I remember posting back on the old site years ago, and seeing this phrase a lot. People wanted to work on the site full time. They actually quit their jobs so that they could blog full time on the site.
It makes sense right? It makes sense because there are bloggers out there that are making $50,000 or $100,000 per year...so why couldn't you make that amount by blogging on this site? Surely your work is good enough to make that amount, right? I mean, after all, you've been making some good money... and that means that the stuff that you post is worth that money, right?
I mean it's not about anything like nepotism. It's not about anything like just having your friends upvote you because you upvote them. It's all about quality work, right? Well, that's actually not true. It's not true because the very core idea here is that we are supposed to upvote the thing that we think is going to get good amounts of money... and that is called curating.
Curating is something that I feel kind of both ways about, because it's a good thing when it comes to being able to make a passive amount of income. Not entirely passive, because you have to actually upvote, but you don't actually have to write anything. It's a neat idea, except for the fact that quality content doesn't always rise to the top. That is a big problem with curating.
What rises to the top is... the people that posted originally to the site when it first came out, got well-known, and then started making money because they were well-known. Therefore, their posts, no matter what they are about, always make money... and their posts are the ones that people should curate.
Any new people that come out have a very hard time getting to the top, even though they make quality content. I can think of several people that didn't make it to the top, even though they should be at the top right now. Some of these people have been posting for a long time and are still making a few cents per post.
Having said that, there was this whole group of people that wanted to become full-time that didn't do anything but post. Essentially what they really wanted to do was just rape the reward pool. They didn't think about it that way, because people weren't really thinking about the reward pool in the same way. Some people were, but not everyone. If you ask them about it, they might say something like "what about that makeup post that made $20,000." Or they might say something like "what about the dollar guy who was onboarded and got $5,000 for his first post."
I just saw a post a few minutes ago from a crafting lady who was onboarded, and that post already has something like $250. We don't even know this lady right? So she deserves $250 for her introduction post? Of course, that doesn't have anything to do with full-time Steemians, but it does have to do with where the money actually goes.
It seems a bit arbitrary to me. However, the idea of the full-time Steemian in is pretty ridiculous when you look at the world today.
Nowadays, you couldn't possibly imagine being a full-time worker on this site, because it wouldn't make any sense. You would just be taking money from the reward pool, and I guess we all know about how it works better now than we used to. We all know that you shouldn't just take money by posting multiple times per day, and we all know that the money actually comes from somewhere. It's not just money that falls out of a tree.
If we want the site to succeed then the reward pool has to stay safe, and we have to understand that some people are going to get lots of money even though they might not deserve it... but those people all certainly think that they deserve it, and that's fine to think that. They might not be able to make that kind of money if they actually decided to become bloggers or actual writers though.
Of course, they would be really surprised to find that out. They assume that they are really good at blogging. and that they are really good at writing, and they don't really put it together that their old cronies are upvoting them, and that's where money is coming from. That's fine though. There's nothing wrong with that. This site is designed that way.
It's just an interesting thing to think about. I think it's a lot less relevant today than it was on the other site though, and I also see that we can't possibly do some of the ridiculous things like attempt to become a full-time worker here, or even allow people to start to get the idea that they could become something like that.
Things really were different back then, and it's really weird to look back then and notice.
Interesting to think about isn't it? It's interesting to see how far we've come.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found this interesting.