My Steem Journey #1
I remember that @dedicatedguy suggested me a while ago that I should write about my journey on Steem and how I got to where I am right now because I might inspire some peeps and I do think that his idea is brilliant so I decided to do it. I will start a series of posts; I don’t know how much it will take, where I will try to share everything I did and everything I got involved in, giving you a look behind the curtains in the hope that it will help some people.
I am not a whale, not even a dolphin, nor do I have the most significant accomplishments on this platform but I do think that what I built so far here is solid and that the projects I work on have and will have an enormous impact on the community.
I am here for a while, and I was able to meet many amazing people with different views, and I got a good understanding of how things work, and hopefully, the advice shared in this series will give you a hand. As for the first post I want to share with you how I got on Steem because my story is not an ordinary one, I didn’t just stumble upon this platform like that; it wasn’t luck or anything like it, my story is about perseverance, trial, and error.
The Goal
About four years ago I had a goal; I wanted to make some money online without any initial investment because I was still a broke-ass student. I just wanted a place where I could work a lot and get something for it, a place that allowed me to develop new skills and succeed. In this time I was trying tirelessly different sites, methods, and ideas until I found what I was looking for. It wasn’t easy but it worth it.
I never fantasized about becoming a millionaire and having lambos, yayo, and hookers even if I often make jokes about these because my sense of humor is weird, all I wanted, in the beginning, was to make just enough for a coffee but let me tell you how everything began.
Trial and Error
About four years ago I found out that you can make money on Youtube so I decided to give it a try, and I started vlogging. I reached out to a couple of friends, and we set up a team, one of the people helping us was @teos, everybody had specific tasks, I was mostly the guy behind the curtain, editing everything, running the show. We were recording comedy clips, and they got pretty popular in our area until the guy that was appearing in them died, and we shut down the whole production.
We weren’t necessarily doing it for money; we made $2 off the whole thing, it was more about getting involved and having fun. I remember that we were at least six in total, everybody contributing in some way even if we were still amateur YouTubers with no income. Thinking into retrospective, running that channel was the beginning of my creational journey.
After that, of course, that like anyone without any skills I got into gambling thanks to my uncle that first taught me some stuff about poker. I started learning and playing more and more; I was utterly fascinated by this field mostly because of the adrenaline that’s involved in the game and the possibility of earning money in an unconventional way. I was only playing freerolls, so I was not earning anything, but I was learning, and it proved useful when I arrived on Steem because I was able to play at @SPL but more on that in another post.
Along the way, I stumbled upon many Ponzi schemes, and I documented on the subject, a thing that proved very useful once I had money to invest into crypto because many things are too good to be true in this industry.
Last year I got into designs, I picked up Photoshop and started creating. My designs were decent, but I did not have the imagination to do them all on my own. I called my friend @another.artist that’s studying arts and decided to team up. She was making the logos on paper, and I had to copy and edit them in Photoshop and illustrator. We would’ve split the money in half. But of course, no one bought them, and because we didn’t stick with it, my freelancing career soon came to an end.
The Golden Nugget
After tirelessly trying out new things I found out about Bitcoin and Bitcoin gambling which was the perfect match for me, but you can read more about that here. I was fascinated by Bitcoin, and what it stands for so I decided to learn more about it, and that’s when I found @JeffBerwick.
After a while, I found out about Steem from him and made an account that night. It was out of curiosity that I joined, that’s one of the reasons I have this username because after my introduction post it was too late to change it, I was hooked. Otherwise, I would’ve probably used my real name, but I’m not sorry at all it happened this way, I met a lot of great people thanks to this username.
In my first week on Steem I realized that this is it, this is what I was looking for all this time. I soon realized that I have to give it time because there are no overnight results and that my continuous efforts will pay off later and at the time I’m writing this, all my efforts paid me more than I was ever expecting and I’m forever grateful for that.
The pictures are from Pixabay: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Wow amazing journey so far,wishing you success and more creativity
Thanks man finally reading a little bit about your journey :D
I think a lot of us were looking for some tool like steem for a while. I am happy that now we have reach a level of technology that allows something like this blockchain to be real and valuable.
Several years ago I had an idea to make a blog about technology with a friend, but monetizing and gaining and audience was incredible difficult, besides, my friend moved to America and the idea pretty much died right there.
Now, it appears blockchain is giving this a second chance. What excites me the more, is that this concept is just starting, and as @taskmaster4450 likes to say, the tokenized world will bring a new era of abundance.
I really hope for that to be true one day.
Cheers bud!
Finally i get to read about the origin of ur steemit username. Whenever you appear on my feeds, i usually and literally take couple of seconds to pronounce it out loud. Inspiring write up. I am looking forward to a similar testimony soon.
Great story and journey guyfawkes4-20. It's interesting to hear how you arrived at steemit and the paths it's taken you down. Your journey through other more conventional internet content creation paths resonates with me as I had a WordPress blog which didn't take off. Steemit really is a game changer in that it removes that power of success or failure from the hands of 'the company', whether it be YouTube or Wordpress. On steemit, we are judged on the quality of our content, by our peers. It is a 'brave new world' and one I am happy to be a part of.
I had an idea in my mind that there was going to be a shower of golden nuggets after I first got into cryptocurrencies but soon learnt that it's not that easy. I dabbled with trading for a while, unsure what I was doing like a minnow out of water before I found steemit. I remember seeing a link to a crypto article on a facebook trading group. I clicked the link and found my way to a steemit page. I can still remember looking at it and thinking, is this a blogging platform that pays? 😲 It can't be true!
I signed up then and there and my first post was woefully bad, I put some ridiculous 2 paragraph post up about a coin I held at the time, ARK I think. Anyway, it didn't do very well and rightly so. But a few days later I started to explore the tags and realized that I had stumbled on something that could help me realize my life ambition.
Much like yourself I felt like I had found what I was looking for but most importantly what I needed. I studied imaginative writing in University and after working a few sucky corporate jobs after Uni the creative drive and inspiration had gone out of me. Steemit saved me from this creative block. The support in comments on my posts when I started posting my Scuba Scribe articles from my long abandoned WordPress blog gave me the boost I needed to start writing new material. Before I knew it, I was posting new poetry and fiction alongside my Scuba posts. It felt amazing, and still does, to be creative again and this is all thanks to steem.
I am constantly inspired by people's steemit stories, thanks for sharing yours.
P.S. The poker sounds like a blast. I don't have the metal for playing with anything other than play money but I like to imagine that I do 😉
Wow. What a journey you've had! Thanks for sharing this with us. I do hope there's a second part describing your journey on steemit so far. Like you when I got here I realized whao, this is it! this is what i've been searching over. I'm glad I found this place.
This is definitely inspiring! Can't help but wondering what happened to that guy who appeared in your youtube videos, but I understand if you don't want to share the details (here).
You also reminded me that I was sharing my pre-Steemit story on here but I got side tracked due to my travels.
Thanks for giving us some more background to you as a person and insight into your past life. I love it when stories become more personal. We are all humans - if I forget the bots for a moment - after all
;>)