Interesting post and thanks for sharing! I'm new to steemit - just joined last month and I'm enjoying it so far. It was a struggle my first couple days due to a lack of resource credits but the awesome community on here really helped me out with that.
At this point things are moving forward at a slow but steady pace. I'm trying to post regularly and reply to comments and leave comments. Plus resteem a few posts each week. I have also taken part in some contests and I'm enjoying those. Even came in first in one :)
But I don't really know if I'm moving up quickly, slowly, or at an average pace. Just trying to put out good content and be active. I'm not planning on powering down. I would like to get above the minnow stage before considering that but even then I would have some minimum I would stick with that would keep me at a decent SP level.
It seems to me that to really get the most out of steemit you need to have a decent amount of SP so I have been prioritizing building my amount of SP. I'm keeping a little Steem just to have the option of using it to engage in different community projects though I don't know what makes sense.
I view the stage I'm at now as an investment but I don't know how long I will have to wait for that to "pay off". I really enjoy this community but at the same time I'm running an online business and I only have so much time. I value Steemit and what it represents so I'm willing to put in time for it.
At the moment about 5% of my website's traffic comes from Steemit. For this month that is currently 76 people visiting my site from Steemit out of a total of 1510 people. I hope that % grows overtime--I link to my blog posts but all the content I post here on Steemit is original and unique. I don't copy my blog posts but instead I write new content that relates to my blog posts or are about my homesteading journey.
Community and website traffic are the 2 things I'm hoping to get out of my time on Steemit. Perhaps one day it will be a revenue source for me but that is a ways off and not a priority for me at this point.
I'm trying to give back to the community in return by providing quality content and engaging with other users on here. My site also links back to steemit on every blog post and on my pages when I link to social media sites.
As far as whether or not I stay active it really depends. I'm also investing my time in Pinterest, a site called permies (homesteading/permaculture forum) and some other sites. Permies is by far my top traffic source (1,210 people visiting my site this month but I have also been active there for a couple years). My site is new enough (just since end of Nov) that I'm still not getting much traffic from google though that is growing.
At some point I will need to look at all the places I'm investing my time in and make a decision on which to continue with. I think this type of decision is something a lot of users here on steemit will make at some point. But this is especially true for people running online businesses.
I have read the guides and doing my best but the learning curve is high which can make it hard/frustrating for new users (I had to wait over a month to get my account confirmed and then ran out of resource credits very quickly). Then it can be slow getting much traction though there is an awesome community on here and in my case the homesteading community on steemit has been great and really helped me get going.
Even at my pre-minnow stage I'm still trying to help by engaging with users who are at a lower stage than me. Leaving comments, upvoting, etc. just to try to help them.
Anyways, long reply but I thought I would share my experience as a new user and someone who still has not reached the minnow level.
It looks like you are off to a good start as I see you have had some posts do well. There is quite an active #homesteading community on Steem and I think you have already encountered @pennsif who is part of it. I am hoping we can get build the community by encouraging new users and those who have struggled to keep going. Of course they have to put work in themselves to produce good content and engage with people. I keep saying that they should make it fun and the money will come, but I can understand it can be hard if you are running a business and/or have other places where there is more activity. Wishing you all the best
Thank you! :)