When I moved into this house, I calculated my living expenses under the assumption that SBD would never again drop below $2 USD for any length of time. It's currently just about $1 USD and I expect it to stay there for a good long while. I've read it was overvalued, that it was never supposed to be worth much more than $1 USD in the first place.
My finances were A-OK when it was at $3. They were tight but survivable at $2. At $1, there is just no way this can work. I have earned only 139 SBD in the past three weeks which is now worth fuck all. I powered down 250 more expecting that to be enough to make up the shortfall. But then SBD kept going down.
I will now have to power down a total of $750 to make up the difference. I can't keep that up for long, it's like eating your own body in order to not starve. The more I power down, the more I diminish my already insufficient earning ability.
I swore soon after I started not to be like the people I saw complaining that their posts were undervalued. I stuck to that until now. But I am at my breaking point. I have been here since the beginning. I have burned myself out making 4 pieces of content per day, because I had to.
Why is that worth single digits? Why is it worth less than 5 SBD per post on average? I sit here miserable and frustrated, watching simple photography blogs earning hundreds of SBD per post, remembering when I could at least count on 30-50 per post.
Much of this is my fault though. I have been sitting on my writing doing nothing with it besides self-publishing to Amazon where nobody will ever find it, and sharing it here. This desperate situation was the push I needed to send all of my work out to several publishers, but I should have done so much sooner.
I could try to get a minimum wage job, but prior to Steemit I tried and failed at that over and over for years. When I did land a job (only twice in that time) I was promptly fired soon after, usually without explanation. Probably related to behaviors symptomatic of autism, though I cannot prove that and they wouldn't tell me if that were the case lest I sue or something.
I could drive for Uber, but I'd just be trading my car's lifespan away for less than Steemit pays, and it would eat up time and energy I could be using on Steemit and sending out manuscripts. I really feel hopeless. What are my options? Work Steemit for peanuts, or drive Uber for peanuts?
I am not going to live off my STEEM savings because it would only prolong the inevitable and leave me with totally empty pockets. I am not going to sell off my belongings for the same reason. I already put a couple items up for sale two weeks ago for a small fraction of what I paid, and received zero interest.
Part of me feels foolish for all the charity I did. You cannot pour from an empty cup. I would not be in this situation if I'd kept the money for myself. But on the other hand my death is an eventual certainty. Maybe sooner rather than later. As I lay dying, I know for sure that I won't regret having removed some meager quantity of suffering from the world. That sort of satisfaction is beyond price.
Still, now I'm gonna be one of them. I have my car though, and it's kitted out to sleep in comfortably so I will at least be dry and safe. It's still a scary prospect. Who helps the helper? Not the whales I used to rely on. They all delegated or transitioned to upvote/resteem selling services.
That right there is what's killing the STEEM dream for everybody who isn't a whale. Whales who want zero effort passive income instead of participating in the community. I guess I'm just angrily and ineffectually shouting at clouds though, which isn't going to make any difference.
Have I not worked hard enough? I already post the maximum allowed, it's resulted in illness recently (hence why there were only 4 posts in the last 2 days). Is my content not good enough? Do I not engage my followers enough? I guess even if you tick all the boxes, sometimes you still lose.
How did this happen? How did I get here? Was it the controversial posts? Again, maybe it's my fault. I stirred the shit, and rocked the boat, but because I believed it was valuable to do so. Because people should be able to entertain ideas they disagree with, without feeling as if they must also accept them (or destroy their source).
Certainly I can think of at least two people rubbing their hands together and cackling at this article. This is exactly the outcome they wanted for me. Not even necessarily because I believed in the concepts I proposed which so offended them, but because I proposed them at all.
What are my options? Maybe SBD will surge before August arrives. Maybe monkeys might fly out of my ass. There's about as much chance that the manuscripts I've sent out so far will be accepted by any of the three publishers I've yet to hear back from. No author ever gets a book deal so soon.
I wish it weren't so. I wish a near future SBD surge back above $2, or a book deal out of the blue would save my bacon. But realistically that isn't happening. I don't mean to upset any of you either. I know you don't want this. I know most of you make even less and would love to help if you could, but you can't magic money out of nowhere. That's the same boat I'm in.
What really blasts my ass is that I'd still have thousands of dollars left in my bank account as a safety net if it hadn't all been gobbled up by taxes. Why did I start paying taxes in the first place? I know plenty of people who earn very little and simply never started, they haven't been caught.
I wanted to be responsible though. I wanted to pay into the system. Look what I got for it. It's like you can only survive in this world if you're a cheat. Maybe that's not true though. Maybe I am just looking at the world through a lens distorted by fear.
This really, really sucks. I'm scared and don't know what to do except hug my cat, who is still going to eat before I do no matter what. I wish karma was a real thing. Then at least helping all those people would mean that there will be somebody coming along when I'm hungry and cold to help me.
Nobody is coming though, realistically. The people I relied on to live all disappeared after finding an easier way to sustain their own incomes. I have to help myself. I don't mean to dump this heavy load on you guys. If I don't post as frequently as I used to going forward, now you know why.
The STEEM Dream was beautiful while it lasted. It was absolutely ideal for people like me. Creatives unsuitable for any other line of work. Finally able to do what they love, and the only thing they can sustain for long periods, and get paid for it. But, barring a miracle, the dream is over. For me, anyways.
It kills me that there are people earning 100, 200, 300 SBD per post with a small fraction of my following. Who haven't been here longer than a few months. Luck of the draw. They got noticed by the right people and money rains down upon them while I toil in the shadows for crumbs. Now even the crumbs have stopped falling from the table above me, and there is nothing left to eat.
Thanks for following me as long as you did.
@alexbeyman,
#1.
Dude let's play smart! I see you write long articles, but I prefer short ones! Once I did the same, but I don't know I didn't earn enough or I didn't get good audience through that articles. So I started something different and I have nothing to complain about my current earnings :D I know those are pretty weird but manageable!
#2.
Try to upvote atleast 9 times per day! You have SP and I hope you are utilizing 20% each day! From that 20%, you must claim 90% into your earnings! I think that would be the only survival method at this moment!
#3.
Do a job and keep STEEMIT as secondary option. Once we talked this, I think it's the best way to deal this high fluctuation market times and personally I hate to have a life without long term future perception. I wish you might do the same!
#4.
HOLD on, STEEM might rise anytime, I wish and I am hoping to see high in price in next August!
Cheers~
A: Never kick yourself for charity or taxes. They were the right things to do.
B: Many people getting huge rewards for lame posts are often buying upvotes on an exchange where it'll show up as a vote from a whale, but it's actually a purchased vote. You can see the proof in the posters' wallets.
C: "Desperate times call for desperate measures." - Consider going on a commenting/meet new Steemians/networking barrage to attract fresh followers in return.
D: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." DTube and DLive give out excellent upvotes, and with the quality of your videos, you'll certainly get some. This could be a game changer for you. Stream your video games there. Perhaps even recycle some old video content that went under the radar and post through these platforms to get a spike.
E: Positive attitude is essential. If you need Steemit/SBD, you need to continue to have faith and work with it. The math is alarming at the moment, but you're talented and have the ability to generate endless content across many realms (pun intended).
F: Start posting punchline jokes in the #punchline and #funny tags. @punchline and @trafalgar are always upvoting those who support them and make daily jokes. You have the sense of humor (super dry and lewd - perfect).
G: Get involved in @comedyopenmic and enter twice a week in their contests. The COM account has 41K SP and votes good stuff well. Some whales are also supporting it with solid votes. Merge DTube/DLive and your humor, and you'll have a big boost.
H: Don't panic. Work on a backup plan to supplement. Network. It's all about who you know. Reach out to friends to see if they can help you make some connections to take some of the pressure off.
I. Thrift store resale on eBay and Amazon. I quit my job 3 years ago and make most of my regular income off of resale of thrift store and upcycling finds.
J: Use your flame thrower.
Enjoy this awesome cover of a popular song that has some great lyrics for you...
Upvoted for visibility.
They also take 25% of it though.
Dlive gets 0% while Dtube yeah...cuts off 25%
You're right, DLive is 0%... I didn't realize that, or that they changed it.
They were at 0% from day one. And that is what makes it attractive!
They also upvote much larger to still have a net gain vs current. Plenty of other ideas here either way...
I also resteemed your post.
no, dtube doesnt take 25% they barely take like 6 usually and that 25% comes off CURATION which no one cares about as much lol
Hello @alexbeyman
I am a curator from esteem and we curate almost 1000 good posts daily and I saw your content is excellent and I will be more than happy to curate your posts once in a day.
Consider posting through esteem once in 24 hours to get upvotes from @good-karma.
The value of the upvote depends on the sp of your followers and going by your followers I guess you will get around $8-10 upvote at the current price.
Yes esteem takes 10% as beneficiary rewards but you will still get decent profits.
Feel free to contact me on eSteem discord
That sounds promising. I will be in contact with you shortly.
I guess I'm just angrily and ineffectually shouting at clouds though, which isn't going to make any difference.
It isn't going to make any difference I think, I too am fed us with the steem price, I thought the value of steem will never go below 1.6$, I always thought its the minimum value below which the price can't fall, I was wrong, I have been using steemit very less in the past few weeks, it's because of the price drop I think.
I wish there are golden days to come in future for steem. Wating for them.
WHo the fuck told you steem cant fall below $1.60 ? wow and @alexbeyman is saying he thought SBD couldnt go below TWO dollars??
WHat the hell is going on here how are you guys all getting so caught up in such spider webs of lies about steem?
I understand it tho9ugh I also used to think all sorts of crazy shit about steem lol i had NO idea how steem was mined for a long time lol i thought wiutnesses were somehow doing some sort of "mining" even tho i knew we werent prof of workl, i knew it was DPOS but i didnt knwo WHAT DPOS is hahahah
now i see its all consensus based inflation and DPOS is like a beautiful energy crystal like a kyber crystal from starwars
Hi totally understand your frustrations and problems and hope the price rises for you and everyone else in similar situations. This platform really isn't the way it should be but I suppose that's life. Try to remain positive and keep striving and always remember there are people a lot worse off than you me and everyone else on this platform that at least has a device to be able to post when and what they want. Stay strong
Why aren't you an fivrr or another site doing writing jobs?
Plus there's other things you can do online.
I'm aware of some things like Mechanical Turk but the ROI is poor. I didn't know fivrr existed. I am kind of a hermit.
power down :(
i guess u shud start contest.. every one will resteem ur post... thatway u will get more visibility.. n hopefully payouts on ur posts...
Hello alex. A lot of new users visit your pages, because they like the content. When steem/SBD were up the amount of $0.020 votes or less you got were not a real big issue, it was not a big issue with a lot of people. It was only a couple of months ago that most of us even learned about a dust level vote from @timcliff.
@davemccoy and @danielsaori came together and created the dustsweeper. This is not a vote bot. This is a saving type account. 1SBD will rescue about 70 dust level votes, bring them to payout status, not only votes received on Content post but also votes received on comments. So instead of no reward from a less than 2 cent vote, you will now get a small reward, and the person that gave the vote will get a small reward for curation whereas before that vote would been burned up a if it was tossed in front of your flame thrower.
I gave a starter dustvote gift to you I hope it helps, you should start seeing results almost right away.
Much appreciated. I didn't know such a service existed.
It's a good program, helps small users, and really all users. It is the new person with very little vote power that receives the biggest benefit, a lot of them like to leave a vote when they comment, and if they get a reply back they like to vote also to signify their appreciation for being recognized, (you almost always reply to everyone and that is why you have a lot of real followers), but as a small guy their votes just do not make it out of that dust-off level so no one gets rewarded. dustsweeper is still really new, I know it has made a difference in the level of rewards I get now. it won't be a lot of help, but with the price of steem, it could help a little bit.
We can always go back to earning absolutely nothing on other social networks
Did I transgress in some way by trying to live off this site? I wouldn't if I had alternatives, you know.
I haven't followed your blog closely enough to know your situation. Good luck going forward, hope you find a way to balance things out!
Man...how sad I am. Anyways, I believe the price of SBD would rise again soon. The prices of cryptos keep plummeting probably due to malinvestments. There are wayward people out there who want to enter the market cheap. When the fight gets tougher, victory is near. Stay strong bruh.
Good luck, bro & always stand on more than one foot ;)
I'm hoping by the last line in this post you're not implying that this is the end of your time here...
You won't be homeless; I can promise you that. You've got a survivor's attitude and I can't see you going down without a fight. There have been many times in my life that I thought I was at the end of the line and then I managed to come up with a solution. I don't have an absolute answer for you. Depending on your living expenses you might be able to make it if you did some freelance writing or editing for a site that pays contributing writers.
Don't worry the price of SBD will soon increase in price and every body will smile again. I feel sorry for your situation but all will be fine. Your finance will bounce back to life @alexbeyman
oh :(.... i hope it remais at atleast 2$ fr sometime... bro :(
How attached are you to the place you live in? if all you want to do is write and live of it, you can easily live in a south American country for 300$-400$ a month... you just need to learn Spanish... but for example, I'm moving from Venezuela to Peru soon, completely different reasons to yours, but you can rent rooms for 50$ a month and apartments for 100-150$ a month.
This is not a bad idea and something I'd consider if I had prep time for moving out of the country. I don't though, as I am imminently running out of cash and must move out of this place.
Let's do some math, shall we? How much money to you need to get daily to not end up homeless? I did some initial math and with current steem prices, if you delegate all your stake to a bot you may earn around 5-7 sbd a day + curation rewards, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive and I think delegating is better than selling because you are going to regret it when the prices go back up.
Never quit your day job is what I always say. And only invest what you can afford to lose.
My goodness I can feel your pain believe me, so many people's dreams are on the brink, but I think it's for a while, maybe few months, I guess the good times were here, the trying times are definitely inevitable.
It will rise again. Just have little faith.
I feel very sad for you. I know your writing is top class but I want you to get rewarded for that.
Fit the time being steem is trading very low and I think you should try getting a job for at least sometime.
Wish you all the best. I hope your misery comes to an end. 😢
I sympathize with your circumstances...
I have no advice that I can offer, I do you feel the frustrations though. I'm often satisfied just knowing that a post was read.
Things have a way of working out. Good luck.
I feel very bad about this, I really love the contents you put out. the little robot that story especially. I really hope that someway somehow you overcome this situation. You will survive this, please keep the dream alive. Yes it's frustrating when great posts are not well rewarded and the whales that probably don't make good posts gets rains of sbd. But please keep the dream alive, I pray everything will work out for good for you.
Hey Alex, an easy thing you can do to earn more is make a wordpress website and use the steempress plug in to publish your blogs from the wordpress website to steem. Steempress just got a million SP delegation from STINC and they use a bot to vote posts made with the plugin - the bot has an algorithm that seems to heavily reward higher REP users. Nearly everyone I know who has decent REP and has posted to their blog from wordpress using the plugin gets regular votes that are quite nice. Good luck!
That's me! I can still barely live of Steemit if I stay in Venezuela, but I'm not planning on doing that because Venezuela is a bad place. I made 150 USD a month for about two months, and now the price dumped, the bots stopped being profitable and I'm left at maybe $30 a month.
When I was making 150 a month, I was dreaming with increasing that income to 300 to 600 in order to be able to live in another South American country at least, and maybe in a few years get to the thousands and live in Europe. The dream!
But now I see that this is not as much a world for our "kind" as much as I imagined it to be. I wonder what the future will bring. I hope it's good. For now, I wish you good luck with karma. As believers sometimes tell me, "may God repay you". It sounds so bad until we're about to hit rock bottom and there's no safety net to stop our skulls from splashing the ground.
You can also marry me, and live in europe. :)
I'm not sure about Uber but my friend did Lyft and instead of using his own car, he used their car rental program. While it's obviously not an ideal long-term situation, it can help keep you afloat until STEEM makes a comeback.
Relying on STEEM only for your main source of income is probably not the best idea I've ever seen. I'm sorry to be blunt, but perhaps trusting in incredibly volatile crypto for one's main source of income is a HUGE risk and personally, I think very silly idea. Sorry your dreams are melting away, but so are many others' too. At least you can write very well. I couldn't dream of writing as well as you do. It's a skill that's worth something to someone out there. You're smart. Learn how to sell that skill and you'll be just fine. I hope price of SBD and STEEM will go up, but there's no telling.. Good luck to you and in some sense to us all.
I have no alternatives.
This isn`t your ending point..Weeping may endour for a night but joy is going to come in the morning.
Never lose hope sir...you will rise again...just be strong and be courageous..You will stand up firm in all endevours of your life including financially....Always meditate on this words "i will succeed and overcome no matter the hard trials or challenges...God bless you sir.
We can't let that happen right?
So...I wanna ask you something? Do you have a blog outside Steemit? A normal blog...just for blogging? If yes then i might have the best solution.
Check the tag "steempress-io"
Read their page.They support the kind of content you have with a fat delegation they got recently.Let me know...because i might be able to help you further more
You're one of the very few that engages and supports minnows, you produce excellent stuff too. Hang in there @alexbeyman, it's not over yet
The price might up soon. You are the best writer here on Steemit.
Well i think just hold on and don't get disappointed because the next bull run will start in next couple of weeks and then we surely see at least 30k bitcoin 10$+ steem and obviously SBD will also rise.
I would suggest a better idea, rent that old home to fulfill the bank loan if you had taken. And live in a small house for 2-3 months as a renter after 2-3 months sbd will definitely gain its old value. The pain is only for the short term. But after this gains will become the permanent term:)
Don't despair...i have high hopes that SBD price will rise up soon. I wouldn't be selling it right now, since the ratio sbd/steem is at 4.15% and from what i read so far at 5% SBD stops being printed and everybody owning sbd will see it price increase.
Try to get a minimum wage job for now and wait a few more weeks and all will be good again.
I wish i could help you more, but i'm not a whale or a dolphin, but i give you my upvote everytime i can :)
Hey Alex, I'm really sorry to hear the news. If I had enough steem to make a difference I'd give it to you. One thing that you might be able to do over there that may work is drive by home inspections. It doesn't require any licensing or special know how. You can usually find companies on craigslist looking for people to drive by houses and take pictures of the exterior and send it to them via smartphone app. They pay between $8-$25 but if your do a decent amount of them you can make some immediate income (without benefits of course) and may be able to divert some of these problems. Look under real estate on craigslist in your area. Or, maybe do some of the online tutoring that that have on craigslist, that's also immediate income and easy to jump into. Lastly, another powerdown may be the way to go if worse comes to worse...
While I sympathize with your situation, personally I am really happy it is back at $1,- now and I really hope, for the platform, that the devs and witnesses will find a way to make the peg stick this time.
For me, the reason I want a 'stable' pegged SBD is that I would very much like to buy and sell services here. I'm a software developer who has writing fiction as a hobby. So I would, for example, love to sell my services as a dev and then use the SBD I make in doing so to buy services to aid my self-publishing, such as editing, cover art design, etc. If SBD is all over the place, I can neither set myself to buy or sell services for SBD. I really hope the devs and witnesses understand this and will work now to keep the peg intact. In theory, this should help you too, as it would allow you to sell services, as it would anyone else here I hope.
Is there any reason you haven't branched out yet with your self publishing?
I've been enjoying your Little Robot posts, and if your other work is anything like that, I promise I'll buy at least part of your publications if you choose to branch out and you add Kobo to your list of channels.
Indeed, I read your post on this very topic. I have branched out. Recent posts of mine detail the process of submitting manuscripts to various publishers.
Right now being able to continue living indoors is more important to me than being able to buy and sell services on Steemit.
You could simply publish all the Amazon stuff on Smash words as well and see what happens. Smashwords pushes to Kobo, B&N,Bol, iBooks and then some. Basically almost every notable channel except for Amazon and Play.
Adding Play is a tiny bit more involved as you will need to produce your own epub for that, but Google Docs has an 'export to epub' now that could help with that.
Hello @alexbeyman. You obviously have a high steem power and so I expect you to be getting more than what you are getting now.
I don't know your voting pattern, but maybe you should experiment more of voting other people's post than their comments in you post and see whether there will be improvement.
@yaanivapeji.
my friend, I'm really devastated hearing that from you, your post does make sense, it is because of the situation you are in right now that makes you to think otherwise, Steem price is getting more dip, I have the believe that before August, there would be a slight change for you to have enough to pay your rent and some other stuff. But you actually make me laugh with your sarcastic tone in the pieces. Such is life, I can say you aren't that lucky this time because of the price, I asked these why is it not last month or two months back that you need this money. I also learned that you should always have liquid steem and sbd besides our steempower, we could urgently in need of money at any time.
Hey man.
I've been living the Steem dream since last September too, admittedly my costs are less where I am, but that's not to say I don't appreciate the pinch.
While you can only guarantee your own vested stake value per post, the dark side of self-voting and BB delegations has hit the platform hard. I'm hopeful we'll be out the other end at some point, and I hope it's sooner rather than later for you.
Followed.
Mr @alexbeyman you are absolutely right. And, i 110% agree with you. Steemit has become a place of cunning (people try to wrap this term in a shiny piece called 'smartness') people instead of hard working people. It was exactly the right idea to invest in steemit and i would say it is not the right idea to cash out. Delegating power for some time may benefit but, probably you would lose followers. Please, give me your contact details in memo. I earned a small ETH (0.1) in airdrop. I have no urgency to use it right now. Its rotting in my wallet. I know you are an honorable man. Its not a charity. Whenever in life you earn it, give it away to some one in need.
Yeah i think that
“If you can make it through the night, there’s a brighter day”-tupac shakur
try googleing "how to make money on the internet being a writer "
good luck
The situation is kind of same for many out in here !
While hope it gets to rise soon.
It sure will be tight but hold tight buddy well side option of income would be a good idea as well !
Thank u for sharing this post...stay blessed..☺☺
We got you
Keep the faith @alexbeyman. It's gonna rise again :)
Most wallcome
a very good post and interesting friends
No worries mate. God will help you through this
Keep going forward. I like a lot of your stuff. The animal fight to the death brackets were brilliant.
Hey Alex, I don't always see your stuff but I always try to help out with my meager upvote when I can. I've always thought it was amazing that you have been living off of steem for so long, and if you can continue, that's great! Just try not to feel so negative about the current situation (Much much easier said than done!).
I know it is discouraging to see other accounts get their "moment in the sun" with whale support, but when they lose that support, I bet they would have less genuine support than you do now. You're a smart guy and a good person, and karma seems to be a real thing in my experience, so keep up your faith in humanity and yourself, you can overcome this difficult time!