My Early Steemit Experience Thus Far

I joined Steemit about two weeks ago. I have to give Greg @marketreport, the thanks and credit for bringing awareness to me about Steemit. I have followed Greg's work on another platform for sometime now. He was praising the Steemit platform up and down, left and right. I had to check it out for myself and see what the big deal was, and I'm sure glad I did.

Up to this point, I have stayed completely away from social media. I swore repeatedly that I would never have a Facebook account and I still don't. I do not like the Facebook culture and especially dislike their censorship. Steemit seemed really different to me, not only do you get paid to blog and upvote others, but the culture seemed so different from the beginning. It truly feels like a community here. People are very willing to help others. The wealth of knowledge on Steemit is exemplary as well.

I wanted to write my first article. I thought to myself, "what am I going to write about? I have never blogged in my life." I follow finances quite heavily and it is a passion of mine. So, I wrote a financial article within my first day or so. This is it here: https://steemit.com/life/@jdawg/advice-to-my-younger-self. It only received twelve upvotes and not many more views. My earnings were .08 cents. I was quite devastated, but not ready to give up.

I wrote my second article: https://steemit.com/money/@jdawg/diversify-out-of-the-dollar. I wanted to get my article seen by more people this time and wondered what can I do differently? I was more aggressive this time around. I hounded a few whales asking that they look at my article. Thankfully, they did! Their support gave me a much needed boost.

What happened next not only surprised me, but found me humbled and grateful. My article was resteemed by @sgtreport, who has nearly 1,400 followers. This gave my article much needed exposure! Others had resteemed afterwards as well. With the support of a few whales, @sgtreport, and several others, this article received much better results. At the time of this writing, it has 276 views, 213 upvotes, 77 comments, and was up to $123, until dropping recently with the Steem price. What a difference this time around! I am so pleased with the results.

Also, I entered into a contest that @aggroed offered: https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@aggroed/minnow-support-project-weekly-minnow-resteem. My article was fortunate to win 2nd place. The prize was a resteem and 10 SP. It was very cool to be chosen.

One thing that struck me was that some of the comments I received was much more rewarding than the money soon to be paid out. The comment that really blew me away and made my day was left by @thelivingpoet:

"You don't have any idea (well maybe you do) how much reading this post has helped me, although this isn't new news it definitely should be treated as such, this needs to be spread like wild-fire. Upvoted and re-steeming and of course now following 😉"

I have seen many Steemit newbies' post about their disappointment in not getting exposure and votes. Many of these people were talking about quitting. My advice to them was and is to keep on. It takes time, hard work, and creativity to get noticed, but you will.

Overall, my initial experiences with Steemit have been very positive. I see this platform growing exponentially. I'm glad to be a part of it in some small way. I would like to thank everyone that has stopped by my blog, read my articles, and shown support. I am extremely appreciative. Please follow, upvote, and resteem.