Today I want to present you with a new interview. After talking with @andrarchy (you can watch our interview here ) I decided to interview more Steemians over here. That is why I reached out to @ericvancewalton and we had a chat.
Watch the interview below
The Interview Highlights
Eric’s Story
Eric started his writer career in early 90s writing poetry.
He had a day job in the 22 years of his writing career. Now he is juggling between his day job, fiction writing and Steemit. He dedicates 8-9 hours of his day to his day job, 1-1.5 hours writing on Steemit and 2-3 to his book projects.
At first the writing was a hobby. That time allowed him to develop skills and grow his network.
By now Eric already has 8 published books.
Now he is in the transition point and is almost able to quit his day job.
In the beginning Eric’s biggest and best social media was Facebook. He grew his author Facebook page to 3500 people. Later, Facebook changed the algorithm and was charging $20 per post in order to show it to the people who had already liked his page.
Few months after that Eric discovered Steemit and was able to migrate his audience from Facebook to Steemit. Now Steemit is his primary social media platform.
Writer Advice
The biggest mistake writers make is jumping right on and publishing the book right away. Its best to grow the online audience first instead.
Steemit Advice
The largest stumbling block on Steemit is the cryptocurrency aspect. It takes time for newcomers to wrap their head around the concept.
The best way to learn the concept is to make transactions. Once you do a couple of transactions it becomes as easy as breathing.
It took Eric 2 months in order to get traction on Steemit and get noticed.
His advice for Steemit newbies is:
- don’t get discouraged
- do your homework and learn how the platform works
- create good content (consistently - at least 5 times a week)
- write about things you are genuinely interested in
- don’t make your posts too long (1200 words max). Split the long posts into several smaller ones.
- engage with other users (if you leave a thoughtful comment people will follow you)
- don’t leave spammy comments asking to follow you
If people post things they think is of quality they’re gonna find their tribe.
Eric developed his niche on Steemit and became the poetry and fiction guy.
It’s a good idea for people to play at their strengths. Usually everybody has one thing that sets them apart from everybody else based on their life experience.
Once you do open up on Steemit and start sharing your personal stories people will connect a lot better with your writing because people will feel that emotional connection through your words and posts.
You can interact with other Steemit users at the www.steemit.chat. There you can also use the #postpromotion channel to promote your posts and it will work way better than leaving spammy comments under people’s posts.
If someone comes to the platform and they have decent networking skills they can get by with average content.
But the bar is higher on this platform than on other social media platform.
The platform made Eric a huge fun of the cryptocurrencies. Steemit is a gateway to cryptocurrency.
If you want to learn about what Eric thinks about the future of the Steemit platform, please read his post here.
What’s Next
For Eric’s “The Perfect Pause: Meditating Your Way to the Ultimate You” book Steemit became a crowdfunding platform. The post payouts paid for the book production. The book launched few days ago.
For the sequel to his first novel Eric plans to push the experiment even further and release it in installments exclusively on Steemit. He has blockchain and cryptocurrency in the heart of his second book’s plot.
Quote of the interview
“Sometimes I can’t believe I was at the right place at the right time… Sometimes I have to pinch myself”