Well last night marked the end of my first full week here on the steem platform and as I was laying in bed last night I began to reflect on my time here and if it measured up to my hopes and expectations.
All in all, it was a good week. I put out a couple of (what I thought) were decent posts, and got my first payout last night (more coming every day). Did I make a lot? Of course not, but that's a hope, not an expectation.
When I started, I wanted to jump right in an get involved in the community. I felt the best way to do that was to purchase some steem and start upvoting everybody with good content. So let's do that. OK 100 steem converted to SP I'm ready to rock. Wait, what's that? 100% vote is worth $0.00. No that can't be right. Yep. OK time to revisit this. I'm not going to make much of an impact helping people with $0.00 per vote.
Another 200 SP bought. Surely I'm good to good now. Nope, and I gotta stop calling Shirley before I verify that I'm ready to go (ok ok bad joke). I'm at least worth $0.01 per vote now, but I was hoping (there's that word again) to make more of an impact with my fellow plankton.
Time to get serious. Goodbye last remaining BCH, you were free to me and now I set you free to roam the crypto-sphere. Be good to whoever buys you but I am moving on to STEEM. There we go, over 1K SP now and that will have to do it. There are no more pennies under the cushions to cash out.
Speaking of pennies, I'm now up to $0.04 a vote. Time to get my feet wet.
WOW what a mess, posts all over the place, covering sooooo many topics. Some are good, most are garbage. Just one or two words, a picture, sometimes not even that. Oh well guess that's what happens when there's money involved. Time to learn how to filter and search and follow and delve into the mess and wait.... wasn't I supposed to be doing something here? Oh yeah READING.
So I found a few posts I liked, gave them my upvote. Didn't really comment on them since I'm generally shy in the beginning of new things, communities, people. Did some follows to make it easier to find these people again.
Next came my intro post. Had some fun with it and then I watched it.....hello watched pot....and we all know how that goes. Hey look,they have these things called upvote bots. Time to run some experiments. 8 bots later on 2 different posts and I reached the conclusion I began with. These things are definitely NOT worth it for newbies or small users. The returns are miniscule (since you only put in a little, you only get out a little +10% which is still a damn small number). For promoting a post or getting it to trending or just making 10% on a decent size investment they might be fine. But a fraction on pennies is still a fraction.
On to the next adventure. Tried my hand at commenting. Quickly and as expected (again with the topic words, what's up with that) found that simply nice posts and good read, weren't going to cut. To my surprise however, a decent comment (multiple sentences), well thought out and insightful and bringing a different or additional perspective to the original article was well received. And by well received I mean to the tune of $0.05!!!!!
WHHHAAAATTTT???? I earned something from a comment? Who knew? And I earned almost as much as the post I made that took me 3 hours to do? (Seriously that post is still sitting at $0.12 after 6 days as I type this.) Well that's definitely an added bonus.
So I wandered around, posting more and more comments, trying to get to know a few people when I stumbled across something called @steem-ua. Hmm this seems like an interesting project. I'll check it out a little bit via their discord channel.
So I hop in to channel, lurk for a bit, nervously ask a "HELLO I'm a brand new newbie as identified by this completely NEWB question" question. All you moderators and old-timers know the kind I mean. The ones that elicit a deep sigh from you that says, here we go again, explanation #173,282 coming up.
Now here's where the story gets good. Some guy named @meno replies in channel to me and answers. Me, not wanting my newb quotient to destroy the channel, DM's him and peppers him with question after question after question after question after....well you get the idea. @meno certainly did LOL.
He gives me some answers, and better yet some advice and tips. Super friendly guy, extremely helpful and took the time to answer everything. Afterwards I learned he's actually a big-wig in @steem-ua and @helpie channels and is a super busy guy. But none of that ever entered the conversation. He gave me as much time as I needed to feel comfortable with things although I'm sure this meant neglecting other users and dumping work on the UA-guides and scouts (thanks to whoever picked up the slack that night for him btw).
OK now I was hooked and re-invigorated. With some tips and hints and goals from my new bestie @meno, I was off to the races. More comments, more posts, more upvotes, I was hitting all the notes. I joined the @helpie trail, I delegated SP to @steem-ua and others. I was on my way to being part of the community, both in participation and rewards.
I got another big break when I saw I had a mention from someone called @yehey. Hmm what's this about. So I hop on over to the post and to my surprise I saw that this member had found one of my posts, liked it, and actually included me in his daily post about new authors. WOW, that was AWESOME!!!!!! Thanks again @yehey and VOTE YEHEY FOR PRESIDENT errr ummm WITNESS I MEAN.
It's around day 5 at this time, and things are clicking. I've been making "helping fin" and "school's" in session jokes to @meno (yeah thats my sense of humour folks, get used to it), the pennies are starting to add up (next couple of posts are over $0.50 each WOOT) and the momentum just keeps building.
SCREEECCHHHH!!! Yep, you heard it, those are the fishie brakes being applied. What is this?
A 0???? But but but I've never gotten a 0 for anything before. Surely this has to be a mistake. Shirley said it wasn't though. But she lies, so off to my good buddie @meno as I'm sure he can straighten this out for me. Well I've posted, commented, been commented on, people like @meno follow me (thats gotta be worth at least 0.1 by itself LOL) and as of last night had my first payouts generated. But nope, still a goose egg. That number stares me in the face daily now, mocking me, taunting me, daring me.
And that's the end of my first week. Very good overall and certainly worth sticking around for week 2.
Oh did you happen to catch that last line about the 0 daring me????
WELL
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!!!
Week 2 begins with the ultimate goal of improving that mythical unicorn known as my UA-score.
Second goal is to organically have a post break $1.00 (I'm not shooting for the moon yet)
Well readers, if you've made it this far I'd like to thank you for your time and if you didn't make it this far
;tldr
@meno is awesome
@yehey is awesome
NEWBIES - join @steem-ua discord channel and get some help/advice. It really does work
Week 1 - a success (in my books)
Hey there! Followed you back when because I was pretty much looking at your introduceyourself post while I was drafting mine :P and well your subject matter seemed interesting enough.
Suffice to say you've done far more with your week than I have! I particularly admire your determination to help upvote good content.
Some nice tips and hilarious parallels with my own experiences here. I'll probably be checking out steem-ua after this. In the meantime, have a (obviously useless) upvote :)
LOL Hi @moofang
I remember you from my intro post. Glad you liked it and followed and found this one.
Definitely check out steem-ua, wish I was smart enough to post the discord link here (@paulag little help please)
Join up, meet the real people who can help you and say Hi to me lurking in there LOL
Oh, and no upvote is useless, everything adds to the community
Oh god, I'm sounding like @meno now, time to end this reply
Hope to see you and others in discord soon
Plankton of the platform UNITE!!!! Tomorrow we challenge the DOLPHINS.. OK OK maybe not tomorrow
Congrats on your great first week on Steem! Welcome 💜💛💙💚
Lyndsay Boews sent me over to say hello! Glad i took her lead. Seems like a full bunch of cheerios you've found in your comments hahaha! Love your attitude. It certainly helps that you choose to have a good time here. There's plenty of fun to be had!! Cheers, till our paths cross again 🍻
Greetings @yogajill
Thank @lyndsaybowes for me for directing you my way. Yep its been a fun first week and I look forward to more as I get more involved with the community and the excellent peeps I've met so far.
Hope to see you again soon
You have a minor misspelling in the following sentence:
It should be minuscule instead of miniscule.OMG
Who let my wife on this platform??????
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
Holy crap I've been spelling it wrong! And that's not like me -- I'm usually the resident grammar nazi in my circles.
Thanks @grammarnazi!
That's my wife's passion and reason for living.
She's an ESL (English as a Second Language for those who don't know) who went to school for linguistics. She lives and breathes for correctness.
Twitter just about killed her with how it got people used to shortforming everything
Me, I'm more of an intent kind of guy. You know what I mean, then its all good
Could be why i have to edit my posts 5 or 6 times even after proofreading twice before hitting the submit button.
LOL
Generally both formats are acceptable unless you're talking about physical type. "Minuscule" was the original formulation in the printing industry, but as a metaphor "miniscule" has become more and more popular and most people don't care that it doesn't reflect the original meaning. (Or even know the original meaning.)
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Welcome aboard. It looks like you are getting well into it already. Don't worry too much about your vote value. When I started the algorithm was different and you needed about 1000sp to vote up by 1c. Keep making connections by commenting. If you make it fun then you will come back anyway.
Enjoy
Thanks for the welcome @steevc. As you might have seen from this post, i do try to inject humour in my posts, I'm just someone who naturally laughs at life and hopefully that fun feeling will translate to my readers.
Hope to see you around more
We may have a similar outlook. I've been on steemit for 2 years and it's still fun
Nice Gordon Smith on your profile. Is that yours? Is it a GS2 or custom? How old is it?
It's a GS2 that I bought new in 1987. It's a great guitar.
You have hit steemit like an on fire rocket. What an amazing first week. It was great to see you in chat last night. Finding and engaging with communities is key here. Steem on, hope next week is epic
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Thanks for the well wishes @paulag. Was definitely fun in chat last night and gave me a chance to meet more of you and get engaged a bit with some awesome folks.
Hehehe very interesting your post xD.
It's good that just starting on the platform, you have been found and valued.
You already noticed that steemit is a sea of many junk publications but nevertheless, there are usually pearls on some sides.
The @steem-ua project comes with the mentality of being able to find and value those pearls.
Yep, took awhile to get my fins under me and find a way to wade through all the morass of posts to find the ones with actual content.
Getting better at that every day.
And yes, I got lucky being picked up by a couple of great people early on who helped me as well
Definitely, you were very lucky.
0 is a good start. This was a great read about newbie experience. Takes me back, and I look forward to more commentary.
I'm sure people have been telling you already, but entering contests can be a great way to gain traction and visibility too.
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thanks for the advice @josephsavage.
So many contests, I literally have no idea where to start
Any recommendations on what are some ones?
That depends on your goals. @steembasicincome publishes a list twice a week. SBI is a good way to get consistent support in your content, but I'm biased.
You should also look into @dustsweeper to keep tiny upvotes on your comments from vanishing at payout.
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Thanks, I'll check them out
0.94 cents now, getting close for your breakout! LOL
Great to see someone stumbling around on Steemit not knowing what the fuck is going on. You are lucky to have met @meno, a great guy. Although be careful, he is not as sane as he appears. He likes to make cruel jokes on people. Yesterday he confvinced me that I, in fact, had diabetes. :(
Anyways, welcome and glad to see you are having a good experience, we need more positive minded people like you here!:)
Thanks @holm and WOW THANK YOU. Biggest ever single upvote I've had.
I'm so happy reading about what a positive experience you've had with the steem-ua discord server, yes @meno is DA MAN for REALZ!!
I'm proud of you for not getting down about any of your numbers, and instead challenging yourself to do better and better. You're gonna go far with that attitude!! <3 <3
Thanks @lyndsaybowes.
Honestly getting in steam-ua chat and helpie has been the best thing for me to start.
I highly recommend it to anyone else just starting out
Awesome people willing to help you
Plus there's Pechi the pig
Honestly how many channels have a pig?
You gotta join just for that peeps! You know you want to now
Sounds like a good start. Good choice to trade BTC for steem
That was also quite an entertaining read.
You need to pick up followers for UA, I think.... and the higher the follower's UA score the higher yours.
There are other ways but that's the easiest.
And welcome btw.
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Thanks for the welcome @revisesociology
And the info about the followers. I don't have many real ones yet (just the couple hundred zombie bots that followed me in the first 10 mins of joining).
Following others is easy, getting the right people to follow me.... well I'm still working on that trick
I think we all are!
If there's one rule of steemit it's this - money follows money!
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It looks like you are off to a good start. A lot of new users try to post more and more thinking that more posting means more rewards. The better way to think about it is more friends means more rewards.
Meeting people like @meno is a huge help for newbies. He is a key player in the social ecosystem here.
Hey professor!!! I recognize your name. I just quoted you on a comment on someone's post yesterday I think it was (probably) @tarazkp
Yeah, the more I read from people the more I'm realizing what luck it was to have met @meno early on.
Not to say he's the only one of course, each day I seem to get lucky and meet someone new willing to share their advice and experience with me.
Week 1 was getting my fins wet, week 2 is going to be about digging in and accomplishing something. What I would love do is find a method of getting visibility for the posts and getting some experienced, good, followers that can help me grow and expand. That seems to be the holy grail every one is chasing at the moment.
Whether its measured simply by number of followers, UA-score, payout amount or some other mannerism I haven't run across, that seems to be the ultimate metric, attracting good quality followers, especially at the start your steem "career".
Good luck to all in that endeavour
It was a @tcpolymath post about the utility of quitting. The Partiko app sends me a notice of anyone mentioning my handle.
After looking at your blog, I would say that you are a good candidate to be curated by both Curie and Steemstem. That will give you a big exposure boost.
There is no sure fire way to get on their radar, but following their curation trails and commenting on their posts is a good start.
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Thanks for the info, hadn't looked into them yet.
They seem like the big boys of curation and I'm definitely not up to snuff for that yet.
One day however, one day this minnow will grow a blowhole and turn into a dolphin
LOL
I disagree. It won't be long before you get Curied.
Say, do you think any of the readers of your previous blog would be interested in joining Steemit?
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Those numbers do spark the competitive spirit don't they? Though I'm not affiliated with them, you should look into @steampeak they're one of the plethora of steemit rehashes, and man -o- man they have graphs for days. I'm glad you aren't let down by the payout or the numbers I've been here for a while and have already out lasted some of the people that joined at the same time. Just keep at it, even if it doesn't make a ton of money at least you get to be a part of a community and lets face it, making 16 cents here is better than making nothing on twitter. :)
Funny you should mention @steempeak. i just discovered them yesterday in fact.
Definitely feel the UX is much better than base steemit as a first impression and yeah I'm hooked on the dashboard page.
Although as much as I love data and graphs it is a little depressing seeing how low some of the lines are on the charts LOL. I'm not here 100% of the payouts, as you said, whats a few pennies or even a dollar day, but of course the hope/dream is to make it big but thats a lottery ticket for another time LOL
Speaking of communities, take a look at @themesopotamians and let me know if you're interested. (This is what I talked about at the beginning of Helpie chat yesterday, I don't remember if you were there yet.) I really like your attitude and think you would make a good candidate.
Thanks @tcpolymath
I'll check that right out. I missed you talking about that as I couldn't get voice working at the start and missed about 5 minutes. The first thing I did hear was @meno mentioning @themesopotamians and of course had no idea what he was talking about and forgot to ask about it after.
Glad you found me and mentioned it again, otherwise it would have been from my brain until someone brought it back up
LOL
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Welcome to the blockchain, @ancientknowled3! A wonderful read. Following for more of the same and hopefully help that UA score of yours. 😎
Thanks @novacadian
Much appreciated