully in as this is important and you wont usually been earning from day 1 as my first 20 posts made less than 5 c each. Actually 5 c I would have been very happy with as generally a big 0 was the final outcome.
The growing part just doesn't happen as nothing is that simple as otherwise everyone would be doing it. All good things in life that are worthwhile take time and HIVE is no different. The more you do the better chance you have of growing as time is the key word along with consistency and effort.
This is how I felt like when I was starting out and why I used this picture for all my related account growth posts.
To give you some idea of tine frames I have had to delve back to my first year on HIVE and one must always take into account things are far easier now. The introduction of tribes means you have more opportunities of finding support and a home base to grow from.
Thankfully back when I was starting out we had a league run by 
To get an idea how the growth really works and the time frames involved I decided to look back at where I was at various times when I first started out. I started at 0 HIVE and never invested any FIAT so this is possible and is seriously hard though so I suggest trying to add a few $$$ in HIVE to kickstart your growth.
The first 6 Months a grand total of 250 Hive Power so roughly 40 Hive earned and staked per month which sounds slow but it only gets better from here.12 months I was just shy of 3500 Hive Power but cheated taking advantage of Musings which was a slave camp, but helped me immensely along with a few other users lol.
One year for 3500 Hive Power gave me a foundation however and only encouraged me to do more. This is what your account growth should do as the more you see being staked it should be the driving force to do more. At one stage doing 60 comments a day was childs play and involved a good 8 hours a day dedicated to HIVE. No one is asking you to go nuts on here, but be active at least as the end result is worth the effort.
3500 Hive Power after 12 months and now I have 68 000 after 50 months shows you how the compounding interest and being consistent pays off. Who knows maybe you could grow quicker than this as there are far more opportunities and support around these days.
Use the tools available on HIVE like Leodex and Hivestats.io to monitor your growth as that is all it takes. There are no short cuts on HIVE as believe me we have all looked and there are none. Time is what it takes and doing the time on the blockchain is what is going to reduce the time required to grow.