Am I crazy to have sold every other investment I had to go all in on Steem for 100 mega vests equal to 48,671.384 Steem Power today valued at $64,048.63? Steem is 100% of my retirement plan as well as the majority of my savings and checking. Still, I have invested just enough that if it were to be all lost I still have enough to pay the bills for a few months and we already have enough food in the house to eat for months without buying any more.
Over half the value in my Steem Power is from what I invested in Steem with the rest coming from our generous author rewards! 100 mega vests was my first goal which seemed far away at less than half of that getting started. I am very excited to have reached this in less than 90 days from starting here!
Where did my Steem Power come from?
Nine months ago I thought had no money to invest and feared I would go out of business in 2017 or have a really bad year. This was really embarrassing after being banned in June 2016 from a website where I made over $600,000 teaching online within the two years before it. The profits quickly disappeared into taxes, paying off credit card debt, personal loans, student loans, and the first new car I had bought in ten years. By December 2016, I was looking at running out of cash within a few months.
After I read Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins, I accepted the help offered in the book and changed my belief about what the year would bring. I had no idea what my best opportunities looked like until they were right in front of my face and it took a big leap of faith each time.
Here is what I spent and sold to put this much into Steem.
- Dash masternode bought for $11,000 which was everything I had after years of "investing" in crypto which I sold at $87,000 to buy Steem in May 2017. About one third of the sale I put into Steem while I used the other third to pay tax on the sale and put the rest in my checking account to pay my bills for several months with the rest. Today that same Dash masternode would be worth $188,000.
- Cleared out my TD Ameritrade account including selling Google, Facebook, and Walmart stock while paying a 10% tax penalty plus regular income tax.
- Sold my Vanguard solo 401k (Roth) which had after tax stocks and bonds.
- Spent about $7,000 on contract labor for transcriptions from my videos and edits to those transcriptions to create about one third of my posts available for the first time in written form on Steemit!
Is it easy to just start using Steem and make a lot of money?
No. It is very challenging to start here without investing anything and then earn a good income because that is what almost everyone does! Probably less than 1% of those that try to start with nothing succeed in making $100. The best chance for building followers and earning income with Steem comes with the product of investing money in Steem and investing time/energy in making great posts. Multiplication means the more you invest of both, the more the results multiply which makes it very hard to do well without investing anything or with a big investment absent of time connecting with the community.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions that it is easy to just log onto Steem without investing anything and then start earning good money on every post! Reading the comments I have seen many authors frustrated with earnings and views. What most share in common is not having bought even 1 Steem which is $1.30 today.
I am very grateful to be a member of our community and am ALL IN on the future of Steem which I think is bright! We could fail in probably a 100 ways that I am aware of from price crashes to Google banning us from search to bad regulations plus many more ways I am not aware of. In that case I will still be happy about the journey together!
Love,
Jerry Banfield