@neoxian, you have a very valid point there. If we could buy a few upvotes from whales to push our blog up, that is not fair.
But the issue with newbies is they are not visible, they don't have influence, they don't have powerful followers or no followers at all, they don't know how to blog, a few are clumsy like me, they don't have any idea what to blog, how to blog n stuff. If they don't get some push or traction in the initial stages say the first 2-3 months till they get a foothold in the community, they will get disillusioned and just fade out.
I have in my followers list a couple of very promising looking bloggers who seems to have stopped blogging after a couple of failed attempts to garner some attention n support.
So @randowhale,@booster are some crutches that a newbie will lean on while finding his place in the community. Once you find your niche and a faithful following then things start getting a bit easier. But the first few months till one reaches say a 1000SP it is an extremely uphill task.
Now everyday thousands are joining the community. More talent is coming. Visibility window for every bloggers is getting shorter by the day.
So a newbie has to make the right mark at the right time with the right set of people to make a mark that takes him forward. It is not easy to get the right niche or write up cool blogs one after other. Blogging requires serious efforts that consume time and leaves one totally exhausted.
So newbies could do with a little help. They are also aspiring to do something worthwhile here and earn their fair bit of money. We need to give that extra leverage to newbies else this will only be a rich man's ( read one loaded with steempower) play ground.
I guess the bigger whales n dolphins should upvote and support much more newbies till they get their own thing going.
They say you come to steemit to give and then you receive as you have given.
Once newbies know the struggle n assistance / leverage received they will in turn help other newbies to find their feet. That's how communities grow.
I don't think we should get into this aspect very much.
Peace n love to all. Steem On!!!😊👍
You make some very good points. I've been hanging around on Steemit for only a week and I find it hard to gain a foothold. In fact, I've already noticed some mechanisms (like the pay for upvotes that @neoxian mentions here) that at first seem innocent but may actually be harmful to the entire community. For instance, whales having so much influence it's tempting to follow whales and post similar content in hopes of them upvoting you, causing a very limited amount of subjects to be present more and more.
I'm working on a series of blog posts called "Taking Steemit to the Extreem" where I analyse a few of those mechanisms and try to predict what would happen if those were used/exploited to the extreme. Maybe if we can identify some mechanisms that are vulnerable to abuse we (the community) can do something to mitigate that.
@pilcrow, I have understood one thing. It will take some time before any newbie gets noticed on steemit, unless you are extremely talented blogger or you have a whale or dolphin friend backing you. so the best thing to do is.
Keep me informed about how things are going at your end. I never ask anyone to follow me or resteem my blogs or upvote me. Never. I am not asking you to do the same. just remember my name, when you write your first introduce your town photo op, just let me know.
This is beautiful. I've seen newbies fail woefully with blogs like how to make money on steemit. When actually they are not making it yet.