When we judge our rewards and votes are not enough on Steem, how do we stay motivated and remember why we are here instead of giving up? What works for me is reaching out to help the many people I love on Steem because this allows me to remember why I am here which is to learn how to love and be of service creating a world I will want to come back to.
I have had many days where downvotes, comments, the Steem price, witness votes, and other user activity had me down on Steem. I questioned why I was here and what good I was doing. Every time the answers came back to people as I remembered posts I read here that helped me start gardening, be a better husband, plan a future home in sustainability instead of extravagance, stay motivated about cryptocurrencies, and get through the dip.
The secret for me is to focus relentlessly on helping others while also maintaining a balance in taking care of ourselves. For example, I have found resteeming several times more often than I post leaves me feeling happier than trying to maximize my earnings with multiple posts each day. With this mindset in place, I hope the questions and answers below I often see and hear will prove useful to stick with Steem on a tough day!
How to Earn More Upvotes on Posts?
Focusing on giving the most value to each reader with my posts, bringing new users to Steem from organic search by considering what people might search for, and helping other authors earn guarantees that I get enough earnings over the course of my life here on Steem. If the earnings we get do not seem enough today, we are likely for that judgement not to change even when the payouts do. When we see that our earnings today are enough, we can relax and just post every day instead of obsessing about how much we make.
While you might interject that "you earn so much on each post you cannot understand how I feel with my zeroish earnings," you might also like to know that for the first several YEARS and ~500 blog posts I made on http://jerrybanfield.com/blog-posts/ as well as on several other blogs and websites, I earned zero on 99% of my posts. In fact, if you total all my costs like website hosting and promoting my website, I SPENT MONEY TO BLOG for the first five or so years I did it. I understand about earning nothing after spending hours writing a post and I did not give up for lack of making money on my posts because I write primarily to help readers.
On Steem, as soon as I started looking more at the earnings on posts I resteemed and on those I wished to help than at my own earnings, a magical transformation happened where my earnings became enough and I stopped feeling the need to care how much I got on individual posts. I love hearing how my resteem led to a hundred more upvotes coming in within 24 hours and I love seeing a big upvote come in on a post I resteemed regardless of whether I had anything to do with it.
Ideal Posting Frequency?
Once daily works best for me to post because less than this makes consistency more challenging while more than this leads to burnout and an obsession with our own rewards. I have tested more and less frequent posting with ending up comfortable in once a day. Each day I intend to do one Steem post and most days that happens. This maximizes my chance to make a post that makes a big impact while allowing me to focus on just the one post and feel finished posting for the day after the one post is up.
Downvotes, Failures, and Losses?
Proof of effort! In one year here I have a laundry list of projects I started and so far have not finished, posts with huge downvotes, losses from bids on voting bots, and more failures which I choose to think of as learning experiences. Each one ironically helped me to improve greatly here and adjust my strategies to be more useful with less struggle. Some of the big downvotes led to building new and deeper relationships than I could have hoped to imagine making without them.
What makes failures and losses easier is looking inside. When I am okay with what I did, then whatever everyone else does is their business and nothing personal. In fact, the critical feedback often becomes exactly what I need to hear. Sometimes I wait a week before I even read it to get some perspective and learn to let go before reengaging.
Steem Price Ups and Downs?
We feel powerless when we focus on things we do not control like the Steem price and powerful when we focus on what we can control like writing posts, reading comments, and upvoting others. I limit checking anything I do not control to an "as needed" basis with attention to rationalizations making up excuses.
Tonight I checked the Steem price because I sold some Steem to one of my partners and therefore needed to know the conversion rate. I have a notification on my phone to tell me when the price goes over $10 for 1 Steem to eliminate the need to check unnecessarily. When I make a bid on a bot at https://steembottracker.com/ I check the price to see whether to use Steem or SBD and how much to send. Outside of places I need to be aware of the price, I avoid checking it.
Sometimes days pass where I have no idea whether Steem is $1 or $10 and it does not matter because I am not intending to sell all my Steem.
Overwhelmed?
During the times I have been most frustrated on Steem, I stepped back the most without taking any drastic actions like powering down and waited until sanity returned. I made my one post a day and then make time for other parts of my life besides Steem. Every time after a week or so I was ready to get back into my normal habits of reading posts, commenting, and engaging in the community.
What many of my missteps have shown me in life is that my impatience often costs me everything I was hoping to get and leaves me starting over. Getting excited about Steem, posting every day, and quitting because the rewards are not enough leaves a lot of us missing out on 99.999% of the opportunity here as does buying Steem, powering up, participating for a while, powering down out of frustration, selling at a loss or small gain, and then telling everyone how bad Steem is.
Today I show up each day with the hope to be helpful here by resteeming 3 to 5 posts written other authors a day, writing my own post, and chatting on discord. I experience the same discomforts that the rest of us do here and each time I am motivated to deepen my relationships here the most when I am uncomfortable.
Thank you for reading this post which I hope is helpful for you to get through the next challenge on Steem and to stick with us!
Love,
Jerry Banfield
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Our Most Important Votes on Steem are for Witness!
- If you do not know what a witness is on Steem, will you please read https://steemit.com/steemit/@gmichelbkk/what-is-a-steem-witness-how-to-vote-and-why because our votes for witnesses determine our future together here on Steem?
- If you have never made a witness vote before, will you please set me as a proxy at https://steemit.com/~witnesses or https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-proxy?proxy=jerrybanfield&approve=1 because you will feel good about helping select witnesses while I do all the work to maintain the votes for you?
- If you already have voted for witnesses and prefer to update your own witness votes, will you please place your vote using at https://steemit.com/~witnesses or https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=jerrybanfield&approve=1 because most of us feel a sense of belonging here when we begin choosing our witnesses?
Hi Jerry,
Everytime I read your post, I learn something. In fact, I got motivated here because of your posts and videos. And because of your resteems and the emails I am getting, I met lot of other awesome people as well.
Thanks for helping Steemit @jerrybanfield
I don't have inspiration to write articles everyday, like you. For me, once per week is perfect but interaction with comments is everyday.
You do provide a lot of help with your upvotes.
you are writing great man
Thanks
In all constructive honesty, and this has generally bothered many more than me, I don't see a connection between this post title/tone and having your Steem Power/vote available by purchase/for profit only. It's extremely contradictory, despite all of the other positive things you've done. It really outweighs the good with the money not currently being where your mouth is. Perhaps you could write a post on the pro-people rationale for that since it feels like the big elephant in the room behind the curtains.
Matt thank you for the suggestion because that helps me know what to share about! Running my voting bot allows me to make direct donations on https://fundition.io/ and fund projects to grow Steem with much greater amounts than I can do with one vote without using an autovoter. I will elaborate much more on this in an upcoming post!
Thanks for listening. That would be appreciated. To the extent that it's valuable, I'm not sure why simply using an autovoter without having a price on your vote (including delegators/investors locking up your manual SP under no-use terms) isn't the best way to go in the spirit of Steemit overall. Influencing the platform to reward others shouldn't have a price when your message is all about the people, in my opinion. I must not understand the process properly. Does your vote need to be sold in order to make direct donations to fund projects?
Matt I made a full reply here https://steemit.com/steem/@jerrybanfield/upvoting-vs-voting-bots-on-steem and credited you for the motivation on the post.
Thank you, Jerry. Do you have a discord # / Steemit Chat account for a brief offline chat? Appreciate the effort to explain things.
I was pumped up about it when I first started. No one cares about me or my life. A lot of times I feel shitty about myself after I read on Steemit. The fact is no one wants to hear from a guy raising kids working a job. They want a world traveling veagan
Hi @propane, You have a point there. But a guy raising kids and working a job too has so much to share. also you can be a guy raising kids and working a job AND a world traveling vegan.
Cheers!
Let's see what Jerry has to say.
As a guy raising kids and doing Steem full time, I can say that many readers are interesting in hearing what I have to say when I focus on sharing in a way that helps. Each of us has a story and the question is will we share our best material?
Thanks for the advice I really appreciate it. I need to change things up. It would probably be easier if I had a steem wallet like yours.
that's funny! I appreciatecha bud! I'd also encourage you to do your part to find/establish a community of folks with like-minded interests. Good luck with life! May your raise some beautiful, well-rounded children and may God bless you with a tremendous success at your job. Who knows? With those things accomplished you may well become a traveling vegan poet hippie dude after-all! LOL
Thanks I like your energy. I’m to old to become a traveling vegan poet hippie dude. The cut off for that is 30 years old. I thought that was common knowledge.
Hi there man...I challenged you to #comedyopenmic challenge...all the best
Thanks for your encouraging post. I nearly quit during my first few weeks on Steemit, but I enjoyed reading interesting posts on the platform.
Resumed efforts on steemit. This article answered me many of my questions about upvote, resteeming and most importantly motivation for not giving up. Thanks @jerrybanfield. Reblogged.
In my country there is a saying:
"the higher the tree the faster the wind will blow, which means the more successful someone will be more and more people who do not like".
Therefore, keep the spirit, and still be a big tree that shade, despite being hit by high winds, but still can be a shelter for others to be able to take shelter.
I always see and subscribe to your YouTube channel. although sometimes look silly, but I like, and it makes me amused and laughed.
keep moving and spirit @jerrybanfield.
Say hello from me to your family.
Regards @yuslindwi
Yuslin I had not heard this before and smiled after reading it because I understand!
remain inspiring, and support and inspire people through your great works👍👍👍
Sometimes it's always good to lead the blessings, sometimes i think it's not just the video that people want, many spend money on bid-bot in other to get seen, it maybe that it took then 2 weeks to earn the money, and the spend it on beeing seen.
Sometimes I want to be seen, a little gesture of your resteem is just more than enough to do the trick.
Thank you Jerry, this is beautiful, keep up your good works
I find it interesting following you on Steemit because you are way ahead of me. I'm still trying to figure this all out. But I think long term it will be much worth it.
Imagine 2, 5 or 10 years in the future. What will the price of STEEM and SBD be then? 10 times? 100 times? I think both is possible.
Thank you for so much advice and for the support, for showing that human part that reminds us that you are the same as us, who were also small fish... I like to read people like you who have fought to make Steemit the place it is. Regards!!
Hello @jerrybanfield. This wonderful motivation is really at the nick of time. However, I have followed you keenly and applied almost all your suggestions, even watched your video on YouTube and I could see you are passionate about this. Yet, all to no avail. Perhaps you should take a look at my posts and kindly tell me what I am not doing right. I know you are under no obligation to do so, but just I may hit the right way and post what is expected and how it is expected to be done. Thank you.
https://steemit.com/@ojebaba
Life is DIY. Don't depend on others to feed your thirst for knowledge. Seek the tree from someone else's seed, pluck a fruit, and plant your own from the seeds of the fruit.
You are already seeking, continue to pluck ideas and implement them, find ones that don't work and drop them, then add to the ones that do work. Rinse and repeat.
Thanks man. I know it is DIY
I call this professional advice, coming from someone who I have so much respect for.
Someone who has experienced the highs and low of blogging.
It's an honor to Learn from your ocean of experience. Keep supporting Minnows Sir... God bless you
it's true there are times when we get demotivated and then we have to get ahead steemit is a platform for the future I have no doubt about that
I understand you are a witness. Witnesses keep the steem blockchain running because they run a server. I understand that this costs money. I heard it’s around $500 a month. This is why we should all support witnesses with our votes.
Jerry you have the right attitude. You write for the love of the community. As you point out, so many are here for the money, and end up leaving because valuable followers are hard to catch. It takes a great deal of time and effort to build a list of genuine followers, especially of those who have the SP to give you a top vote.
A quite difficult thing to do is building a genuine follower base, most of the time, it's difficult to attract the right type OG followers because we don't control them. Amazing comment here
Thank you for this!!! Indeed very helpful and lifted the motivational level!! A proof that anyone who succeeds started from where we (newbies) are and experienced our frustrations too... ☺️
It’s all about persistence, baby! 😁
Excellent post Jerry. Another straight from the heart. You make it very difficult to not love you:)
I think of the line about there being little money in poetry, but little poetry in money. Which is to say, as a professional author, I've learned to live hand to mouth (even after publishing several books) because I view the literary life as a kind of spiritual calling and, as you say, a life of service.
Migrating to Steemit, I thought this might change, but it's been a challenge, financially, 6 months into it. But the reward of doing what you love, and meeting/helping people whose stories you care for, is not (merely) monetary.
So, I continue to post what I hope will inspire others and I'm grateful for new contacts I've made, on this platform, and how it has meant a kind of rebirth for me as a writer on some level: blogging, trying new things, and collaborating with artists.
Thank you, @jerrybanfield, for your support of my recent post on promoting tolerance towards Islam/Muslims. This has become a kind of mission for me and I hope that my posts will continue to interest you.
Thanks, for sharing your experience and for your encouragement.
Onwards & upwards,
Yahia
Yahia I appreciate you sharing your experience as a writer because you have helped me remember my gratitude that after years of writing online I earn enough to do it full time along with making videos here on Steem!
Doing what you love, full-time, is certainly a privilege. Congratulations, for getting to this special place—with hard work, humility & gratitude.
It’s good of you to, Jerry, to be giving back/helping others, as you were helped along the way. 🙏
Thank you for your continued guidance!
Your blogs, advice, and tutorials have helped so many people Jerry. You are one of the reasons I finally joined Steemit in July 2017 after dismissing it as a scam in Summer 2016. Thanks for everything you've done for the community.
source
Well stated. I blog for myself. If I entertain or reach someone..that’s a plus. Without someone helping you out with a nice delagation for a bit, I don’t plan on striking it “Rich” here. That was never the intention of joining this family of Steemians. I wanted an outlet and a chance to meet new folks, new friends and to learn something new(as I often do so from your posts). I’m going to invest in this family and reinvest. Looking forward to the day I can help others as much as some have helped me. Can’t wait! Please please please fellow Steemians..reinvest in our future and strive to put your heart into everything you do. Best wishes to all. Thanks @jerrybanfield for a strong thought out post!
Hello Jerry. Thanks for the encouragement. I'm 7 days old here in steemit and I'm still learning a lot. You single handedly brought me to steemit with your YouTube videos. If you get a moment, please have a look at one of my posts.
Much love Jerry an Steem on.
Thank you Dustin I just read one of your posts and made a bid on my bot for it!
Thanks again Jerry. Im honored!
very useful tips Mr @ jerrybandfield, hopefully i can apply when i manage my steemit. you are great and best regards from me.
Dear Jerrybanfield! Thank you for the encouragement and motivation!
I have a small gift for you- your portrait. I hope you'll like this drawing:)
Thanks for this, @jerrybanfield. I am increasingly finding my time on @steemit more and more rewarding. Partly because it has become less about the money than about the engagement.
A key takeaway for me, from your post, is the value of a re-steem to the re-steemer. I do, however, think twice when I look at blogs that are mostly re-steems that don't seem to make sense. Also, I sometimes want to re-steem with a comment. I guess that's what citations for?
BTW re-steemed and just going to check that I have voted for you as a witness. I think I have...
Good weekend to you and your family
Fiona thank you very much for the resteem! According to https://steemd.com/@fionasfavourites I am not on your witness votes yet! I just made a bid for an upvote on one of your posts!
After I commented, discovered that I had difficulty doing it from my phone. Seriously appreciate the upvote. I have now voted for you as a witness, @jerrybanfield!
Another thing is those who get transformed by your great contents will always be desirious to visit your blog over again. Thanks for your awakening and encouraging post @jerrybanfield.
You keep right on going @jerrybanfield! You are a model of perseverance all can learn a thing or two from!
Well said jerry, a beautiful soul!
As a wise man once said
“Help ever - hurt never”
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STOP@jerrybanfield i can see you understand what we are passing through, if we really want this platform to grow, i think its high time for whales, start reading and upvote good content, before i believe down voting affect the price of steem and Sbd in the market, the growth of this community should be paramount to all whales, lifting up minnows ....
Patience and perseverance is what should prevail in the pursuit of any goal, for that sometimes the fundamental move away a bit to seek another angle of vision, another approach that allows us a new perspective of the goal to achieve.
It is interesting what you propose, especially for those of us who are starting in this Community, I barely have a little more than 2 months, that little by little we discover their great potential. This vision reinforces our decision to continue exploring the contents of the Community to achieve our satisfaction goals for the contents published as well as for the economic satisfaction.
Congratulations for such an interesting publication.
This is really great advice for someone like me who just started.
I'm new and just started posting content, though upvotes are very rare, I am more focused on creating good content to gain more followers. I am not rushing myself to get to the top, but I am taking each step to gain experience, to help and connect to the people here. So, I guess I'm heading the right direction.
Thanks!
You're welcome @ justnyz! I appreciate your comment and send a bid for an upvote for you on my bot on your recent post!
Wow, I was really surprised! Thank you very much and have a Great Day!
Quite inspiring and motivating.
I'm new here, I hope to make good use of your kind words words in my journey here.
Thanks @jerrybanfield for being such a positive inspiration to all Steemians. Keep up the good work!
Hello jerry, I recently joined to steem and met your blog, I really like your blog and upvoted and follow you, please see my blog to support each other. thanks for sharing useful post.
@timewarp
I just took a look now at your posts and made a bid on my bot to upvote one!
thank u so much my dear friend. it's my pleasure that I was able to get your attention.
I am all time support you @jerrybanfield
I am a new user in steem, you and your friends are a steam promoter. I feel bad when new users like me are introduced to the platform, I give up because they are not recognized and no detail explained. Your team and you do a good job with recognize the user completely and I will be happy to be part of your team @jerrybanfield
Im vote your my witness
Please check in my bloq
Thanks for this my witness @jerrybanfield
Thank you for adding me to your witness votes! I just made a bid to upvote you on my bot in an hour or so on your most recent post!
yes ,, i love to be your loyal followers. I also appreciate your work in steemit
Thanks you sou much my witness @jerrybanfield
Hey , @jerrybanfield , i noticed that many users doesnt understand the concept of steem witness , so i made a comprehensive content to help users understand and how to vote witness also check it out please curate to encourage the hardwork , resteem if the content is usefull for other users...
https://steemit.com/steemgigs/@blackempror/a-fully-comprehensive-user-guide-on-who-is-a-witness-and-how-to-vote-your-witness
i am the new-bie in steemit. to tell the truth, i do not know benefit of steemit. i usually use the facebook and i heard facebook also make coin like steem. if i want to make money with steem, i can see me lost fun in steem. so i will just write my story in steemit like diary. ^^
Jerry Banfield greetings I admire you for your work in steemit I am from venezuela I do not stop seeing your channel every day you are excellent, your constancy is barbara I congratulate you.
Congratulations @jerrybanfield!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following category:
I'm glad to see you're doing well... You sure know how to bring home the Votes...lol... I'm lucky to get 10 per post... I think my average is 9... I really do have something to say... I suppose it's rare for anyone to Stumble upon one of my posts, sorry to say...
Hi Jerry,
i don'y know if you remeber me, i worked with you on upwork for some video translation on udemy, since than i follow you on youtube, Facebook and twitter, personally things are so good on upwork i made 55k$ in the last 12 months, but what i've learnt from you, is never focus on 1 thing, and this is why am expanding my income potontial to other possibilities such as youtube, blogging, udemy and just got to know Steem from one of your youtube Videos.
so thank you for all your great content.
Regards
@othmanchohdi you're welcome! I am happy to hear you have earned $55k in the last 12 months and have been following me since we worked together on Upwork and you have joined us here now on Steem!