In early Feburary I learned about Steemit from a stray comment on a former colleague's Facebook page. It looked worth investigating, so I came, looked around a bit, and signed up for a free account. Then I forgot about it. At the time there was a three-week lag for free account signup, so I got an email saying my account was ready on March 2.
I bounced around for a little bit trying to figure out how I wanted to fit in here. I tried posting some of my photography, I did some copyediting for another poster, I started writing a little bit about books and movies. But mostly what I was doing was trying to grasp what was going on here, and by the time I got a little bit of a sense of the Steem economy, I knew this was something I wanted to be a significant part of. I've only become more sure of that since.
The biggest risk in cryptocurrency investing is that so many projects are fly-by-night scams, sold on strong marketing without any intention to ever follow through. It's extremely difficult to judge when a project has a real future. Steem has solved that problem by backing its investing platform with a community of content creators, not only allowing investment in a variety of ways but creating an expectation that anyone who operates a service on the platform will be a member of a real community. This may not remove the risk, but it mitigates it immensely.
On the other side of things, traditional social media is a colossal time-waster. As it has evolved across platforms, the expected quality of content has decreased along with the social and professional reward for communication, and a focus instead on punchy, viral, shallow posts. It has also shown its extreme vulnerability to centralized control, as Facebook has repeatedly made choices to harm its users. Steem has solved both of these problems by backing its blogging platform with an investment opportunity, putting ownership of the network in the hands of the users, and creating a system where creating good work can lead both to greater ownership and financial rewards.
Do these systems work as well as they might? No, they don't. Steem isn't a money tree, it's a money sapling. It needs nurturing to become its best self, and I see that as both personally and financially rewarding.
The future Steem ecosystem I see is one where the major population is composed of content creators who are also small-time investors, reaping the benefits of platform ownership while also developing a community where we reward each other for quality communication. To me this is the revolution that creators need in the 21st-Century economy, a way to lift our work forward while generating financial benefit at the same time. This can also benefit the large-scale investors by creating a thriving platform and market for their capital.
I was fortunate enough to be a small beneficiary of the rise in Bitcoin, allowing me to become that creator/investor hybrid from the moment I decided to commit myself here. But there aren't all that many creators who fit that category, and if we want them, we're going to have to make them. I see a two-fold strategy for that: support account growth and retention for creators who are already here and participating, and recruit valuable creators from outside with the promise of an easier path to ownership and rewards than they would have coming in without assistance.
There's no end of work to do on that. But it's springtime on Steemit, and if we nurture our saplings, growth will come. I've been pleased to discover that there are many foresters here, with many different methods.
Spring trees outside Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik, May 2016.
I've been thinking of this post for a while but I wrote it today at the suggestion of @abh12345 in this post. You can see other posts from this initiative here.
Great stuff.
I did a little analysis a while back comparing Steemit to Quora and Medium and the results were quite positive. https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@just2random/steemit-vs-medium-vs-quora-competitive-analysis
The only thing holding us back from a breakout moment is more quality content.
And your post has been a great reminder of that.
I think user training would also be helpful and more promotion and I'm not talking about paid promotion either.
That's a great point to make, I was overwhelmed at the amount of learning I had to do just to understand Steemit. User training would be invaluable.
Yeah you might want to sign up with @dustsweeper once you get your first earnings. I'd upvote your reply but right now it would be a waste.
It looks like a really good initiative from what I've read, I just need to wait for my first SBD now and I'll join it.
Wow...@tcpolymath, your whole post is a shameless effrontery.
You say within your post:
"Steem isn't a money tree, it's a money sapling. It needs nurturing to become its best self, and I see that as both personally and financially rewarding."
The same time you are writing this, you're buying upvotes big time for your post, that otherwise would only have got the value of a few bucks. Which I think would be totally equitable.
Abusing the platform and honest authors that are putting up great quality content and then you writing about how to help steemit grow and whatever is such a bad kind of hypocrisy and double attitude that I MUST condemn. # I hope that some whale sets in and flags this post with most voting power he has.
You are not helping the platform grow, "nurturing" (how ridicolous is that), not in any kind of way , instead people like you destroy it.
That's a great article. I'd thought mostly about Medium, because it seems like our style of content is a more direct competitor to them, but Quora is interesting. My partner is regularly a top answerer there, so I'm more familiar with it than I am with Medium. It might be nice to see a Quora-ish frontend for Steem. I'm down for answering random questions but it's not super-easy to find that sort of thing here.
there is a tag: question
Conveniently, someone was already developing a Quora equivalent: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@musing/introducing-musing-io-a-decentralized-question-and-answer-platform-on-steem
Steem has so much potential is crazy how the majority does not realize that.
great points @tcpolymath!
haha love that: a money sapling...
i love your point that we need to nurture this community. i think your post and @abh12345's contest are doing exactly that! great job!
Figuring out how to be an effective nurturer is itself quite a learning process. I've found a few new posters I'm ruthlessly experimenting on (mostly by upvoting them, so I think they're fine with that) and watching some of the more established organizations and how they go about things. I figure in a few months I'll have developed some useful forestry skills.
haha love it! (keep that analogy going lol, as a homesteader i love it ;)) ... cool. i'll stay tuned to hear about some of your techniques, i'm all for tending this blockchain sapling til it produces fruit for many!! <3
:) do share those
I love this...so true!! Too many join with the prospect of becoming an instant millionaire, but like anything good in life, it needs to be nurtured to remain successful, and that includes creating and maintaining your community here :)
Thanks for a great entry!
Keep grinding, forester.
Oh, and good post, btw.
I'm really enjoying this metaphor.
Tim the Forester has a nice ring to it.
I have very strong feelings about trees.
Thanks to you I learned about @steembasicincome and that is a wonderful way to nurture newcomers while also rewarding yourself. This makes it a whole lot easier to make some of my youtube buddies to jump over and actually stay active here. :)
Nicely written. I was actually suggested to steemit from a friend of mine who didn't realized that I blogged. When he found that out, he strongly suggested I join this community. I am so glad I did. Not only am I finding communities that interest me, I can choose to stay away from the drama from other social media networks like Facebook. And the incentives of possibly being invested in is a perk as well! I just got my acceptance about 4 or 5 days ago and I am already amazed by the steemit community!
As a published author and writing coach and instructor, I get great joy and satisfaction in helping other writers. But as you so clearly stated, @tcpolymath, all the effort I poured into "social media" through the years has perhaps grown a bit of "brand awareness" for my businesses, but that's about it. Paltry to say the least.
Steemit on the other hand, has given me a fresh new platform and I'm thrilled about that! I see a very long-term relationship in my future. I'm convinced others in this Steemit community feel the same way.
That's some of the direction I come at this from too; I was a short science fiction editor back in the day, when established authors avoided the internet and I had to build up my writers from the younger and bolder folks who saw value in publishing online. I get a lot of the feeling here that I had then, and while I got out of it early, it's certainly done well for short sff publishing.
I think one major thing holdest back is the process of getting paid in crypto. For someone that doesn't really understand cryptocurrency and how to transfer crypto in fiat is worrisome for non-crypto enthusiasts. Unfortunately, the non-crypto users will have to understand the process of the exchanges to receive compensation which most probably wouldn't want to take the time to decipher.
Especially because most people aren't able to go from SBD directly into their fiat. The extra complexity of having to go through BTC or ETH just makes everything harder.
It would be nice if somebody would tie in an easier way of doing things. I do think regular people are gradually becoming more crypto-literate, though. I'm constantly fielding questions about how Bitcoin works, and eventually maybe that will trickle all the way down to Steem.
Account retention is so important, which is one of the reasons I loved @abh12345's initiative and wanted to participate. So many people are overwhelmed or haven't found their tribe (I'm hoping the creation of groups with HF20 will help with that), they give up. I fear they'll regret that choice when the price of Steem starts to rise! It'll be like all the people today thinking, "damn, why didn't I buy Bitcoin in 2013?"
It's kind of Catch-22: if talented posters leave they may regret it when Steem is big, but in order for Steem to be big we need to keep as many talented posters as we can.
in my openion if some one invest much in steem he will get much benefit too but small investment not give you nice responce @tcpolymath
I'm doing some experimentation on that but in general it's a question of how small is small. The larger an account is the faster it grows, which means that the hardest moments are the first ones. It feels like around 100 SP is a key watershed moment.
You definitely don't need to buy in as big as I did to get recursive growth going.
in initial stage a steemer use to starting investment of 50 steem through which they judge the income after that may be they invest more @tcpolymath
Steemit is a good platform, but needs a lot of improvements in the reward system and bots. Maybe a bit more security as well :)
I would definitely like to see some security improvements. At home it doesn't bother me much but I'm planning significant travel later in the year and I have difficulty figuring out what passwords and keys I'm willing to carry on a portable computer that could easily be stolen.
The above is gradually becoming true with upcoming of some communities that support content creators that are hidden under much bidbots of money mongers trying to kill the platform with their quest to be wealthy without adding some values to the platform.
Used well the bots make it quite a bit easier to move from a whale-centric system to a dolphin-centric one. I'll have more posts on this before too long.
Thank you for the post it really helps with trying to understand this platform. But as you said what this brings is ownership and valuable content. People and work with substance which I really enjoy. I hope at one I will find what works for myself and the community of steemit.
@tcpolymath Glad you are finding your place on this platform and obviously doing very well for yourself!
Yes, I agree that I have stopped using traditional social media which is a waste of time and more of a passive and mindless consumption of media that is fake as hell lol ,where with Steemit is active posting and commenting on genuine and valuable content. Also we get paid for this, so that doesn't hurt too much, right?
I think that we are in a really good position, because it is still very early for this platform. I think that certain aspects of curation still need to be improved but the platform really does work itself out for the most part!
I do alot of crypto currency reviews and you should check them out! I think that there are alot of scams in the space, but it is easier than you think to discover good quality altcoins.
Cheers!
I agree with all you have said in your post, and as you did, I too fumbled and am fumbling through the platform.
I understand not all content is worthy of reward, but really am confused as to how you managed to get to 61 ranking in such a short space, I have been on steemit for a while and I seem to be stuck on 47, I do not however post evrrty single day though so not too concerned about it, but am interested to know if you have insight into the ranking and how one improves it.
thank you for your post
stay blessed.
Reputation increases when you're upvoted by a user who has more Rep than you do. Mine has gone up pretty quickly for essentially three reasons:
I'll boost yours you a little bit with an upvote here, but high Rep really doesn't matter much; it's mostly useful for hiding spammers who have less than 20.
@tcpolymath Thank you for taking time out to reply, much appreciated. Love @steemit platform, so am not too concerned was just curious. Will continue to post as I really enjoy being a part of this community, no matter how small the role, lol
Thank you again.
Ps. added you to my steem voter peanut offering :-)
I like your sentiments and shared the same when starting out, trying to get my head around it all. It's a unique platform, for engaging readers. Not everyone can do this well, but we can contribute stuff and find our way. Hope u continue !
Great post mate.....Just visited the trending page and saw your post was there.....looks like we achieved what we set out to do......Cheers
I think that most of us started on Steemit barely knowing what it is, but while we stayed knowlegde came .This platform is full of opportunities to learn, meet people and also get money for well written content. Thanks for sharing your point of view!!
Your post is helpful for steemit users. I think that steemit is such a platform where anyone can share his knowledge and can gather as well. And this is not only a social community but also we call it a financial community where we can financially reward.
Steemit has opened up a platform for original content providers to earn rewards for their content. It's has developed and still developing. More content providers are understanding the need to come here and flourish. It's getting better everyday!
I totally agree with you. I see the opportunity of Steem to be different from conventional social media that has wasted a lot of time and only planted a lot of bullying cases and very high showrooms.
By the way, today is my first day in Steemit. I'm so glad to see your post in Trending and your title instantly makes me read your post
Welcome. I hope you do well here.
Steemit is a home for all, it is a place to socialize and make friends from all walks of life. Steemit has come to stay.
Thank you for sharing an article about your experience here on steemit.
"Do these systems work as well as they might? No, they don't. Steem isn't a money tree, it's a money sapling. It needs nurturing to become its best self, and I see that as both personally and financially rewarding."
I love that a lot sir.
Very interesting content, i read it from the beginning to the end because i am still finding a reason to continue and give reason to some of my friends who are a little bit skeptical about the viability of this platform.
Congratulation tcpolymath! Your post has appeared on the hot page after 71min with 78 votes.
Good post and I agree with u
Totally agree! It is fortunate to be part of this revolution!
I understand the appeal of a publishing platform that is owned by its users. I don't see how the Steem design leads there.
Right now content is rewarded because there is a lot of speculation in cryptocurrencies. Fine, that's probably no worse than using venture captial money. But I don't understand from my reading of the whitepaper, or my limited experience here, who wants to buy STEEM and for what purpose.
On Patreon, creators can lock content to backers (paying customers) or just ask for montly support. This provides a revenue source which I can understand. But upvotes on Steemit don't take currency from person X and give it to person Y; instead person X buys currency, which they keep, to get influence that might award person Y more when X upvotes them.
If STEEM is particularly good for e-commerce or other non-publishing uses, it seems inefficient to have those use cases subsidize the publishing use case.
If I run a STEEM node and act as a mirror, I don't get compensated based on traffic servered by my site, but at best indirectly by being chosen as a witness. I could run ads, I suppose, or charge creators to be visible on my site. But I don't actually need STEEM tokens to do this.
So I'm having trouble understanding how "real" money gets injected into STEEM, in order to be cashed out by artists and authors, in the long run. Is it a Patreon-style model where people buy more STEEM each month either to give directly or improve their influence? An ad-driven model in which publishers have to purchase STEEM for... something? A self-publishing model in which the front end charges for hosting, using STEEM?
It might be helpful to read about a simpler Proof-of-Stake system like the one ETH is working on before trying to grok Steem. Steem is really just Proof-of-Stake with a game built into it.
They do though. There's a third currency in play, rshares, that no one likes to tell you about. It's the one the voting system runs on. You get it from staking in the form of voting power, but your actions with it are restricted; all you can do with it is vote, decline to vote, or flag. When you vote the rshares are transferred to the person you voted on, and when post payouts happen they're forcibly converted to Steem and SBD.
People invest it in order to get their share of the staking rewards, and then either vote them or convert them to cash. Why does anyone buy a bond? I wouldn't necessarily argue if you thought the Steem blockchain deserved a junk rating but people buy those all the time too.
Alternate way of looking at it: Steem has gamified being on the internet, and people invest in the currency as a pay-to-win method. Since being on the internet is the most popular game in history by several orders of magnitude, if we can get people to notice it should do pretty well.
I think one major thing holdest back is the process of getting paid in crypto. For someone that doesn't really understand cryptocurrency and how to transfer crypto in fiat is worrisome for non-crypto enthusiasts. Unfortunately, the non-crypto users will have to understand the process of the exchanges to receive compensation which most probably wouldn't want to take the time to decipher.
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Interesting. Danzy in this case is a Smartmarket vote but apparently also an independent bot itself. I did not know that.