You gave much thought to the topic and I also read your larger post about the "Best Way to Grow on Steemit" at the time of publishing.
I also paid attention to this subject, and I was interested to see how it looks from a complete newbie perspective, with an unfunded account.
I'm not exactly sure how things stand now, after the Steem price increase, but when Steem was around 1.7$ a new account which only has the 15 SP delegated by steemit had very limited options to grow, especially if investing was not an option.
Here's what I can think of:
- commenting on other people's blog posts, where the author upvotes good comments
- manually voting posts or comments, not excessively, and not for the curation rewards which are practically zero, rather for visibility
- participating in contests they are interested in
- applying to receive a delegation from projects (or users) who offer them
What doesn't work:
- posting (with absolute exceptions, they will go unnoticed, as you also mentioned here; self-vote is also zero, if they think their work deserves at least their own vote)
- curation rewards (I tried on my test account and they were zero for both manual votes and curation trails)
- selling votes (I also tested it, the bots I tried simply didn't trigger the vote selling, probably because the vote value was dust)
- delegating / leasing for profit (not enough SP)
Of the things that don't work, probably the curation rewards is the most unexpected and damaging, because it would be a very good entry point for newbies.
I totally agree with you, commenting on posts is the best way to get rewards at the beginning (but real comments, not spam), but you should still write some content on your blog (even if not largely read) to have a showcase of your work (people will likely follow you if they liked your comment, generating more visibility on your future posts), and lot of time I tried going to the author of the comment's blog to find an empty page, what can I upvote then ? I upvoted his comment, but I wanted to give more.
Curation can be good but you need to know what you're doing, and as the curation rewards system is really complex, it's really difficult to profit from it as a newcomer.
Oh I know... I've been posting since my very first few days. But I had different goals back then. Trying to see if I can post every day, since I have been blogging weekly for a few years, and such a change in rhythm can be difficult. So I had another driving force at first, not the rewards.
For someone who hears you can make money on Steemit and comes here with this mindset, resisting the initial weeks of struggle, and not giving up, can be a real challenge.
But I agree! I have the same feeling some times, when I'd like to see the work of someone and there's nothing on their blog (or even worse, in my opinion, only resteems).
I understand, I came here for the free money, but decided to stay for the community, perfecting my english and the delight of writing and debate.
I agree, only resteems is worse than nothing.
But I went on your blog, it seems nice, so I followed you - I don't like going back in time to read, because it's really time consuming, and I already have a lot to do, I just check titles to see if I'm susceptible to like future added content - but I will read next posts, upvote and comment occasionally.
So that's why I encourage newcomers (not you, you're here for much longer than me, I just took your case for an example) to at least write a few posts reflecting their personalities or their areas of interest to be allowed to benefit from this kind of follows.
I agree with your view, I was definitely a exagerating above :)
Good reflection. What I'm trying to do with my strategy is to increase the curation rewards even for minnows.
But I do believe that you should try to get an account with Bitstamp or Kraken who offer fiat-crypto conversion using SEPA banking relationship with european banks. Then buy BTC for 500 RON ( ~100€) and send them to Binance, buy Steem and send it to your steemit account. I would use 20€ to buy SBD and 80€ to increase my steem power for instance. With the SBD I would use some voting bots to get more visibility for my posts.
Yeah, I already have a Bitstamp account and have done a small test SEPA transaction to see how it goes, total fees, how long it takes etc.
In the comment above I wasn't referring to my account specifically, I already have over 400 SP (some of it is delegated for profit). But mass adoption won't happen without people who are not willing to put a dime in, and they do have a hard time at the beginning. Hopefully their experience will improve as the price of Steem increases and the vote worth likewise.