Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash
Most people have never had the experience of spending their entire lives working on projects they are passionate about, but that no one will ever see.
One of the most influential moments of my adult life came at a time that I was least inspecting it.
I was walking around a Border’s book store with my brother, back when Borders was still a thing. We were browsing the different sections and at one point my brother stopped, pulled a book from the shelf and asked me to read the opening paragraph. This paragraph was about a third of a page long, but can be summarised as follows:
Life is difficult. The sooner you accept this, the easier it will become.
This pithy little statement has stayed with my ever since. Life is hard! The world doesn’t owe you any favours, most people don’t really care about you, and as often as not, things will not go the way you had hoped they would go. There is a natural human tendency in these situations to adopt a victim mentality.
Life is not fair!
Things shouldn’t be this way!
At the end of the day though, life isn’t fair, and things are the way they are. Wallowing in self-pity doesn’t change this. Regardless of how much you rail against your predicament; the reality is that the world still doesn’t care about you, nor does it owe you much. The only people who do care are yourself, and hopefully your family and friends, if you are fortunate enough to have good people in your life.
It's my opinion that the only way to deal with the above situation is to accept it for what it is. Realise that the cards aren’t always going to fall your way, and just do the best you can. Just keep living in other words. This isn't intended as some cute little self help sentiment. It's reality. You can only change the things you can control, and you cant control the rest of the world. All you can controls is yourself, your actions and your perspective.
This analogy is equally applicable to Steemit.
I read a post a few days ago by another author. It was creatively titled “Running Out of Steam.” It detailed the frustrations of the author at how little success they were finding in getting recognition for their work. There was a lot I could empathise with in what she had to say, and a lot of experiences that she described that I could relate to. We’ve all had the experience of pouring our heart and soul into a post and then seeing that no one it reads. It can be heart breaking. At the same time though there was something about her post that really bothered me.
My Steemit journey started out like most others. Here was an opportunity to turn my hand to writing, which is something I enjoy, and at the same time earn some rewards for doing so. I’ve got a lot of strong opinions on a lot of different issues, and here was my opportunity to put those opinions out there and hopefully connect with people in a positive way through writing.
So, I posted my introduce yourself post and almost no one read it. I next put up my first real post, which dealt with some of the vagaries of the bitcoin market, and it earned $0.27. I kept working and after a few weeks I was able to write a post that would get 7-10 views if I was lucky. I too ran out of Steam and I left the platform for a couple of months.
My “Borders moment” with Steemit came not long before Christmas when I was lurking in a discord chat group watching a discussion unfold. It was at this point that @ryivhnn made the comment that I quoted at the start of this post. I can’t remember her exact words, so hopefully Ryi will forgive me, but I think this captures the essence of it:
Most people have never had the experience of spending their entire lives working on projects they are passionate about but that no one will ever see
Rhyvinn is an artist who spends her days doing all sorts of artsy thing with computer graphics that I don’t even pretend to understand. She’s pretty good at what she does. She makes enough money from her work, both on Steemit and other ways to help support her family, and she spends her days doing something that she loves.
Her point though, at least as I understood it, was that anyone who has dedicated their life to any sort of creative pursuit has most likely experienced a lifetime of rejection. Musicians write songs that no one will ever listen too. Artists paint beautiful pictures that no one will ever see. Authors write stories that no one will ever read. For every Lady Gaga, John Grisham and Brett Whitely, there are literally tens of thousands of artists that produce amazing works that never see the light of day. This is the life of many who dedicate themselves to these types of activities.
Is it fair? Hell no!!! Is it reality? Yes, it is.
It’s not uncommon to hear a newly successful author or musician interviewed about their recent work and be asked some version of the same question:
How does it feel to have burst onto the scene and become such an over night success?
To which the answer is almost always:
I don't consider myself to be an overnight success. I've been working at this for years. This is just the first time anyone has noticed.
Being involved in the conversation I described above was a wake-up moment for me. It made me realise the mistake I had made in my approach to the whole Steemit experience. If I am being brutally honest, the arrogance of expecting to simply create an account and have everyone love what I write is almost breath taking. Why should I expect to be an instant success when there are literally hundreds of thousands of other aghunter’s out there all trying to do the same thing?
Steemit is hard! It’s also my opinion that it’s getting harder. Every new addition to the platform is another content creator that you are competing against for attention. It’s getting harder and harder to get your work noticed. You have a few choices you can make. You can get upset by this and let it frustrate you as each piece of work continues to get less attention than you feel it deserves. You can give up. Or you can accept it for what it is, keep working hard and gradually build your profile. Its completely up to you, but you need to understand that whatever choice you make, Steemit still won't care. The platform owes you nothing and the reality of the daily grind will not change. The only thing you can change is your attitude to it all.
One thing I don’t want this post to be though is a lecture to new comers. There are a lot of successful Steemians who have written posts in the past stating words to the effect of
‘Stop whinging, I did it hard, so you should do it hard too if you want to make it’
These posts really annoy me. There are some real problems with the platform. It’s my opinion that its getting really hard for people to get good quality content noticed, and it gets harder every day. There are a whole host of reasons for this that are will beyond the scope of this post. Eventually I think some of these problems have the potential to significantly effect the long-term success of Steemit as a platform. I’m hopeful that someone, somewhere is working to address some of these issues.
The fact remains however, that someone who joins Steemit today must work a lot harder to achieve success than someone who joined 12 months ago. Someone who joins in six months from now will find it even harder still. That is the reality of the system that we are working with though. So, I’m not saying. “you need to work hard like me!” If you are new to the platform, then you need to work harder than I did. That’s the unfortunate facts of the situation as it stands.
Is it fair? No. Is it reality? Yes, it is. You can either accept it and crack on, or you can run out of steam and leave. Just don't get caught up in the pity cycle. You chose to be here remember. To paraphrase a common saying from another setting
You joined Steemit, Steemit didn’t join you!
The system isn’t going to change to suit you.
I have to include the compulsory paragraph about how to succeed on Steemit. You can take these or leave them, but this has what has worked for me.
- Post regularly. Preferably every day, but if you can’t manage that then at least 3-4 times a week
- Post original content. This should go without saying.
- Pay attention to your formatting. Markdown is also difficult to master, but there are tools out there to help you. This stuff really matters. I know that I personally won’t even read a post if its not well presented. It’s hard to read something that is a single block of text. The easier you can make a post to read, the more likely it is that your audience will read it. Use headings, bullet points, block quotes, whatever is appropriate to what you are writing. I use a web app called Stackedit to help me format my posts. It can take the pain out of markdown.
- Use attractive and interesting pictures. Blocks of text won’t make someone want to open your post, but a cool picture might attract someone’s attention.
- Reference your sources and images. You shouldn’t expect credit for your own work if you aren’t willing to extend credit to others who have helped you put it together.
- Get involved in a community. I’ve left this for last for emphasis, but it’s possibly the most important one. The quickest way to get yourself noticed is to make friends on the platform. They can help in so many ways. There are more communities than I can list here but some of my favourites are shown below.
Minnowsupportgroup. This should be the first stop for any new account on Steemit.
Qurator. Another group helping minnows to get their posts noticed.
Steemiteducation Great if you like posting about educational topics. Particularly good if you’re a teacher, but useful for the rest of us too.
SteemStem. A group dedicated to promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics on Steemit.
Given I think networking is key to success on this platform I want to end by giving a shout out to some people who have helped me get to where I am in my Steemit journey. These are either people who have helped me directly, or who run great accounts that I think are worthy of more attention.
I’ll start with @ausbitbank. He’s my whale. He probably doesn’t realise this, but he’s the only whale I know so I’m claiming him 😊 He follows my account and occasionally upvotes my posts, which I am very grateful for. More importantly though, he’s made himself available a couple of times to help me out by answering some newbie questions and give me a bit of guidance when I needed it. He’s also a witness who I know works hard to make the system better for all of us. So, if you’ve wondering who to direct your witness votes too, you should definitely check him out. He doesn’t do a lot of self-promotion, but he’s doing a lot all the same.
Next is @gohba. I’ll be honest and say that I think Gohba and I are a bit like chalk and cheese. If we ever got onto a serious conversation about politics, it would probably end in a pub fight. That said, he’s one of the leading figures in the Team Australia community and does a lot of work to bring us all together within that community.
@crimsonclad is another witness that I think is worthy of support. She seems to be pretty much everywhere on Steemit. She doesn't post all that often but seems to be in about 2 dozen community projects and is very open to helping others along their Steemit journey.
@emmanuel250998 is a young guy from I don’t really know where. What I do know is that he translates a lot of foreign language journalism into English, which means I can read it. He doesn’t produce a lot of original stuff, but in a world where quality information about Crypto currencies is hard to come by, he takes material I otherwise wouldn’t know about and translates it to a format that I can read. This is a valuable service for me.
@terrylovejoy is a guy who crazy about astronomy. He puts out some cool stuff through his feed and provides some helpful tip on how to improve your photography and the presentation of your posts.
@tarc is a not for profit account that supports a shelter for abandoned animals in the US. If you love animals check them out. They’ve taken on a big job and could do with all the help they could get!
@just2random and @aussieninja have helped with advice around how to make some of posts more appealing to a wider audience.
@choogirl who got me noticed by curie. She’s an Aussie living in Panama. As best I can tell she spends most of her time at the gym and in Discord! I know she also spends a lot of time working to promote quality content and find promising new authors.
@abigail-dantes posts about psychology which is a passion of mine. Check her out! Her posts are amazing.
@trudeehunter. Trudee is one of those sickening people who has achieved overnight success. She’s been on Steemit about 5 minutes and has already won four of @juliank’s photo contests. And by overnight success I mean she’s been taking beautiful photo’s for years and has only recently discovered Steemit as a means to share them 😊. She takes some amazing photo’s. You should check her out.