It's discouraging when your account value keeps falling and the pending payout of your existing posts continues to decrease as well. This is exactly what we've been seeing lately.
This fact is important because since the inception of the Steem network, we've seen a very strong positive correlation between the price of Steem and the number of blog posts on the network.
This strong correlation makes sense because if people are financially motivated to post on Steem, and that financial incentive decreases, then users will post less often. Despite the immediate financial incentives, I'm going to argue that you should be posting more often when the price of Steem is low.
I know many of you are like me in that you are very optimistic about Steem long term. If this is the case, I think it should be your goal to acquire as much Steem Power (SP) as possible.
Lower price means fewer people posting
Due to the correlation between price and users' posting habits, lower Steem prices results in you having to compete with fewer people for a share of the reward pool. That means you're probably going to be able to earn a larger share of the reward pool than before, but only if you continue to be consistent with your posting.
Sure, the dollar amount shown next to each post will be lower than before. However, the amount of Steem Power that you're earning on each post will most likely be higher.
Fewer people posting also means your content will be discovered more easily. Users want to use their voting power (VP) on something, and when they have fewer posts to choose from, they'll be more likely to choose your post to spend their VP on.
Yes, it will still be difficult to have your content discovered if you're new to the platform, but not as hard as before when the price was higher.
If you're a long-term holder, does the current Steem price really matter that much?
There are those of us counting on our Steem earnings to survive, so yes the current Steem price absolutely does matter to those users! On the contrary, if you have other income sources and don't need Steem earnings to get by, why should a price decrease effect your posting habits?
If you're a long-term holder, I think it's safe to assume that your goal is to acquire as much Steem Power as possible. A lower price gives you that opportunity!
A lower price isn't a free pass to earning Steem Power
Although it's going to be easier to earn SP when the Steem price is low, it is by no means a free pass. There will still be plenty of competition, high-quality content will still be required, and you'll need to remain consistent in your posting.
With that said, regularly posting when Steem is less valuable will not only help you earn more SP in the short term, it will put you to be in an excellent position when Steem goes back up. You'll have more SP, a much larger following, and more active followers who are consistently interacting with and voting on your posts.
If historical trends are any indication of what will happen this time around, with a much lower Steem price, we'll see far fewer blog posts on the Steem network. I'd recommend that you seize this opportunity and start posting more often than before. View this time of falling prices as an opportunity to build up your Steem Power.
We've seen lower, much lower... and we kept on blogging didn't we @shenanigator :D
Haha oh yeah! I remember blogging when the Steem price dropped to under $0.10. This place was a ghost town!
That's true. Including me, I am less motivated to post because of my earnings consistently decreasing. But reading your post, it enlightens me on how important to continue posting right now and it's important to build up my steem power in this situation. Thanks for this. It helps me a lot :)
I'm glad it helped to motivate you. Just keep in mind that the lower the price goes, the better it is for accumulating SP :)
I agree and am not in this for the money. The problem is a lot of people are, when you search for trending or new outside your friends list, I wish it would filter out non-English posts. Before the hate pours in, it's impractical to speak every language and I see this dominated by people posting from countries where a dollar or two is pretty good. One issue with steam is that it should focus a little more on geography, income and language. I don't mean to come across as arrogant and I don't think my posts should be worth anymore or are any better, it's just annoying to have to skip four or five blogs in a row for one I can understand.
Steemit has a new interface in the works which will fix your problem. We'll have something called "Communities" which will be similar to subreddits on reddit. You'll be able to subscribe to the communities that you want to follow and you'll no longer have to see posts in languages that you don't speak.
Wow! Can't wait for this feature! @crypticat yeah the trash posts are major issue! Quality content is hard to find but it is very rewarding when you find an account which creates quality post like this one! I realised that at the moment the best way to use steemit is to build very good and personal feed by finding and following interesting people. It would be cool if someone developed algorithm based system like YouTube or Netflix which recommends quality content to user. Either way I am starting to love this platform more and more because of the unique tight community.
Funny enough, I have been posting regularly since the drop. I don't know why, maybe I have been having inspiration now.
Nice! Keep up the consistent posting and I think you'll find it to pay off down the road :)
I like your optimistic attitude and long-term thinking. Your thought process makes sense, and I hope the community reacts accordingly.
very nice
First a question, where can I find the statistics to see prove for the fact that there are less posts when the Steem price decreases? I'm especially interested to see how big the difference is.
Second, I think we should all post less. Many tunes I've read the advice to write 1 post a day. But imagine what happens if you follow 40 people. Are you going to read 40 posts per day? And will you write a comment for each post?
I'm quite sure most of us can't read more then 25%. So posting more is in all cases a bad idea.
If you search Steemit for something like "price posts correlation" you'll find quite a few posts on the topic with graphs. I'm not aware of any Steem tools that show you both at the same time.
There are arguments both ways here. I think the strongest argument for posting as much as possible is that it will result in more search engine traffic. If we bring more people to Steemit, it will increase the number of Steem accounts, the Steem network will be used more, and Steem should become more valuable.
@shenanigator More like the stock market, investors go on a buying spree when the market is falling. While others are panicking and selling. Thanks for the post. Upvoted. Cheers!
Something I had been wondering about myself. Since arriving 2 weeks ago I have been learning the culture as well as technical aspects of Steemit.
I already discovered I am coming in at a perfect time from a financial perspective. You just confirmed for me that the dip is a great time to do some test posts. Maybe saving the introduction for after I get in some practice on the site.
Thanks for giving me lots to think about.
It is so good to read we all have the same problem. :-) shared fun is actually double is it not? It is so depressing to see it down, I now just consider it as points, and points do not matter so much I close myself off from what it is worth until I open my wallet again, then it is a short gasp for breath, and quickly start steeming again.
It's also a great time to get followers and meet new people. The people who continue to post and be active when the price drops are less likely to be on here milking the system and are the people I want to build relationships with here.
Great advice! That's exactly what I've been doing!
very well said! keep hustling . love your work
Evan
The problem is that there are not enough curators, wales post or sell their votes instead of curating and all the others don't have the time to curate or read other posts because they have to work on their own posts.