Last week I announced my first milestone: doubling my voting power. While writing this, I am getting closer to my 0,03 $ SBD up-vote goal. Awesome. So far, I have invested most of my earnings straight back into the platform to accumulate more Steem Power. So, why am I so focused on getting more Steem Power, rather than cashing out the earnings I receive so far and put it into different coins?
I already felt and thought that I was lucky on Steemit and knew that I have finally found the right ‘Social Media Platform’ to share my content on. This is not based on the fact that you can make money on Steemit, but because of the atmosphere we got going on here. I do not take the earnings I have received so far for granted and would like to show a little bit of my gratitude in this post to the people who helped me during the early stages on Steemit and have taken me to the point where I am right now.
During my first two weeks spent on the platform, I have learned some valuable lessons and made the usual newbie mistakes. And these guys took the time to welcome me and teach me. So, this is what I’ve learned and this is to whom I owe it to.
Let me share you the steps I took to reach my first milestone: doubling my up-vote in SBD.
Obviously, signing up for Steemit was the first step I had to take, this one was easy. In this case: 1+1 = over 9000.
Steemitchat. Connect & Share
After some Google research about Steemit, I found out about Steemit Chat. Basically, @lemony-cricket was the- it/it’s person/being... ah well... the anonymous, a gendered entity who said hi to me on chat. I reached out, and I got answered. While staying on chat for a while and introducing myself @emilclaudell found out that I was a photographer, he asked me if he could DM me, because he had a question. “Can you give me some tips for my next lens?”. We started chatting and now, he is my young Padawan. He did good on his last exam and I made him a promise that I will be doing a product photography post-processing video tutorial if he passed. I will most probably do this on @dLive.
Quality over Quantity
So, I didn’t know what voting-power was in the beginning, or how it was supposed to be used. @geekpowered “I should’ve taken the time to go through your blog before. You’re killing my voting-power”. Sorry man… and thank you so much for up-voting my posts. It got me motivated to keep on releasing more quality posts instead of the 'easy-way-to-go' posts.
Be aware of Copyright infringement.
Well don’t take this personal @r00sj3, but let me share this with the blockchain. She flagged one of my posts, assuming it wasn’t mine, but actually, she helped me spot an image that was mine and used on a different website. She woke up the @steemcleaners crew and they flagged me. Pretty confused what was going on I asked @geekpowered what was going on and if he could see the ‘low rated’ post as well. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t understand how the flag-system worked, and I would’ve still been flagged for something utterly unnecessary. After that I told her not to worry about the ‘mistake’ she made, she apologized, Steemcleaners upvoted my post, so yeah… nothing lost, only gainzzz.
Right time, right place
“Are you just as cool as in your profile picture?” I replied: “I am ~fucking~ tired. Lol.” @saywha introduced me to a ‘secret’ high society, 4th world order group chat on Steemitchat that’s planning to buy a Whale-shaped island, I don’t know why he added me to the group. But let’s keep that a thing for the Universe to know. Thanks to @saywha I’ve met a lot of people who teach me about the platform.
Get inspired, motivated and set goals
And then something happened. I’m not sure how to start, or how to write about this guy without making it sound that I’m ass-kissing. Just keep in mind, that I had no idea how much 1 SBD was worth, and I was assuming the payout amount was in USD and not in SBD. Until later I found out about that. All of the sudden, I got an insane up-vote from @acidyo on my introduction post. -read as- My first post and my first introduction with Steemit. I had no idea. And for some reason he supports me most of the time when I make a post. When I have found out what the value was of one single up-vote from him, and how difficult/hard it is to reach that for 99% of the people here on Steemit. He became an example for me. Without the support of @acidyo I could not give this Steem away. So, I’m setting up a goal to help out new members whenever I’m getting more and more SP. I am sure a lot of people have gotten the support from him. My end-game-goal: beat @acidyo with voting-power and up-vote the shit out of him.
Hospitality
After me making jokes about asking for a place to stay whenever I have the chance to visit Serbia, this guy literally said and offered a place to stay and that it was no problem. @svemirac, I told you that you were on my ‘list’, this is the list. Not only for taking time to read some of my posts. But mostly because of that gesture.
Get nominated but don’t join every fucking challenge/contest you see.
I believe @anomadsoul from the @ocd curation team, was the first one who nominated one of my posts about a little social experiment. It’s interesting how people react and interpreted the things you do. I'm not a big fan of joining contests. I'd like to curate or be a judge when I have more time and earned the respect of the community.
Pick a witness [OCD-Witness]
The crew that I support. OCD-witness for witness! Their OCD page offers great curation all over the globe and is a good read. There are currently 35 curators that curate for @OCD and create these posts. Too many to name them one by one. OCD Curators, you know who you are.
Get others join Steemit
So the first person I got on Steemit is Jaka, we have met a few months ago in a Telegram group chat that’s about mining. Since ~some~ most of my Dutch friends are pretty skeptical about Cryptocurrency I find it a challenge to get them on Steemit. Anyway, I wanted to give my last 1 STEEM to @jemmanuel as a welcoming gift. I’m looking forward to seeing how he does on the platform and how he will connect with other Steemians.
Hopefully this post was inspiring and motivating you. What were your first steps on Steemit that made you get closer to your goals? Do you have milestones or goals set-up on Steemit? Let me know and drop a comment below.
My values when you give something.
- Never refuse a gift.
- Never give to receive.
- You have so much to give.
Cheers,
Ruben
Thank you @rubencress! I'm glad I had the honour of being the first to welcome you to Steemit. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Given our SP differential, though, I am perplexed at your decision to send me your Steem instead of powering it up yourself. You need it more than I do!
Since you say "never refuse a gift," though... I will graciously accept it, power it up, and use it to help me keep upvoting all this awesome content you've been creating for our platform.
Good luck on your quest to one day outrank @acidyo in vesting shares. Maybe if we team up and sell all of our marketable organs, we can take him down together :)
Well... that's what the after effects could be whenever you welcome a stranger. I hope that a lot of people here on Steemit will remember and realize to whom they 'own' their ' successes' to, small or big.
I know I could use the Steem to power-up myself, I also know that there are a lot of people that could use that 1 Steem even more than you or me. The main reason that I'm giving this to you, and all the other people mentioned above, is mostly because the steps that I took, helped me out a lot. This 'experience' is what I can offer to newcomers, heck, I'm a newcomer myself. The Steem that I have sent, is just a simple symbolic gesture to show that you can achieve much more with 'giving' than only thinking/focussing on receiving. And with giving, I mean; welcoming a stranger, asking for help, acknowledging your mistakes, and so on.
We all 'need money' to survive in this dualistic world we live in. You are either poor or rich. I think that the first focus most people have here on Steemit, is being filtered because of the seduction of 'money'. If you limit yourself because you think/feel/believe you do not earn enough on Steemit, then there is less room for the positive aspects of your self-esteem (improvement/motivation/inspiration/dedication) and more room for negativity (failure/regret/disappointment, and that is unhealthy for the mind).
Keep doing what you're doing, you have been a great help to me.
Damn, stupid contest didn't make the cut. So sad.
What contest, the crayon contest? :-D
I was thinking SYTT.
Hey Ruben, this was an amazing read. Glad that @acidyo restemeed you and that's how I found you. Happily following you. People with true values are a blessing in all aspects of life, in all platforms! Much Love brother
Hey Janka, thank you so much for your kind words. Just came across this comment. Nice to meet you, looking forward to seeing more of your artwork, they look madddd! <3
Thanks a lot bro, happy to hear that you like my art! Cheers to new friends :)
Wow! Ruben, Thank you for inviting and helping me in steemit. Youre an inspiration to everyone specially to the newbies.
No problem! When will I see your first beach pictures just so you can make me jealous? ^^
Good tips. Such a high up-vote at just 50 reputation is a big deal. You ought to be a great curator from what I read. Some curation tips would help.
I have limited areas of expertise and thus don't have much to write about. Curation is my best shot here.
Hey there, thanks for digging in. Since I am new to the platform I have not yet encouraged myself to take a deeper look into the curation part of Steemit, but instead, I have focussed on the quality of my posts. I am still not sure how rewarding based on curation is being calculated (still learning). But what I do know, if I am not mistaken, is that within the first 30 minutes after posting, your upvote is given a penalty on your own curation reward, which means that a cut of the 25% curation reward-pool, is added to the author reward-pool instead (which is not a bad thing to do if you consider that the post is valuable and the author him/herself is currently undervalued).
Absolutely correct. We don't want to get into details of the algorithm. You have got the gist of it and that's more than enough as a user.
Haha, yeah @acidyo is known for them big upvotes. Happy for you. :)
I think I shall vote for OCD-Witness as well, thanks for sharing.
Yeah you def. should vote for OCD :)
2 weeks in here and already this far? Good job ! ^^
There probably isn't many things that I can help you with except maybe cannabis related ones :D Anyhow, I'm gonna follow you for now and see what you come up with !
I like Steemit as a social media but I want to see more real people, not just some fake ass copypaste-shit.. BE ORIGINAL man !
Tickling the 4th week now, nice job on doing the black and white series. Haha yeah, originality is easy if you focus on the right thing. I hope I can teach you more about photography in the future on Steemit.
Thanks ! I just took them with my phone and I don't know much about photography but nice to hear that someone liked them ! :)
I'm glad to see you doing well on the site :) And yeah, you're doing better than most, you'll get there quick!
I'm pretty happy about it as well, it went pretty fast yeah... Didn't expect that to happen to be honest. Do you have the supplies yet to create the 'secret Steemit project?'...
No, not yet, but i figured out what to buy. I found that it's actually better to buy it through uni, but unfortunately the process isn't exactly fast -.-
I will patiently wait for it! Im really looking forward to it.
Hehe, me too dude, me too :D
Any color preference?
I think original colors with transparency would be the way to go. Would be pretttyyy tricky to post process though!
oh yeah, keep rubbing it in, will you? ;) Thanx for the Steem, and for the friendly torture!
Hands down, you felt guilt, but do not worry, I am a friendly foe.
Beautiful post my fellow photographer.. I'm a newbie too and its been great since joining this platform... I haven't tried chatting yet but i will from now on... Thanks for the insights.. Following u now
You're more than welcome! And the journey is just getting started right?
Yes it is... Hoping for the best...
I pray for the day a whale blesses me with an upvote.
Don't pray for a whale to come along. Be the Whale. Focus on creating good content and surely people will follow.
I will do.
Great to see you're doing good here mate! Keep up the good work!
You should post more Arlindo! I thought you left the platform.
I want to stay and be regular but I just can't keep up. I don't have time to study and invest in it atm and I think I don't understand 99% of the stuff going on here...
I can send you a PDF I made for some 'basics' about Steemit? Send me a message on Steemitchat/E-mail (website).
awesome
truth
Very informative post.... You have got some nice writing skills... Admire your work... May you have success
Thanks Alif. Glad you liked it.
Welcome
Great post! :) im glad you have been able to explore and utilize the power of steemit! :) keep up thr good work!
Thanks Nick, I have been mostly very lucky. Sure will, everything for Steemit! ;P
I like you post
I like your comment
I like your meta comment
I like your meta meta comment.
Nice! Congrats man! Keep it up
Yesh!
Keep it up. Steemit famous in no time!
Thank you for this amazing post. You are an inspiration to me sir.
You make it hard for me to respond to such kind words. You're welcome.
You are a great Philanthropist sir,keep up with you good work,i wish you good luck in all way round.
The best preparation for tomorrow, is doing your best today.
Great info for a noobie man! Your post explained a lot to me and happily in not so many, artificial words. Respect!
Cool! Thanks. I'm happy this post is helping you out!
Ruben! You are really inspiring. You have changed my view about Steemit and I have learnt new things from this post and I hope to learn more from you, photography especially.
Thanks for sharing.
Cool! What kinds of photography are you into? And why did your view 'exactly' changed?
I am no a professional photographer, but I have flair for it. It is something I always think about going into, but the resources is reallt dragging me the other way.
The my changed view is about investing earning back into the system. I always thought of cashing out, but your story really inspire me and I now think otherwise.
Thats awesome! Happy to hear that.
About photography, i have this silly sarcastic langual easy step to step guide on how you can improve your smartphone photography. Technology is going nuts, so you might not have the rescources right now that you want to have, but its never too late to learn and get a better understanding about technique rather than relying on the gear you have.
Yeah! Cool to read that. I will like to read your guide. Thanks!
Here it is
Very nice tip in order to stay long here in this platform. Thanks for the interesting post. Still newbie here, and your post help me alot. I will follow you sir.
I'm also still a freshman here on Steemit, need to learn more, and fast to keep up with the pace!
One week here and counting. I know I still have much too learn and looking forward for that.
Connect with people that can teach you, or are willing to teach you.
cheers!
Good luck @rubencress. That was a cool read man. Wishing you all the best with your Steemit Career :)
Thanks Jeff! Looking forward to share more content here.
I look forward to reading it :)
Are you musical by any chance??
Cool, I think I need to be doing a Q&A with the A's answered in some in-depth-posts. I actually play sometimes on the piano, how so?
I'm sure whatever you will do will be splendid.
Was just going to offer you my music to listen to whilst you take care of business ha.
Feel free to drop by to my Dsound for some Instrumental guitar arrangements.
https://dsound.audio/#/@jeffandhisguitar.
Soon to be taking requests :)
Cheers Ruben.
Nice, checked it out, sounds good! Followed :-) You should re-invest more in Steem Power though ;-)
Ahh haha yes!! Oh Ruben I have a tale to tell. I am a late bloomer.
Unfortunately, my bank card was stolen here last year in Cambodia as some arse schmuck broke into my flat and stole my belongings.
Afterwards I heard about crypto currency and wanted to get some, but I couldn't purchase any because of the theft.
Now I have been super lucky on Dsound and have been investing my rewards in a little different currency just so I have some for back up. I still have no bankcard!
Now I am happy with what I have I will be powering up daily 100%.
This is all quite new to me and am still learning about crypto and it's values. I'm so 1980's :)
So any tips will be highly appreciated ;)
cool Ruben. I will wait for Elliot before requesting for your scissors.
You are doing great
Would be nice.
Nice post. Will keep follow and upvote
Thanks!
Hahaha! Loved it!
What did you love?
Very interesting post,i hope he help me to be more strong. Today first time I participate in contest 😊
Great! Just do what you like and good luck.
Thank you 😊