The first payout on Steemit was one year ago today, on July 4th 2016. That's when all of this became 'real'.
It was no longer just a number next to the post, it really actually ended up in your wallet, and it really actually had real value. Of course when it launched the value was quite low but it soon grew quite a lot — and has not hit that high since. But it will again, probably.
I started powering down a few months ago.
At first I was very strict about powering down, I just didn't do it. There was no real need, I wanted to build up my Steem Power.
Then the crash happened. Steem went to a few cents, but I kept on posting through it.
I started powering down because Steem is my largest holdings.
According to Steemwhales.com I am currently holding the #70 spot for highest posting rewards so far, at 41,983,620 vests.
That's pretty impressive, I would say, and I'm happy to have made it to the top 100.
I powered down about half of my holdings and spread it into other cryptos, to diversify. I made some bad trades and some good trades. I was selling Steem when it was 20 cents, and when it was $2.70. It's quite difficult to buy bitcoin out here, you have to get around some hurdles, and so going from Steem to Bitcoin to other currencies was the best way to go.
Steem is still my largest holding.
At the current price of Steem, it is still the largest part of my portfolio... but my portfolio is much more diversified now, and a bit more equal than before.
Today I cancelled my power down....
As hard as it is, I would like to keep my Steem Power and build it back up. There are things that I'd like to do with it, invest in other things, use it for travel, use it to fund other ventures.... but I've taken out enough. Now it's time to build again, as difficult as that might be — it's getting harder and harder to get noticed on the platform, you have to be extremely consistent, dedicated, and give a lot of your time (like @sweetsssj and @papa-pepper and @timsaid and @kingscrown! They are all really impressive to me.)
Moving forward...
I'd like to plan out my posts a bit more, dedicate a bit more time and energy (if that's possible! I feel like I spend a lot of time already!) and also focus more on curation. I would like to double or triple my SP holdings in order to spread rewards to, in my opinion, the best photographers on the platform. If you would like to delegate SP for this purpose, I would certainly not object :)
Moreover, I intend to sacrifice a little bit more sleep and a little bit more time to create content people want to view and want to share and interact with. Right now I work a full time job, a part time job afternoon/weekend, and Steemit! Living in Caribbean Paradise is expensive, and this month they increased a bunch of taxes so everything is 10%+ more expensive.
There have been people on Steemit who supported me and my work from early on, and there are people who I give my support to - however small or insignificant it is; through exposure; through facilitating the contests, through upvotes etc, — and I would like to increase my support and spread it widely.
If you have a good idea for a project on Steemit and you think I'll be interested in it, send me a message on steemit.chat
Reasons To Build Up Steem Power
These are more for myself than anything else....
Higher stake in the platform.
Since HF19 you no longer need to be a 'whale' to make a difference. A nice sized 'dolphin' account has a lot of spread nowadays, and if the price of Steem stays steady above $2, it can be pretty great for everyone involved.Contribute to increasing price
Holding your Steem Power instead of selling it makes it more valuable, it reduces the amount of Steem on the market and people will be willing to pay more if there's less being dumped. I say this after having sold more than half of my holdings. I know that we sell for various reasons, and I'm not saying it's wrong to do it... but it's also a positive to hold onto it.Steem will be more valuable in the future anyway
This is a hope and a prayer, to be honest. I am betting on it being more valuable. I have hedged against it to some extent (by diversifying my portfolio) and now I am planning to ride it out, to the moon or to the dumps — either way! I'm hoping for moon.Higher curation rewards
The incentive built into Steemit to look out for high quality posts is that you are rewarded for curation efforts multiplied by your amount of Steem Power. The higher your Steem Power, the higher your upvote is for others, and the higher your curation rewards will be. In other words, higher Steem Power grows faster, it's kind of like a high interest account.
What other reasons can you think of?
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Well I think you listed 4 solid reasons to power up but also the more people who have a good amount of steem power , helps attract more people of influence, which in turn keeps steemit growing as people come in and bring their following here from other platforms like facebook and youtube.
Yup, that's not a bad reason to keep growing SP.
You are still doing very well! I can't imagine powering down for some time as I am super bullish Steem!
What sort as % of your Steem do you make a week as a curator? For me if it covers the inflation I would be happy :)
I'm still doing relatively well — I'm not up there with the aforementioned but I can't complain too much!
My curation rewards probably average about 100 Steem a week, not a whole lot, but I'd like to focus a bit more. The HF19 has made me change my voting patterns a bit so I have to be more selective.
Ok that makes sense. 100 Steem a week for curating is pretty nice considering your balance.
I still haven't really got an idea on how I want to vote now. I have still been voting 100% on everything as I find it annoying to change the power % all the time. I have been voting every comment I post and others write back but I think I really need to change that approach now. Especially with this new HF increasing the power so much and it goes so fast (5 days to get back up from 0 -100%)...
If you change the slider to, say, 40%, it will stay like that during the session until you change it again so that way you can upvote everything at 40%. I upvote photographers at *100% and others usually between 20% and 80% depending on what it is. I upvote comments at 1% just to show some love.
*EDIT: I upvote from a list of photographers at 100% not 40%
Interesting, will have to give this some thought :)
Sorry, made a mistake. I upvote from a list of photographers at 100%, not 40%.
I've been here for about 12 months now, and was powering up everything I made until recently.
My wife's been in & out of hospital for the last 6 months, so we suddenly found ourselves in need of some extra cash to pay for everyday things, including hospital & doctors bills... I'll continue to power up once this is behind us.
Very good reason to power down for what's really important, and I hope that will be behind you very soon.
Hey Jam, you got an upvote and a new follower.
I recently re-started Steeming again and it seems a lot of things have changed since the upgrade. I couldn't really get anything with my posts before so I gave up, but it seems now even smaller accounts give you something when they upvote you.
Yeah that is one of the nicer consequences of HF19. It also means that people are more frugal with their voting power, however, so it may end up balancing it out from people (like myself) who vote 20+ times day! Low voting power constantly. Still gives about $1 or $2, so it's something.
Well it seems that you played it out pretty well and were able to diversify. I'm glad to see the platform in a lot healthier state right now and unfortunately I powered down a lot of my holdings when things weren't looking so hot in the winter.
Stay focused and Steemit On!
For me, I continue to believe that steemit is the future and I'm fortunate to be here at the beginning.
Great post! Good to hear the experience of a user who has been here through a bunch of ups and downs. I think all of your reasons for building up steem power are important. I would add that it will become much more difficult to accumulate steem power as Steemit grows. More users means more competition for rewards and attention. The growing value of steem power will make it much more expensive to accumulate by purchase. It is going to grow tougher to accomplish what you have done so far. Thanks for sharing with us.
Oh absolutely. Buying Steem is out of the question for me now, that time was at 10 cents / Steem to be worth it. Now you'll spend $1000 and get 500 Steem and I can't justify that for my pockets. It's pretty hard to accumulate already.
IMO the best way to accumulate is by earning which is time converted into profit, and not money converted. Spend money on experiences and document those experiences :D
Personally I'm using my mining earnings to buy more Steem.
i have been here for about a month here, and i have dont have option to powering down. has a small SP at the moment.
hope that the steem price will rise again.
diversify into the other coin also seems a good thing, i might doing it also,
Yup. Having all your eggs in one basket can be either very good or very bad, depending on how it goes.
I powered down for a while, and now I don't have much. However, I want to write, post photos and contribute more. I hope in some way that it will someday allow me freedom from my current job. I hope to invest into the platform sometime soon. Assuming I can convince the wife!
Great post, Hopefully, one day I can get my steem power high so I can upvote a lot on a post like these! Happy 4th of july! Ill stay tune for what lays ahead from you :D
Thanks for sharing your journey and insights @jamtaylor. Your commitment moving forwards is a real inspiration to others including myself.
Thanks
You were among those lucky steemians in the community :)
It was a mixture of some luck and some effort and initiative :)
Any tips on how we can also succeed in the platform? :)
Be consistent in terms of posting frequency and quality, network with other users, grow your areas of interest, and give back.
Thanks man. I really appreciate your words. Since I joined steemit, I never stop posting, not even once. Even on those hard times of steemit were price goes down to $0.10. I just enjoy myself and learned a lot.
lucky you got early =D
I got in pretty early, yes, but the platform is only 1 year old so depending on what the future holds — we're all here early!
I've been here a few weeks. Today was the first day my real SP surpassed my delegated SP. A little milestone but I plan to keep on building. I don't think I'll ever power down, I'll just take out Steem Dollars now and then.
You are welcome back then. I wish you good luck to your adventure.
I liked your perspective I always recommend not to do power down. But hey man, keep up growing, you will do great, I know so ;)
New to steem here - been here for about a week - I am definitely looking forward to seeing how steem develops as a platform.
You had me at 'anti-solipsist' if for nothing else but the sound of the word — following you!
Inspiring read and yes, I would be buying some steem however little I can afford now :) If so many who are here are vested in steemit, I thought I'll do my little part too.
I have been here since january and i have never powered down.... anything i have cashed out has been liquid sbd and steem!! Ive been very fortunate to have met you and other amazing people here on steemit!! I will continue to power up until i reach my goal of buying that dream camera with just a few power downs then its steemit to the moon!!!
That's a decent approach and it's what I was doing before powering done as well (cashing out the liquid and keeping the SP). I used Steem to buy my macro lens which you see I used ALL the time. What's your dream camera?
Well i think i've decided to stick with the 5D Series....the mark iv just came out and looks pretty sweet! Now if for some reason steem goes to $300 then i'll be in the hasselblad range ;)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I've been thinking about it a lot myself these days, and continue to toss between powering up all my earnings or taking some out as I go. As a minnow, I was very optimistic about Steemit after my upvote spiked to $1.30 following HF19. However, watching it rapidly decline -- down to less than $0.60 -- despite my best efforts to continue to post good content and grow my Steem Power has been a bit disheartening. I keep reminding myself that this is a long-term investment, but sometimes it's hard not to get caught up in the downturns.
Yeah it's really tough when you get used to a certain level of return and then it drops substantially — I was here for $5 Steem which then dropped to a few cents. That was rough! $500 posts became $5 posts. The thing to remember is that this space, cryptocurrency in general, moves very very quickly. Before you know it, there'll be more updates and things will change again. The best thing to do in downturns is work harder on your brand/recognisability on the platform, get people to recognise your name!
@jamtaylor that's quite an unique celebration that you are having, an anniversary for the first payout. But it also shows how much you have grown and scaled up since last one year.
I agree with you on holding SP. I am here since about 3 weeks now and all I am doing is power up and power up. I need cash, but then I am still powering up so that I stack up a decent number of SPs and then take it from there. I have a very insignificant teeny weeny 250SP till now, but then I am only 3 weeks here and a first time ever blogger who never ever blogger earlier, so I guess it will become better as the time progresses.
Wish you the very best in building your SP and looking forward to reading some of your blogs in coming days. Steem On!! God bless.
What's nice about Steemit is that it provides an incentive for people who may have a creative streak but who have never actually put anything out there to spend more time cultivating that for an audience. You've made ~$500 in 3 weeks by blogging which you've never done before. That's a success! You wouldn't get that anywhere else in such a short space of time. Keep it up and keep getting better at it.
If there is enough time, I'd think it's also good to do a bit more than just curation. Even only once in a while.
It's about giving feedback to photographers, who are not yet the best, but seem to have some real potential but you'd crave for more. Sometimes good tips help more than upvotes, as upvotes won't help you improve.
But once again, I think none of us has the time to do everything we want to do.
Yes this is also something that I should be doing, but then I also recognise that I am no expert and so giving unsolicited advice on other peoples' work can often come across harsher than intended. But I have given my opinion through in-depth critiques when asked :)
Interaction is a also a big part of it, not just critiquing or giving feedback. Conversations and that sort of thing, which I've not always been the best at in the past.
Ah well, such is life, even though I think it's more common for the other person to appreciate tips he/she is getting :) And I'm not saying it has to be critique, but maybe as good tips?
As I tried to help someone by commenting about aperture use only to notice, that he had only taken the photos with a phone camera and all his other photos (with a real camera) were far better than I'm getting.. well, mistakes happen :D
I've been here since February. I took off and sold a little Steem to buy photographic equipment in order to make better photos. After HF19, I also stopped power down, I want to increase my steempower also by curation, since now it has become more real.
Thank you for your support!
You are one of the more interesting photogs currently using the platform and I'm glad to offer my support for your work! What equipment did you buy?
I bought Canon 6d, instead of the old 5d. And today I received the lens Canon EF 17-35 2.8L
Sweet
It is an interesting story. Congrats for being on the top 100. And yeah it is all about strategy and think about what is better and works better for You 😄
well written opinion!
In my opinion, I think I'll just keep on powering up until i'm rich :D
since i've start off with nothing, and i treat steemit as a new facebook or other social media that i used to use.
So, i've got nothing in the first place, i don really mind if i aint got nothing 5 or 10 years later.
That's a good way to look at it. It's really just time and effort, if you don't actually put money in (which I didn't), so it's all free money for what you'd be doing for fun anyway.
My reason to build up some SP, I believe in Steemit and its community and I don't want to be a minnow anymore :D I want to grow into a dolphin and maybe someday a whale ;) Love your post and let's hope everything works out fine! Looking forward to some of your other posts! I liked your photography ones from the beginning I started here :)
I've only been on here a few days so i'm still getting to grips with how it all works. I'm always grateful for useful insights like this. So thank you for taking the time to write this up.
I intend to power up everything i have for as long as possible. I see this platform a potential long term investment. The one thing I am seeing everywhere is that patience, consistency and quality are key.