Hi Everyone,

Time certainly passes very quickly. It does not seem very long ago I was celebrating my first year on Steem. Even though time has passed quickly, a lot has happened. In this post, I would like to share some of my experiences.

What have I been doing in my second year on Steem?

I have continued to post regularly about economics. I have had a greater focus on applied economics than theory (ironic, as my most recent posts have been more theoretical). I have also written several posts about Steem. I have focused on the economics and incentives that are influencing decision-making. I have also looked at some of the problems and offered several possible solutions to improve the economics and help better align rewards with contributions.

I ran several contests in my first year on Steem. I have not run as many contests in my second year. I plan to run more contests when people start returning to the blockchain and the price is higher; it is difficult to cover costs as I am funding prizes from the upvotes that the posts receive. I might also consider paying prizes in Steem rather SBD while the price of Steem is still low.

I have been using the Actifit DApp consistently for the last 6 months. I try to update my activity counts every day and I contribute a post once or twice a week. I do not post an Actifit report every day, as my days are not significantly different to be able to write interesting reports each day. I normally post the report on a day with high activity (10,000 plus counts). I also use my Actifit reports to provide updates regarding my other activities. I might briefly summarise a very recent post or inform my audience of upcoming posts. I want my actifit posts to complement my channel, rather than standout as something completely not related.

I have very recently started posting and sharing my content on Palnet. Palnet feels like Steemit from 2 years ago. However, there are several differences.

Palnet uses its own coin as well as staking of these coins
It does not use bot promotion
Posts promoted using the promotion function appear on both promotion and trending pages
Rewards are split 50/50 between content creators and curators

There are several other differences and the list will continue to grow, as Palnet is very new. I have collected my airdrop Pal coins from Steem-Engine and I have bought a few thousand more, which I have staked.

Favourite posts from my second year

I have put up many posts over the course of my second year on Steem. I thought I would share some of my favourites with you. See list below.

Time to Play the Game

Quality of Life as Quality of Time

What’s going on with Brexit?

Free movement of people

Trade, money, debt, waste, and power

Steem explained by an economist

Is the Steem ecosystem in disequilibrium? (Part 5 – Combination of solutions)

Why is it important to understand economics?

Most of these posts required a little more research than my average post. Some of these posts have also been pivotal to my content. If you have time, I would recommend giving at least some of them a read.

Always learning

One of the most important lessons I have learnt since being on Steem is that there is always something new to learn. Steem is constantly changing. There are new applications coming up every week. There also many interesting features that are being added to make life a little easier. Many of the existing applications are getting updated or upgraded. Even without all the changes and updates, the Steem ecosystem is very difficult to fully comprehend. It took me most of my first year to come to grips with everything that came before me and I still sometimes don’t fully understand everything.

In the coming months, if Hardfork 21 goes ahead as currently intended, Steem will experience some quite major changes. The hardfork is expected to consist of two major changes. They are the Steem Proposal System (SPS) and Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP). These changes will have an effect on the distribution of the Steem rewards pool. The fine details for the hardfork are yet to be released but they are definitely worth a close look over, as I believe everyone will be effected.

My advice after being on Steem for 2 years

I would strongly recommend learning as much about Steem as you can early on. Things are typically not what they seem. The good news is that it is a lot easier to find out information than when I started two years ago. Steemit.com and Busy.org can be upgraded using the Steem-plus extension. This extension adds a few extra features, one of these features is a links tab. This tab contains many useful links that can help fast track your understanding of Steem. Steemit has featured and pinned posts that contain useful updates about what’s happening around the blockchain.

My next bit of advice is to engage with the community. Upvote and comment on posts that you find interesting. Take time to get to know which users are most influential and most engaged. You can also contact and engage with Steemians on Discord or Steem.chat. This is likely to become more important after the next hardfork, when I believe there will be more competition to get attention.

My last bit of advice would be to promote your content as widely as possible; do not rely purely on Steem to promote yourself and your content. I recommend that you use your other social media to share your content or discuss your content. It is often worth writing short posts with links to your Steem content on other social media. Posting your Steem thumbnails directly to the alternative social media will likely give you greater visibility than just sharing a link by itself. The social media I have found to useful for sharing Steem content are LinkedIn, Facebook groups or pages, Twitter, Reddit, and Minds. Be careful how you go about sharing your content, you could get accused of spamming,

What will I be doing in Year 3 on Steem?

I do not intend to depart from posting about economics. I will most likely be writing about Steem again after the Hardfork 21. It will be very interesting to see how users change their behaviour if at all. I believe we will see significantly more curating of content but we won’t know until the changes have been implemented and the users have had time to adapt.

I also plan to continue posting Actifit reports, which include updates. I feel confident I will bring back contests before the end of the year. I will also be on the lookout for new and interesting DApps, where I can post my content. I do not feel my content is necessarily limited to just written posts and videos. Pictures, gifs, diagrams, and animations can also play a role.

Thank You

I have been consistent on Steem largely because of the awesome people that have been supporting me on this journey. I would like to thank the following people for their support over the past year.

There are many others that have upvoted and commented on my posts as well as chat with me on other threads or in steem.chat. A big thank you to all of you as well.

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.