@playfulfoodie, I have decided to keep my following list less than 100.
I have never been in I follow u u follow me game. I never even ask anyone to follow me in my blogs. Many of my followers are the ones who read my post and like it and then follow me. But I don't follow them, unless I repeatedly come across good posts from them.
I don't redeem too. I will probably start with Maxsteeming a 1 post per day aggregating all the resteem worthy blogs from my end.
I have stopped pivoting myself while posting a blog. Upvoting myself for my own blog is something I am not comfortable with. And here some steemians even upvote their own comments. Ridiculous I would say.
I saw some trending posts from HNW (high net worth) steemians and they don't even qualify as a post, just some random abrupt thoughts, a few lines or say a couple of random ordinary photos that you click dime a dozen times at home or outside. (The sort of photos that right now sitting in my bedroom I can simply point randomly out of my window and click). Now these posts ( not posts say some random thought) get huge traction and triple digit payouts. On the other hand I see a minnow put atleast a few hours of hardworking, painstakingly building a real good story something really that could add value in true context gets $0.001.
So I have learnt that the path is very steep for minnows. I am just putting down my head and put out some good posts (I put in many hours of real hardwork behind each of my blogs). I am giving myself 3 months and see where I reach and then take a call.
I am just focusing on good quality content and trying to engage my readers. Nothing more.
I am not bothered about upvote, resteem, likes, payouts etc now as you read above nothing matters much. I am just keeping it very real and grounded and simply blog.
You are already a dolphin I guess or a mini whale . I simply suggest get these statistics out of your mind and do what you do best. Publish quality blogs. Some fail, some succeed. That's how the game is played. Don't get too attached to results. It's not in your hand. You do your duty and leave the outcome to others.
Thank you so much for your elaborate reply @topdog! I really like the stance you're taking and you're right, the game of Steemit basically means it's not fair. Nothing in life is, so why should Steemit be. Great authors get passed by by bad ones who got lucky or know people in high places (or are people in high places).
I think you made a good call to be so strict about your followers list. I follow over three times as much and I'm unable to keep up with all the posts in my feed, which feels kind of unfair towards the people I want to support. I really need to slim it down immensely. I tried again today, but it's a lot harder than I thought it would be...
I'm still a minnow, because I never did catch that lucky break of getting on a whale's good side. I'm not much for boot licking and try to keep things real. That's worth more to me than a whale upvote.
The most important thing is that we enjoy what we're doing here and I do! I can't help but think about these things sometimes though and just because life's unfair, I can't always simply accept it. Seeing as I can't make a real chance, I just have to blow off some steam once in a while :-)
Besides, I do want to expand my online presence, so getting more eyes on my posts is always a good thing.