I actually can relate a lot to that @ana-maria. Although I am still quite a distance to go to be a year old.
Sometimes it is just based on posting at the right place at the right time. There is no specific formula (like a lot of minnow thinks) but the main thing is just to Keep Calm, make friends and Steem on
$500 SBD a month is not enough for me as a minimum wage if I want to take care of my parents medical expenses and a super expensive rent here (landed property), but the upside of this is that I make solid friends here and I don't have much average dead ones around.
Only 15% dead, yay
That is something still worth celebrating.
upvoted
You are absolutely right, @littlenewthings that there is not some specific success formula here although many constantly try to find it or figure it out. Waste of time!
Regarding dead followers, unfortunately, that's something we accumulate through time as some of them simply drop out (no matter why and when). Therefore and in an example, the user who is here only a month or two would certainly have significantly lower percentage of dead followers vs the total number of followers than an active user who was here from the beginning (something more than a year). That's somewhat the ugly side of the Steemit when our follower's base is in question.
In terms of earnings, I would say we are almost on the same page despite the fact we are living in different countries in between which the living costs may differ.
However, I calculated for me one that I would need to earn at least $40 per post (and post daily) only to cover my more or less essential living costs per month. I would really like to meet that goal.
Therefore, I'm going to follow your advice and ...
😉😊