For those of us who haven't invested our own money into Steem and then chosen to lock it up in Steem Power, upvotes are a gift. None of us are entitled to "earn" money, much less make a living, blogging here. That doesn't mean we can't be successful on Steemit while accruing crypto assets, just that we aren't owed financial compensation as content creators here any more than we are on other social media platforms.
There's a lot of complaining about how whales have an unfair advantage here, and I think that stems from a lack of understanding that they have a vested financial interest in Steemit. That's money they could have invested elsewhere, and they expect to maximize returns on it. If you were in their position, you would too. Every upvote they give someone else is money they could be putting into their own pocket, but they often choose to contribute to the Steemit community instead. When we belittle them for upvoting themselves and each other, it's a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth.
At the end of the day, if you're only here to make money, you could probably spend your time doing something more lucrative. But if you focus on being an engaging member of the community that contributes quality content, you'll find that Steemit has a lot more to offer than financial incentive.
Make it a great day!
(Random picture of me fishing in Baghdad, Iraq circa 2004)
I'm here mostly for the community, though the money did serve as a "lure" to get me to post.
My "blogging" attempts in the past tended to end after 1 or 2 posts, with several months/years between...
Mainly from lack of interaction (which is most probably the reason most bloggers fail at first).
But steemit's community welcomed me.
Even though I got distracted and disappeared for 3 months XS
When I returned in May, I decided to give it another go, and I now have a few friends here that I enjoy interacting with.
Though I'm not exactly clockwork... I tend to post, then just lurk in the comments section for a while, then suddenly post again... gotta work on the "regularity" part of building a following XS
But it does serve as a gateway into Crypto. I just used my account to get some bitshares, some more bitcoins, all from SBD I've earned by presenting things I'm interested in to others !
I'd probably never have invested in bitcoin with "real" money, if not for this platform, or even have any Crypto's at all (Especially the 20$ worth of BTC that that I got from @sponge-bob by reading one of his articles and noticing the paper wallet he presented in a photo in one of his posts had a "note" more or less saying "there's money here... just saying ;)" just underneath it XD)
steemit for the win !
Oh, and nice post XP
You are so right about the gateway into Crypto. I always heard of Bitcoin, and all the smartest people I knew were in it, but I have just never thought about investing because I never had excess funds lying around. This way, I write, and the investment can come from the power of the words. Lately, I have gotten some decent writing and editing gigs that have led me out of the brink of relying on my parents or homelessness, but even now, I'm just trying to pay off debt from my dog's surgery. I am really happy about the way Steemit works, forced investment if you will.
Maybe you are a "comment lurker" as you say, but sometimes the comments can be just as meaningful as the original post <3
Hehe. Comment lurking is an awesome hobby XD
Thanks for the upvote, friend :)
By Gandalf's beard, if a 5% upvote does THAT, I can't imagine what 100% does... does it make steemit explode, perchance ?
Woah! It was a good comment, and I'm glad you were recognized for it! Guess that kinda makes up for us dying in the steempocalypse challenge. Amazing how meeting people and building genuine discourse with them can pan out, eh?
Yeah, it's great how genuine it feels to interact with most people here on Steemit !
First online community I've ever really interacted with at this level :)
How are you doing, by the way ?
I had an idea before we died, but forgot to mention it. I think there exists tools to play MtG online, would you be interested in a match one day ?
No idea if the tools are good or not. I remember testing one a few years back... it required upload of graphics for every card (since the graphics were copyrighted, so understandable).
You ready for the next season ? Let's see if we can team up again !
feels horrible for praying everyone go ahead and die in the apocalypse already
You're the second person on Steemit to ask me about Magic online in the past 24 hours. I've never used it, but I guess it's time for me to open up an account. The client is notoriously shit, but thousands of players use it every day. We might as well join them.
The universe is sending you a message:
" miss, you're not playing enough MtG ! We risk an implosion of the universe by way of boredom ! Play More MtG, ENTERTAIN YOUR CREATOR !"
Well said. Yes, whales have vested financial interest in Steemit so they should be well rewarded for taking the risks. If you do not provide good incentive to invest in steemit they will take their money else where.
I have noticed a Whale or three that simply comment and upvote their own comment in high-value posts (while completely ignoring the post itself as well as other more contribution comments within the post) - basically padding their own value while doing nothing for the Red Fish/Minnow community as a whole. Yet I've also seen plenty of Whales who seem to genuinely upvote and promote us little fish through active upvoting, participation (commenting), and resteems.
I get your point, and yet still think our (Red Fish/Minnows) community would stand to thrive and prosper more if we, as a community, pay more attention to each other and less attention chasing Whales (and even kissing Whale ass).
You're absolutely right! They could only be upvoting their own stuff, instead, they chose to share the wealth. Good point!
I didn't know you are a veteran! I'm a veteran's spouse! Thanks for your service! <3
As a veteran, I think living with one of us might be the hardest job there is. Thanks for YOUR service. Y'all don't hear how important you are to us once we come home nearly enough.
With my veteran, that might be true! Haha :) Lemme know if I can ever help you with anything! <3
You are so right... we are so like minded! :)
Upvoted, Resteemed and very carefully been reading it. Something strange is happening. It's a choice between "The one who are sleeping" & "The one who are waking up". Glad to see you fully awake :)
im here only for the fish lol
nice one!
I should write the story behind this fishing trip some time. It's a happy memory from a less than awesome period in my life.
I like this post. I'm not here for the "money". It may be a bonus for doing this, but since I don't have the money to 'invest' then it's no big deal for me.
I've never been involved in an 'online community' before. I am a face-face man in real life. My job, building manager, has me dealing with people all the time and I have my friends and gaming groups that I hang out with all the time.
Most of my communications are face-face. I use Facebook and email merely to gather attendance information for game days.
I hope many people see this post, it is some good words.
Thanks! I' mean not a big Facebook or email user, either. I like steemit because there's a lot of unique, specialized content that you don't find on mainstream social media. I think a lot of people want this to be "Facebook that pays", but it's designed to be something different. And until the"Facebook that pays" crowd invests in lots of SP, it will continue to be curated the way the whales want it to be. That's just how it works.
Nice to meet you, and followed.
I keep hearing this term "whale". Other than an ocean animal, I have no idea what people are referring to, nor have I had the inclination to find out, lol.
They're the people with the most steem power. Their upvotes can be worth many dollars, so people can be a bit passionate in their opinions of them.
Wouldn't you "want" their upvotes then? Or do they stick to themselves?
I mean, wouldn't they be helpful to have as a follower?
It's like anything...some of them are heavily involved, other are taking a hiatus and have delegated their voting power to other users, and some are basically ghosts. Their downvotes are perhaps more influential than their upvotes, so they can be really useful in keeping the platform free of spam and plagiarism. I'm sure that plenty of people have invested in steem power for that reason alone. It's kind of nice having a social media platform where people care that much about maintaining some modicum of quality in the feed.
Thank you for sharing this. I am a newbie and need to hear things like this from other that know the scoop.
Also, thank you for your service. Great catch.
I agree, can't stand people who bash people on here for doing things like self voting. If it wasn't allowed, it wouldn't be possible to do. People like to soap box and ride high horses.
Thanks for posting!
Good post, Thanks for sharing
Facebook gets the rights to broadcast matches of the Champions League: https://steemit.com/facebook/@hamzaoui/facebook-gets-the-rights-to-broadcast-matches-of-the-champions-league
Great advice and I would have up voted your post but my voting power is way too low and recovering. I will resteem your post instead :)
I find myself in that position far too often these days! Thanks for the resteem :)
Love this post. When I first joined Steemit the community was much smaller, more time was spent on interacting and less people cared about the payouts. I've seen a shift and it's heartbreaking to read spam in really great posts like this one.
I had a good chuckle at the irony
They only saw the fish photo and skipped the written text. 😐
THIS right here is the correct attitude.
I'm using Steemit to basically earn money off of things I would have done anyway. If others go in with the same idea, then whether you make seventy cents or seventy dollars on your content is irrelevant: you would have written it for nothing somewhere else, so what have you lost sharing it here instead, and what do you have to gain? :)
Meanwhile, we gain your unique perspective while you garner the upvotes. It's a win/win situation. :)
Great post. If the only reason you post is to earn money, you're not going to succeed! Today, I was actually thinking about posting something very similar! Upvoted and RESTEEMED :]
I agree with your words... :)
Nice post! Enjoyed. I totally agree and have had this mind set from the beginning. I love the community here and actually just surf around meeting people and mainly commenting. This is lots of fun for me as I meet so many people and make lots o' friends. The wallet really is just a bonus for me. I do find myself less and less on other sites with some days passing with no visits. Refreshing to say the least. There are no get rich over night schemes. Everything takes time and effort except maybe for the guy or gal who invented the mailbox flag ;)? Love the pic of you fishing in Iraq! Awesome. What kind of fish is that as it certainly isn't old bucket mouth. Thank you for your service my lady. Much appreciated. Take care and I wish you well...........
Great Post, it starts with a seed but if you don't water it it wont grow!!
Blessings to you!!
Resteemed!!
Thank you!
You make a really good point about the whales contributing back, but a lot of them contribute amongst themselves and I think thats when people become irritated...however, that's not my point!
Really interesting post, mtgmisfit. I agree, but I also have to agree that it was the cryptos that brought me here...Than the crypto news and community kept me here. Now, I'm working on creating a name for myself and actually posting more original content. Stay tuned ;D Follow/resteemed
Thank you! I imagine being a whale is like being a member of an exclusive fraternity. Sure, you gave the support of powerful friends, but there's a significant cost to access that network. One thing I've noticed is that the more involved I get in the community, the more I understand the idea of being able to buy "clout" to help shape the direction of the platform so that it isn't overrun by spammers and copypasta that would make the platform unsustainable.
The nice thing about Steemit is that if you can't afford to buy the steem power to hold influence in the community, you can work your way there by simply interacting with other community members. The platform seems good about rewarding genuine discourse, and that's due to the diligence of people who want Steemit to be successful.
Following you as well :)
I agree with you @mtgmisfit, I also make a post on participation on steemit. You can read it up. Meanwhile, I have to resteem this. Great job
https://steemit.com/steemit/@krisosa/how-do-i-steem-it-the-participating-guide
really true!! exactly what i said in my videos!! good stuff girl!!!
Pfff, that article was really touching. I didn't actually know much about what a whale was before a couple days ago, and you've definitely contributed to my understanding of what this is. I am a writer. I heard about the money, but in a couple of days, realized the community and what it stood for. This article to so concise and straightforward and real and informative. Thank you so much for laying things out this way. Really.
That's incredibly kind of you to say! Already glad I'm following you. There are some great people in this community who really make it worth the effort.
Nice write up, people join programs for different reason but I believe that when you have passion for something you go get it.
Personally steemit is a great place to work for me and sometimes I forget that this is basically a social site meant to build a community, not to get rich.
Also there are a lot of people from 3rd world countries whose local currencies are worthless. I have seeing complaints from them mostly
this is true, i focus more on building something for myself that other can enjoy rather than pushing out as much content as possible
@mtgmisfit, this blog came to me at the most opportune time and opened my eyes, wide and clear.
I am a newbie here, 2 weeks old and have out about 8-10 posts, 50% of which are random photos that do not count as blogs per-se.
Well, Just a couple of hours back, I put up a blog on "Happiness " and my Happiness was gone after watching the blog sink into oblivion without a trace. I put in many hours of work, creating diagrams, collecting info from net and felt that the blog really created some value for the readers. But the truth turned out there was none. And I really sulked a bit.
Random thoughts crossed my mind.i was thinking if I should continue or concentrate my energies elsewhere. Whether I should spend the time developing my business or just relax doing nothing in my free time.
I genuinely felt my blog was better than many other blogs which did way better than mine and I was left wondering what happened.
I just shut down my laptop and started reading one of my half read books as they are one of my passions.
And then I casually opened steemians on my mob and lazily drifted to your page and then some stars flashed in my brain.
I have not invested a single $ in steemit, but still richer by a few hundred $ in last 2 weeks. The blogs which I thought would tank did a triple digit payout, the blog which I had high hopes did not generate a single $. But all these while, I have learnt, made friends, had a great time here.
I now understand the whales better. As you said they have invested $ here which they could have invested elsewhere. So they have all the right to get a decent return for their $ parked here. They have reason to use their votes carefully and to their advantage.
I have never complained on the platform in this regard, but had expressed my views when whales self voted their own blogs. Now I understand better. They have all the right to do it to safe guard their investment as we do with ours.
I guess I have a shift in my mind now. Going forward, I am going to simply enjoy my time here. I mean comment more, make friends, participate, engage more and stuff like that and think less of payouts and competition. I will just get myself a bit relaxed and chilled out and just be myself and have some fun instead.
The way I look at steemit has changed thanks to your few lines in this blog. We did not invest any $ here. May be we put in some effort in blogging. But that's the time I would have anyway wasted in front of idiot box. So everything is a bonus here actually. Every comment, every chat, every blog is just adding more value to my life whereas earlier there were none.
Thanks. I am going to have more fun here now on 😊👍
HolySmoke! ... Nice Fish !
I'd broaden it up a tiny bit: To be a happier human, stop focusing on $.......and JUST FUCKING DO WHAT YOU LOVE YOU DUMMY :D
thanks for great post @mtgmisfit , 100% upvote