Interesting subject matter, quality writing and formatting, and perseverance.
There's a trend on here that someone will post something new (first travel blog, first makeup tutorial, first post about weed) and it will get successful, then everyone jumps on the bandwagon and does me-too posts.
These posters are missing the point. It's not writing about travel, makeup, or weed that gets the bucks, it's doing something new and different
If you have a niche hobby, or work in a strange area, or have studied something most people on here wouldn't know about, try writing about it!
Sometimes though, it's just the luck of the draw. I've seen shitposts make a ton of money, and I've seen brilliant posts get totally ignored. If that happens to you, don't give up. Just keep working at it and try again.
OK, thats useful, one question that confuses me is when tagging posts, there are alot of categories missing and it seems it will only tag your post with the first word you place in the tag line.
Do multiple words in the tag line make much difference in search results?
AFAIK you can only put a single tag in the actual tag field, but they're arbitrary. You can use a tag which doesn't exist yet and the category will be created.
You can also put additional tags in your post body itself using hashtags, that's what I do. Just don't go totally overboard on it. Some people will put like, 50 random tags in their post, hoping to score lots of upvotes, and they just end up pissing people off instead. Make sure your tagging is relevant.
Edit: Also, I should point out for the record I'm hardly a Steemit whale or anything. I've only had one post which I would consider properly successful, but I've been here for about a week now, and I am seeing patterns in what works and what doesn't, even if I'm not very good at making use of that knowledge myself :)
OK, thats useful thanks, ill try something new and unique and see how that goes.
Its just funny how i first tested everything out and uploaded what i thought would be crap and i get a good payout.