Yay!!!!! Us little fish don't have to survive on scraps anymore.....
Hi everyone...... I have been a Padawan of the Steemit Star System for nearly 10 days now..... And boy I have experienced some thoughts and feeling I thought I never had before lol......
Being a freelance web content and ad writer who has lost a lot of business and income due to the economic down turn over the last year, life changed a lot for me. I am an extremely busy professional person who speaks to audiences for a living. That takes up most of my business hours. During the busy times for writing I would spend a good chunk of my after hours producing content. But that was ok.... I was driven by a one of the greatest motivators..... money!!!! And most of it was in cash. I am not a greedy person.... But I did like the ability to spend comfortably when I have a growing son.....ageing parents who no longer work.... a new wife at the time that was totally dependant on me and had to sponsor for education. Most months I made extra cash ranging from $6000 to $10000 on top of my professional salary.
It felt like having the weight of the world on my shoulders.....
And as the writing contracts dried up.... I was left most evenings to watch TV, read a book, or go out and do something nice...... That felt great for a few days or even a week or two.... But I was not used to it..... I was left twiddling my thumbs with a residual momentum to be productive for all of my waking hours.
About 3 weeks ago I met up with an old friend who is big on markets and trading...... we spoke about cryptocurrencies...... we spoke about my side career as a writer.... He then said a word that has my full attention for 15 hours a day now.....
Without knowing anything I thought.... what a concept.... I spend a bunch of time on forums and facebook anyway. It's a release...it's a habit... they are like fidget spinners for adults.
But steemit... a social media platform that rewards people with real money... wow. It took me a further 2 weeks before I took action and joined. And I was hooked... I get to blog, and chat with people and browse fro other people's blogs and feel good from building a following... and most of all... instead of just feeling the buzz of a like and a comment, I can get paid if my articles are good.. So off I go..... lean and mean... keen as beans....
So, I read everything there is to read, looked at examples, chatted with other people in steemchat when it was still working and off I went.
- I wrote unique articles
- I used pictures to make it interesting
- I used gifs to make it exciting
- I wrote on topics that were popular
- I wrote about things I am passionate about
- I had fin doing that
- I wrote a lot
- I commented on other people's articles
- I responded to comments on my articles
- I connected with people and got a small following that is growing slowly
- I learned a something new everyday and applied it...
Result????
- Low numbers of views
- $0.01 to $2.88 in upvotes and sometimes zero
As a minnow, whatever I did... long well thought out articles that take a couple of hours to write.... volumes of quick and light hearted articles... My content was visible for may 20 to 40 seconds before they sank under the weight of the huge volume of content created every second.
Yeah.... it was frustrating........ Even after the HF19 few hours of excitement died down. It was a bit better, but I is still no fun to be a minnow.
And what was I doing wrong? Well.... nothing!!! I and countless other minnows are doing everything right? My content was simply just not seen.... I am still too small at this stage... and there were too many that are much bigger.... It's like a normal person with normal savings trying to start a casino in Las Vegas and trying to get a percentage of the proftis to be had
I mean, have a look at the assortment and volume of content I created in a week and the range of topics I wrote about... Check it out.... https://steemit.com/@yoda1917 I slept less than I ever did for a week, and I think I gained less than $100.
But then I came across this..... The minnow support project....... https://steemit.com/steemit/@tech-trends/newbie-special-hf19-minnow-support-project-do-you-want-upvotes And here is a chance where the all the minnows in this huge community can be part of an automated system where a technology strategically help each other out with upvotes.
Here is a chance for a minnow to have content upvoted at an acceptable standard while we carry on blogging. By no means is this a set and forget lazy approach.... that works with nothing in life for very long. One still must write good content, add value to others, connect with people, and build a following....
Getting this all set up was fiddly but not difficult.... I am not the most tech savy person. But I followed the instruction from this:
This one is also very useful with instructions:
https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@diverse-thinker/it-takes-just-5-steps-to-be-big-whale
And when by the time you have done a couple of steps and joined DISCORD, there are wonderful people there that are more than willing to help if you get stuck.
If you found any of this helpful please resteem it and let more people see it. Give me a follow and an upvote. It will be much appreciated and remembered :)
Chin up and steem on brothers and sisters.... Hope to chat with you in comments soon. Stay safe everyone.
Regards
Yoda