I've been on Steemit for about a week now, and there's something I keep noticing more and more, something I don't really feel comfortable about – I’m reading more titles than articles.
And that’s something I’m pretty sure a lot of people do. Let’s talk about Steemit – why are most people, especially the new ones, on this website? It’s pretty simple, and here’s the truth – they are here because they want money.
I don’t like lying or faking things, so that’s the truth. A considerable amount of the people on this website are here just because they want to make money. They don’t care about the community, they don’t care about content, they only care about how much money they can make.
And that’s okay. That’s a thing that can motivate you to work harder and create better content. I know it’s something that really motivates me. I’m trying to make around $2000 to buy a complete setup that will help me work on more things and will help me learn new skills, like game development.
However, I am aware that bad content, like really low quality articles won’t get me far. I am aware that writing things just for money won’t get me more than a few cents a day, if I’m lucky.
Sadly, that’s what I’m seeing on Steemit more and more, especially on the “new” section. There are thousands of people who don’t even try to write something that is high quality. They just post things hoping to get on the “hot” or “trending” section and get as much money as possible.
I think that’s the wrong way to look at things. The main reason is that I’m not even reading most of those articles. If I’ll spend 5 minutes on the “new” section of Steemit, I’m pretty sure I’ll only open around 5 or 6 tabs with articles that seem interesting.
I spend most of my time reading titles, and watching thumbnails, and that’s not good. That shows how many people don’t really care about the quality of their content, and only want money. They post really bad pictures, they post articles that have around 100 words, and I’m pretty sure some of them blame the website or the community for not making any money.
If you’re doing that, please stop, and focus more on what you create. You will never make enough money from creating an article that has one picture and two lines of text. That’s not valuable, that doesn’t bring anything to the reader.
You may get around $50, at best, with your post, but you can't expect an image to make thousands of dollars. People are yet to learn this, but I’m afraid Steemit may end up like a lot of pages that tried the same concept. More and more people will post garbage content, and no one will even try to visit the “new” section of the website. Everyone will be on the “trending” section reading articles that are actually really high quality.
It’s sad when something like this happens, and if you took the time to read my article, I appreciate it, but I would appreciate it more if you would spend 60 more minutes on your posts and you would focus more on creating high quality content.
It’s not about how many articles you have, it’s about how good they are. It doesn’t matter what you write about, what matters is if it’s good. If it’s not, don’t expect to get anything from it.
Your present and future followers are the core of your content. They will upvote it, they will share it, they will make sure people see it and, most importantly, they will make sure you get money. The best way to thank them is not by making all kind of giveaways and trying to give them money – is by creating high quality content for them.
If you respect your followers, you will start creating good content.
You have rightly put down the points to build a good online community. #Steemit should put validations over voting articles with out viewing them. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts.
Yup. I just noticed an article that had 11 views, yet 34 up votes.
What is the point of this, other than to encourage people to only up vote articles without reading them.
Thank you very much!
I really like Steemit, and I would hate to see it become one of those websites where people with a lot of experience make thousands of dollars while newcomers don't make anything, because there is so much garbage on the "new" section of the website that nobody even cares to check it any more, and this way newcomers don't get a chance to impress people with their content.
I hope this doesn't happen, ever, but I guess we'll see about that in the future. Thank you very much for your comment:)
Google/YouTube might have an annoyingly complex payout scheme, but they do track how long someone views a video. While that would be hard for an article, it would be better if there was a preference for articles to be viewed and possibly read to correlate it with whatever rewards it gives.
And maybe, there could be a bot that would determine the length and quality of the article. Granted, this would put video bloggers at a disadvantage.
And while new people are here to earn money, the community was setup to make Steem worth something. So, they should focus on improving things to make sure that those are providing the content get something more out of it than those who are just recirculating it.
I totally agree with you. I noticed that as well. But I think in the long run it will probably fixed by having some algorithms to give more to votes that came after people read the post, or if they also commented etc. Basically rewards should be for real engagement..
Totally agree with you on this.
People who are actually putting a lot of efforts into their work are not able to gain any exposure to their articles in this sea of spams. Hope the situation changes in here!
I believe if a minimum of words would be put as a limit, example 200 words maybe spam content wouldn't appear so frequently, but from the other hand setting this restriction could not be so positive for the community in overall, and yet imagine 50 people posting every second content, spammy and not spammy, how will you be able to distinguish the difference of each post. What a see is that a lot of work must be done still in this platform, i hope everything has a positive outcome.
Still, even with a minimum of words per post, people who want to make money without spending too much time working will find a way to write posts that are only 200 words, and nothing more, so the spam won't go away.
I guess in the future the people at Steemit will have to think of a solution, because once this website will get over a few millions users, it's gonna be hard to find interesting content among the spam.
Anyway, thank you very much for your comment :)