I've been in the trenches helping baby fish since I got here in June 2017. I think the best people to work with are those who post daily or more. I have no luck with others.
I've seem a lot of this recent effort to help redfish go to those who post sporadically. They are not going to change just because they get to 500 sp.
On the other hand, we have lots of people in between 100 and 400 sp who work hard here. But no one looks at them after 100 sp and before 450. Then they get dropped like a rock again after 500.
I think your target market is active and eager people under 500 even if they are not close to 500. Then have ways to help them after they crack the minnow floor.
Additionally, I do not recommend directly powering up until you have at least 500 of your own sp. Much better to spend your money on delegations so you can be somebody faster. 3.750 steem gets me 50 sp for 24 weeks. Boom! I'm invested. I need to keep working at least that long. Then the next time I have the money - do it again. 3.750 steem power up when you have only 50 sp is meaningless and depressing.
Take a look at my @fitifunfood account that I started on Jan 1 2019. I would still be flopping around at 50 sp if I did not lease. Instead I am over 500 with almost 200 of my own.
Also - everyone tells new people not to think of making money here, which is outrageous. I tell people how they can make money here and have a few active posts about this right now with more to come.
I'm on a mission updating my minnow tips from the last time I did it a few months ago. You can see all the old ones at the bottom of my posts (except share2steem.) All my tips are about how to maximize earnings and connections. Part of the reason I am doing this now is because I finally see big guys helping, so please don't stop.
And yes, you are so right that people do not know what is offered here. You need to learn 1000+ things and if no one helps you, you never will.
We have plenty of active communities in Discord and Chat. Use them until the mythical "real" communities somebody is working on become reality. I'm in at least 20 communities that I help and that help me even more.
Finally - I have three blogs here and have never once powered up. Instead I power down and live off this money since Dec 2017. Even with that - my sp is growing. The new account will start powering down soon too so I have more money to live on. Sure, it is a life of poverty, but it's a better life than most have. My 4th blog will start in May.
I'm sitting here in KL Malaysia in a room in a condo with a pool and a balcony, healthy food, and tons of steeming @teammalaysia folks nearby. I live off my blogging at steem and try to be an example for others. Who can ask for anything more?
there is a part of me that envies you. Every month for the last year I have said, right next month liquid is liquid and I need to start paying myself and there will come a day that I do. This is the life steem can provide for people and you are right, who can ask for more. the only problem is, right now STEEM can not sustain this for everyone. If the price of steem dropped to like .01 cent, would you posts give your enough to live off? and that what we have to prevent from happening by getting the balance right.
I was here at 20+ cents a few months (?) ago. I scramble like mad and try to stay as cheap as I can. In Dec and Jan I wrote posts to say the rent was due and I did not have it - steemers came through for me and still do.
If the price goes to 1 cent, I am screwed like everyone else. I read your stuff and others and know this is a complicated mess. But I cannot starve and go homeless while you figure it out (or not.) I still barely know what a witness is or a token or an smt. I'm a weight loss coach and author, supposedly, even though I write minnow tips here. You big guys cannot expect us down here to do much more than post and interact. I did not even know what crypto was when I got here and few content creators do.
But I am also a nomad and something good will happen like it always does. I don't worry about the worst happening - ever. I am too busy and optimistic for that.
You are right about STEEM not being able to do this for everyone, but what job does? I have all kinds of strategies going here, and all kinds of balls in the air. I'm counting on the mainstream to get here and I am watching them come now. I feel like crypto is the future and it has far to run. In here, the dApps are the future and I am making good rewards from a few of them that were not even here last year.
Coingecko and rt got here. And a few others. This is a good place to post even if flawed. Will we get to a tipping point where people flood in? I hope so and I cautiously think so. One of my author friends came this week and a lot of my other friends are having friends come in. Drip, drip, drip.
In my case, I have a lot of supporters, sbi, autovoters and great places to post things I care about. And thousands of connections on multiple platform besides here that directly came from here. When I stumbled into Malaysia broke last August, @teammalaysia saved my butt and still help me daily.
Back when the price was high, I got enough money out to live for over 6 months. I was screaming at my friends to take money out and some did. Some of them turned around and put it back when the price was so low. Now they just about doubled it again. Other people watched the price go up and come back down again without taking a thing.
I take money every Tuesday no matter what the price and have since Dec 2017. This week I spent 9.40 myr (2.30 usd) on a delicious restaurant meal and my @tasteem post will get at least $4 in rewards. I feel like I live a charmed life, and I will do everything I can to help more little guys succeed too.
The project for 10K minnows is one of the best things I have seen since I got here two years ago. We need the baby fish to thrive and I am so glad someone is finally seeing that from the lofty heights.
You should definitely pay yourself @paulag, even if it it 1% a month. Something!!!! Go out to dinner and post your review on @tasteem. You can do it if I can, and your post will get more money than mine for sure.
Tasteem reviews are gold and you can take that to the steem bank!
Thank you @fitinfun ...
... for the investment of your time to give your fellow Steemians the benefit of your perspective. There are a lot of questions I see "in here" about why people don't "follow the script" and power up all they can. Including in this post.
You have provided everyone with one answer. Seems to me, in a "free market," this is as it should be, i.e. everyone is going to do what they deem to be in their best interest ... Perhaps, as they learn more, they will change their approach. Then again, even then, they may not ...
For myself and, I suspect, many others, they view their activity on the Steem blockchain as a long term investment, since they do not need the "active income" right now. But I know some for which that is simply not the case. Many of our fellow Steemians, in Venezuela, for example, need the "active income" now!
Thanks again for writing!
Exactly! And I know people using this money all over the third world for housing, medical, food etc. I am not some freak, but one of many. Just because we use the money now does not mean we are leaving.
My rent is $85 usd per month. My dinner I'm feasting on this moment is less than 50 cents of ingredients and I am loving it.
The world is not only made up of investors with long-term goals, big houses, and fancy cars. I am playing the long game at steem even if I am not doing it the way some people think I should. I post this message of what I am doing here all the time, and I am glad you saw it, @roleerob. We need our babies to thrive and the 95% kill rate needs to improve. At least I give people hope.
Most of the time, little guys cannot even get follows from big guys, much less votes or delegations or anything else. I beg for follows on my post footers since I post on busy. I get 20 people a week following with under 50 sp and maybe a few a month over 500.
If anyone does not need the money now, find some minnows and invest 1-3% of it in them somehow. If they do not work out, move on to the next. It's not like they are not here trying in droves. If we get to 10K minnows - and we will, let the next goal be 25K.
Very good @fitinfun ...
... I appreciate the additional input and perspective. I've "tweaked" what you have to say a bit, since many of us are far from wealthy (although well aware "wealthy" means different things to different people ...). At least in the way you have described. For example, I am investing for the long-term in hopes of providing a means of supporting my wife and I in our old age ...
The challenge here, at least for me, is the time commitment. But ... That said, I will commit to taking a closer look at how I might be able to do better ...
Thanks again for your contribution with your "real world" view of the Steem blockchain.
Have a good day! 👍
P.S. If you'd care to provide me your Discord name @fitinfun, I would like to ask some questions "off line," but I see there is more than one "Fitinfun" in there ...
Agreed. Community building up through various ways like discord, steem.chat is better way to expand
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I'm happy that works for you, but for those who do not need to cash out there can be benefits in powering up everything. Maybe buying a little delegation will help. I haven't looked into the exact numbers. Having more Steem powered up spreads the voting power to give a better rewards distribution. Anyway, I'm delighted you can live off your Steem. That is a long way off for me.
Under 500 sp buying delegation is far superior than crawling your way up. I've been recommending this for almost 2 years. The people who do it and do not power down are minnows in months and excited. The people who do not take much longer, are unmotivated, and might leave. If they are going to power up 20-30 steem - they can already be a fake minnow and at least have a vote.
I feel very fortunate and I also have many minnow and redfish level people helping me since they have money outside the system. I get wallet transfers when a tiny fish reads my minnow tips sometimes out of the blue. It's amazing how this works. I am all in for steem and always expect the best in spite of the rich people and their issues lol.
The idea is that the more you grow your account, the more you earn. So powering up actually improves earning.
You are fortunate as you have a pretty large delegation that allows you to earn from unowned SP, even when powering everything down. This is not the norm for most people.
Powering up = more returns
It’s not to bash those who doesn’t power up, its to show the additional earring potential of doing so.
I do not have one large delegation, @llfarms. I have many small delegations on three blogs, and I pay for them all through minnowbooster. Only one of them is free and I won that for 90 days. The rest are 24 weeks and I renew then constantly.
Powering down = pay the rent
Op, apologies, it looks like the delegation I was thinking of is no longer there.
Yes you lease SP, which gives you a return based on the SP... because the more SP you have, the more you earn.
Leasing is of course an option. It requires money out of pocket.
The idea here is to power up, to increase earning (just like you do by leasing).
Both options require an investment: either paying to lease or investing in yourself. Both options can result in higher returns.
Just was trying to point out the whole goal here is not to bash anyone for powering down, but to show them the additional earning potential of powering up. Which you clearly know, and it’s why you lease SP.. because the more SP you have, the higher your return.
It's not money out of pocket. It is money earned by blogging here.
And the point I make to little guys, is that they can grow much more quickly by leasing than they can by directly powering up. For less than 4 steem you can get 50 sp for 24 weeks. 4 steem added to 50 steem is depressing and a slow path to nowhere.
After you lease with all the steem you get for a few months, then you can stop at some point if you are not powering down, or keep leasing and grow faster still. If you spend 50-100 sp on leasing, then you will have your own 500. If you spend it to directly power up, you will still be under 200.
Little guys who have taken my advice are now big guys. On the other hand, many blog for a year or more without leasing or attaining 500 sp.
This is something I've wondered about since I joined Steemit. Outside of RC and preferring to be able to vote for those who support you, why do you choose to still rent SP at your size?
In my own case, currently at 500 SP, I usually choose to just use my liquid for things like minnow booster and delegate my SP to smartsteem for the daily payment (rather than having to manually keep track of various delegations on the minnow booster market). Is delegating SP less profitable than vote selling? Is following a curation trail more profitable than vote selling/SP delegation?
I haven't seen someone whose run the numbers on all of this, so I'm still a bit in the dark as to how they stack up to one another despite being here for a while and would be interested in your thoughts, thanks!
It's partially because I have 3 blogs, soon to be 4, and we all vote each other, so this is part of the reason it works for me financially over 500. But it is also to have a higher vote on all my blogs so I can vote the people who interact with me for a decent vote. Most people I deal with and vote for are tiny fish and if I don't do it, no one will.
I choose not to go the delegation route of letting others do my voting for the most part - maybe later. I have not run numbers, but I am associated with people far larger than me who still lease.
I plan to do it until I am at 5000 sp in case I ever get that far. I was buying votes as you mention but stopped that as not being profitable at all.
I do not find keeping track of delegations to be hard at all. I am only sad when people pull them unexpectedly and this is why I am moving to 50 sp leases instead of 100, so that a loss does not hurt as bad.
I think it is an individual choice, @ribbitingscience. i want the biggest vote and biggest sp I can get while powering down. I find this works the best. If you have only one blog and do not power down your choices will be different. I still recommend it for all under 500 sp.