You can author, comment, and curate on Steemit, but when to do what is a question I seem to be answering a lot these days as the Minnow Support Project kicks off (we broke 100 people in the Discord room, and should have plenty tonight in 2hrs, 10pm NYC time). Folks tell me how frustrated they are writing long posts no one reads for low rewards. I was asked why I post so much... and someone asked me why some of the whales never seem to post.
This all has to do with the rewards system on the platform and how each group is maximizing them to their benefit or spinning wheels to their detriment. To be clear you should be doing all of the activities on the platform and some off of it if you're committed to growing here, but here's what you should focus on for these stages of growth.
If you have no idea what's going on with this platform start here- https://steemit.com/steem/@aggroed/i-m-new-here-can-you-explain-steemit-to-me-like-i-m-5
Minnows
You have no vote power, you don't have many followers if any, and you're wondering if this platform is worth working on.
First thing is to make an introduceyourself post. You'll get more on that one post than you will for the next 2 months on a post is my guess. It's how you get known, but it's not a great long term sustainable mechanism for growth. What you need is followers, and the challenge of course is how to get them when you have none. You've probably written a post that took over an hour that got 8 views and paid 1 cent. That sucks... so, my advice is don't do that!
So, if you're not authoring and you're not curating (since your votes don't earn you much) what should you be doing? COMMENTING. Find some established authors that you like, and find some minnows who seem cool and hop in the comments section. Why? A whale might toss you a bone for $1 or more just for a good meme or a funny comment. It take 2 seconds to find something funny on giphy.com to get $1 or you can write for an hour to get nothing. So, that's the fastest way to catch an upvote, but you'll get your followers popping along in minnow posts and talking to them. Say "that's a great post, I really like what you did there, I thought that third section was really funny." You have a pretty good shot at catching a follow by doing this, and those follows are how you grow long term wealth on the platform.
If you're looking for more advice on this check out- https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@aggroed/minnow-support-project-minnow-101
Dolphins
Once you start getting followers you are going to keep commenting, but you're going to start transitioning to authoring. You finally have enough juice in your follower tank to earn some cash on here. So, use it. Make some good posts and watch the amount of money in your account go up. Once you start having 300 followers you can start shifting and once you have 600-800 you'll want to spend most of your time on the platform authoring. Why? It's the highest reward thing you can do. You probably know some formatting by now, have some buds that can resteem you. You're breaking in, and it's time to post.
If you're looking for advice on that check out- https://steemit.com/blogging/@aggroed/tips-to-successful-steemit-posting-learning-from-kaylinart
Whales
There are some whales that like to post and get rewarded for it, but a lot of them don't even bother. Why? Because for them money is in curating. When you're a whale you can make $1k/week just curating. Click upvote, watch people follow on, sit back and laugh while you count the money. Curation favors big posts and big bets on them. And they can rake it in.
2 bonus tips
Look, tons of good stuff happens on the platform, but tons of it happens off the platform! Get into steemit chat, and get into discord. Lots of active communities there to pick from, and you'll socialize and really learn how working collectively can grow your following and your account!
Please vote for me for Witness!
You can find me hanging out on steemspeak, a discord channel that many steemers use to text and talk to each other- https://discord.gg/qjpRj7w
You can find me in Whaleshares- https://discord.gg/GykFB6S
or my new channel PALnet- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
I can also be found on steemchat as @aggroed. I moderate the channel msp. If you have a post to share give me a good sentence or two of why you think I’ll like it.
To vote for me click the link underneath my profile, scroll under the list of 50 names and type aggroed into the box. If you can see my name you have voted for me (don't click the little blue upvote next to my name as you'll cancel your vote for me).
The tip about minnows commenting to get 'cheap' exposure is really good.
Maybe the most powerful advice in this blog!
I agree, some of my comments have more value than my actual post. It's sad my laptop broke, my gif stash was there, easier than finding giphy gifs for comments. Haha
Thanks dude! Yeah, I have a minnow 101 post about a guy that got 200 followers from scratch in 2 weeks doing it. It's the way to go for sure!
The beauty behind commenting is simple for me as a minnow:
Presumably, neurons firing in a brain that works.
I came here via https://steemit.com/tutorials/@deveerei/6qqmdc-tutorial-new-to-steemit-check-this-out because I was blown away by the "trending" section numbers. I thought to myself, "WTF mate, this is actually an enterprise that IS worth looking into."
So, after a few months of just playing around here at Steemit, I've decided to dedicate myself the way I used to back in the day.
You know ... 15 years ago when blah-ging was a thing that created friendships.
Your ending gif is a top-notch. Thanks for the advices. I'm already doing my best on the comments sections. It's really interesting how far can some conversations go. Learned so much this month. @aggroed
I have been following this advice as well. Sticking to only making 1 or 2 posts a day and focusing more on comments. It is very good advice and very true. The same situation can happen like this on twitter.
I'm finding it fascinating that for a content creation and curation platform that most of the incentives are not in great, interesting content until you hit a certain level.
Its almost like trying to gamify blogging... First, you have to grind it out with some 'mini-blogs' (aka comments) and try to find people willing to follow you. Once you've proven yourself entertaining enough with your mini-blogs, you then get to finally create content.
DING DING DING. Winner winner chicken dinner!
Very informative and will pass through acquiantances onboarding steemit.
I learned some of these through experience. I started on steemit with zero contact on the platform. This is ok as I've seen how supportive the community is even for new comers. I feel that I am doing well so far, but looking back I know I could have done things more effectively had I searched for materials such as this to guide me.
What I did was eagerly author. And yes, some hours were used to create the content, which ended up having minimal visiblity.
I had to do something about it, so i followed quite a number of people. From there I did start building relationships through comments, and my followers started growing!
I got stuck at rep 48 for a while, only then did I did some research on how I can improve on managing my account.
Still happy to have catched on this a month after I onboarded. ^_^
Thanks for another great post... everyday here at Steemit feels like the first day at school and having an awesome teacher like you helps to find your way around the always fascinating campus!
See, Judy's catchin' on! WOOT!
That's what happens when you get to learn from the best! :)
Hey, @aggroed
My computer went on vacation last night, so you might be down an auto bot for a while...🤠
May have to buy a new computer,may take a bit...
Going to do the best I can to try and resteemed your posts and try and to keep up using my phone...
Keep up the great job ,and I will be back full time as soon as I can.
Thanking you for all your hard work!
Namaste 🤠
We'll be here. Safe comp travels friend!
Great post! I just made a post about commenting being a way to add a multiplier to rewards, I didn't think about it being a way to get followers! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your gifs are incredible, btw lol
Juanmiguelsalas made them. He's quite talented!
Awesome, I'll have to check him out. :)
This post received a 24% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @aggroed! For more information, click here!
🍒 You got flagged by BernieSanders? and you made a badge? it made me laugh when I saw it, it's hillarious, great sense of humour dude and I know you're not his only victim unfortunately, the whole Korean community is on the same boat o_o
Yeah. He's not totally beloved, but there is some good to flagging.
Great tips @aggroed, but I only got 3 bucks on my introductory post, haha. I don't know if I have been doing it wrong, but as soon as I registered, I started authoring, commenting and curating altogether. In less than a month, I accumulated 150 followers and made 500 posts (including comments). Quite a lot of my posts were Upvoted by whales, which helped me a great deal. I am happy with what I have achieved in such a short period of time :)
Thanks for writing and sharing these tips!
congratulations! I follow you @irreverent-dan and you have cool content.. this may be the reason of your success?
Thanks @xianda :) I hope so!! Haha
Shit! Now I feel obligated to go check out your page and kiss ass for a follow
lol 😂😂
Thumbs up bro! Thanks for Sharing!!
Appreciated reading this post. Been trying to help two worlds: 1) The steemit world and newbies. Me wants to stay positive and engaged. 2) Me non-steemit friends. So I make an effort to keep my posts simple and clean. I want them to stay encouraged. Many of me non steemit friends won't understand the inside info, so I try to keep it relatable to what they may post on facebook. And there are newbies that I hope they can see to keep it simple is ok too. I appreciate posts like this though to keep everyone encouraged moving forward!
Good points, I'm in a similar position. Thanks for all the tips and just being the example.
I appreciate you taking the time to help us out. I'm a minnow and trying to figure out exactly how the Steemit platform works. Been investing in crytpo for several years, but Steemit has really caught my attention the last few weeks. Thanks for sharing.
Yep, this place is gonna explode. Join the discord to find some friendly help.
Tips are so amazing, these tips will try to apply and maybe also I will get great things.
"That's a great post, I really like what you did there, I thought that third section was really funny."
Wow learned a lot thanks, and I'm on discord!
It's interesting to see how the highest return activities change as you progress through the stages of growth on this platform.
as always excellent advice. i spend most of my time here reading posts and commenting. as you noted, find someone that posts things you like or want to know about and start a conversation with them. more than likely someone will read it, like what you wrote and start following you. although i joined the steemit community almost a year ago i didn't start being really active until less than two weeks ago and now i have almost 60 followers which i find mind boggling 😉 so now on my way to whalehood 😜🤣
yeah. You could waste a few months authoring or kill it gettin' snarky with some other minnows. Your choice.
Great ..Upvoted
taking your advice to heart and commenting :) Thank you for the post! and best wishes for future steeming!
See, now you're gonna get an upvote for that!
awesome!
As always your tips and info are very helpful. I have started commenting and it is really bringing in some profit. Thanks.
That's great to hear! Have some cents!
Thanks mate, gon keep it in mind ;)
good advice, I ll start commenting more,
When you do how ever start making more posts what do you recommend as the rewards settings 50/50 or 100%? thanks
-Dest
Depends on the prices of SBD and steem. I think with SBD above 1 the calc favors 50/50.
thanks man, ill keep that in mind. It seems like the goal is to get more Steempower tho right? I mean if you dont ever plan on cashing money out?
that's my goal
amen brother. Do you know if its true if you do 100% curators get no rewards? I heard that once and only once lol. my reason for asking is because I wouldn't some of the whales to not get rewards and not have an incentive to like my post, know what I mean?
They get 20-25% of the rewards. Early big votes on successful posts make more money.
Thanks for the info @aggroed
Thanks aggroed, I have to admit, I have only been on here about 8 days now! I have submitted quite a few blog posts, but like you said it's not necessarily that they are bad posts, it's the followers that make them profitable. I definitely agree on the idea of doing an introduction post as it does bring in some well needed attention and usually earns you a lot more than your other posts too. So if your reading this and have not created an introduction yet, do so as it's worth it! I am also focusing more on commenting at the moment, although I did post an awesome little blog tip today which was a lot of fun creating. I'm definitely getting better at using markdown, but i think i will take your advise and stick to commenting for a bit with the occasional post till i get a better following! Cheers matey :)
we got a discord channel to help people too. You should join us there.
https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw Didn't my witness bring you in? Glad to see you active!
No, but i will definitely check it out! Thanks aggroed :) shall follow you too as this was very helpful :)
Thanks for keeping up with the project, aggroed.
I agree with the early focus on commenting, but I would emphasize being different. Try not to post anything that could be cut and pasted to another post accurately. Show that you read the post (hopefully, you did!)
Even though I personally would say that I know all these things, I do "my own thing" here, and that's to write my own articles. I've had tons of posts with basically zero rewards but I've also had greater success on some of them. What you've shared here, is a superb guideline that people should follow to become more established, "the easy/right way", so to speak. - I know that I'm working "backwards" a bit.. But it's just my personal style to do it.
Anyhow, Resteemed and upvoted for a great read, as usual. - Thank you!
Yeah, for sure there is no one way. I burned through 100 posts not making shit. So, I thought I would save people that time. Look if you love it then do it for that, but if you're gonna burn out then do it the right way first and save your posts for when you have an audience.
That's a great advice. I actually burned out after 2 or 3 months on Steemit, when I joined last year.. So I know what you mean. I should probably have posted less back then, and more today when I have a decent amount of followers.. - But it was a bit different last year too, when there was less posts and more rewards in general.
This post taught me a lot!
Thanks. Resteemed. . .
Sweet! Hopefully it saves you time and frustration too!
I agree with you @aggroed
I followed the same for first 30days of my steemit. I just did only commenting and interacting with people. But not spamming.
One whale voted my view about EOS during its ICO and gave me $40 with single vote. That gave me lot of zeal to dive more in steemit.
Hi @aggroed, thanks for the insights. But won't it be hard to gain followers purely by commenting as a minnow?
70 +followers in about a month,thanks in good part to @aggroed advice!
Follow his advice and you should do great!
Namaste
No, it's so much faster! you can still post, but don't spend hours writing stuff no one will read.
A little witty sentence on a well-read thread is a better than hours wasted writing. I agree.
Thanks for the perspective!
Returns are so much higher!
You seem like a nice fellow. Come join us in Discord- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
cool thanks for great strategy. will work on it : ) Kudos to you and all who is working to help minnows like us.
Come join us here: https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
A good way of getting followers is to visit the NEW section regularly and make insightful comments on the #introduceyourself posts. Make sure you read their post and respond accordingly, at the very least if they have put their real name address them by it, make a comment about something in their post. You will be surprised by how a welcoming face gets followed
Sorry guys... I am still a Minnow LOL. I'v been on here for about 11 days and plan to become a solid dolphin and then whale in a few months... Let's all put in the work and make It happen... Lets go!!!
RESTEEMED and voted up. Great info. Thanks for the post.
Sure thing. Hopefully we see you in Discord!
I'll check it out. Thanks.
Oh wow, totally forgot about the introduceyourself post! This week then...keep on steemin' on @aggroed!
Good one sir, Votes for withness
Thank you for this. It is confusing on what to do and how to do it, not only to gain followers, but not step on other people's toes at the same time.
That's why we made a group to support folks- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
Come check us out!
Great great tips man!
Great post as always! This is a well thought out plan for long term growth, versus the "throw mud at the wall and see what sticks" approach many of us newbies follow.
That's what I did. This is what stuck! I'm just trying to save you the hassle!
Thanks, I am registered on both steemvoter and streemian, looking forward to the journey.
I really appreciate all you are doing to help us little guys out, it means a lot.
Pretty sure that's why folks elected me! Glad to be here to help and hopefully we get you up to speed faster than it took me.
@agrroed I keep seeing your name pop up and something has been annoying me about it. Should it be pronounced aggro'd (as in angered) or aggro ed (as in angry Ed), or even agg roed (as in, well, no, I got nothing for this one)?
It's pronounced "Aggroed"
I love that joke...
ag-growed is probably the closest.
It's from aggro, like the root of aggressive, but it's past tense. So, it's aggroed.
It's a WoW term. I was sleeping. The deep state pissed me off. Now I'm woke AF and fighting back. I got aggroed by them... now I'm Aggroed!
Thanks for clearing that up. That's how I have been pronouncing it, but when I first saw it I pronounced it as agg-ro-id and knew that couldn't be right.
Nice one @aggroed
Thanks boss!
How's minnow support going btw?
Thats some awesome tips.
This information is very useful to a minnow like me. The good thing is I don't need to dig it out from millions of posts here. Thank you very much for putting it together. I will definitely refer to it very often.
Good times! Hope it helps and good luck!
Another great post on such a subject. But perhaps the best one I have read so far. I must admit that even now although it has been nearly 2 weeks I still don't understand it completely. I am not disappointed that I'm not making any money but I'm just disappointed that I am slow to learn how this social experience works. The most valuable thing I learned was to start reading and commenting on this post so thanks for the tip.
Excellent post. Really love the third section ;)
cute
Of all your achievements, being flagged by berniesanders is still the one I'll respect the most. Hahahaha.
Thanks for the tips and the ongoing initiative on Minnow support project.
I admit it takes a steep learning curve to get a hang of Steem. I haven't had the pain of making the proverbial 7 cent posts yet which scares the hell out me because I know someday I'm bound to get one or more. I don't know if I'm strong enough to console myself for that.
And it's so inspiring too seeing so many great people contributing greatly to steem. Sometimes I wonder "what do I bring to the table". What can I contribute to genuinely help others, and bring value to this community.
Great tips that I'll be more than happy to follow. Why go through trial and error when veterans such as yourselves had gone through it and be so kind to distill your experience into learnable actionable steps to help us.
See, this dude gets a follow. First I see him in Discord. Second, he's droppin' knowledge. So, kudos. Maybe I'll resteem your shit homie! Can catch some followers when it's going out to 1500+ people!
Awwwww thanks man! I don't think I have any resteem-able post right now tho. Hahaha.
It's ok. I'll be around for a while. You can catch one later.
This was a great post- thank you very much! It really helps to see through how things are done, and helps to realize what we should look for as minnows. By the way- the rainbow minnow is really cute! :)
So much to learn! You clarified a few things I was wondering about in this post, so I thank you for that. For instance why what seems to be a great post earns next to nothing and I see other posts that are well lets justs say a lot less than great that seem to make a killing.!! I'm going to take your advice and maybe I can hatch out of this minnow egg , and become a full grown minnow! Still a lot to figure out, but I'll stay the course until I get there. THANK YOU!
Rock on! Come join us in Discord and we'll get you sorted!
Just download the Disord App, thanks for the tip bro.
Always great content, thanks for the advice. Enjoy your day @aggroed.
This was very helpful, thank you! Other than a few large payouts from contests on here, my posts haven't got much attention for the most part so this is a nice way to focus my attention.
Find some established authors that you like, and find some minnows who seem cool and hop in the comments section.
That's pure gold. Thank you!
Should help. Glad to see you in Discord!
Yes, registered! And such helpful Steemians there. I feel more confident now, thanks to you.
Good times!