In the statistics, the number of users of Steem blockchain is reaching 1.2 million, in theory. But most of them are “deadfish”, inactive, approximately 1.11 million. The number of active users is less than one year before, slowly decreasing, by approximately 40,000 now. (Active authors: less than 10,000.) (@arcange)

Human souls

That means, from all the users ever registered on Steem(it), only 3.333 percent stayed and about 0,75 percent are active authors. That is a very low rate, but not surprising news. The question is, why? Why causes Steem(it) such a big disappointment? I think the general cryptocurrency price declines aren’t explaining that completely anymore, nor moves of the wales.

I have a theory about that, possibly nothing new either, but I think it’s undervalued. I mean the psyche of people: The pride of them, and their common sense, practical behavior.

Free Steem?

What happens? Somebody reads or hears something about Steem, and decides to visit, mostly, Steemit.com first. On every page of Steemit, at the end of every article, people not signed in are viewing the following message:

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sing Up! Get STEEM!

1 cent or 10 cents

That seems to be amazing, luring, but if somebody signs up, and makes the first post, begins the frustration: The “free Steem” isn’t coming, or nothing worth. A newbie mostly can’t even earn a cent with the first posts. And after some weeks, it doesn’t get much better, perhaps the user will have 100 followers and sometimes the “payment” reaches 10-20 cents?

And in the “hot”, and “trending” lists, they see some really bad posts with 20-200 USD value. (Like mines, yes, thank you.)

Box of matches

But this is more than Facebook or Google are paying, you have to work yourself in, or invest more – I hear the argumentation. Most people don’t know that or don’t want to risk much time or effort. Yes, these cents are much more than nothing, but in absolute values, one cent is one cent, and ten cents are ten cents. You can’t buy anything with this, in most countries, not even a box of matches.

Let’s suppose, somebody writes a post with one hour of hard work. Let’s suppose, it is not garbage, it’s relatively interesting, on another blog, it may have reached some popularity. But, not here, because most people are reading “hot” or “trending’ or their followed accounts, and upvoting their friends, their community. Or selling votes, leasing Steem power etc.

Another deadfish

What could newbies feel? “I’m relatively good, this post wasn’t bad, but nobody cares. I earned only 5 cents, means, nothing. What a terrible place” – and are gone. The number of deadfishes increased by another one.

See the labor statistics of ILO, one organization of UNO. Many countries are missing from the list, but it stays interesting. Even in the poorest country, Mali, people earn 0.7 USD per hour on average. In the richest, Switzerland, that was 45.6 USD. In semi-poor countries, let’s say, like Brazil, Russian Federation, China or Portugal, people are earning also 3-6 USD in one hour. The minimum wage in Germany is very close to 10 Euro/hour (11.4 USD) this year, the average, 27 EUR.

Caught the message

The message of the cents for a new Steemian is: If you want to earn, forget Steem and go work something in real life. Or: They say I can earn Steem, but in reality, I can’t. So better I go. If I cleaned up or washed up dishes some hours a week, I could earn much much more. (Or open some WordPress blog and place ads if I’m an enthusiastic blogger.)

I know on some dApp-pages or applications people can easily earn much more, maybe 0,5-4 USD per post, because of their own curators, delegated Steem power, automated community upvoting or other special conditions. But we are living in capitalism, and this seems to be like an incubator. Or state subsidy, dotation. Not suitable for the masses and in the long term.

Humiliating

All right, but who said you can live from Steem? – I hear the answer. On Pixabay.com and other pages, they have a “coffee” button, they say you could invite the author for a cup of coffee. That sounds good. But 0,0001 cents don’t read nice. There are differences between earning, tips (or “drink-money”) and humiliation with time-wasting.

The 0,0001 cents seem to belong to the last category for many people. “If Steem is work, pay it. If it isn’t, don’t bother me with Steem, SBD, Vests, Steem Units and fractions of cents, please” – that’s another possible opinion.

Advantage of Youtube

A content creator, @hooiyewlim commented on my previous post:

At YouTube at least they promote my video if it is related to the user favorite type of video. Here at steemit I have no chance to be notice since nobody will promote my content. I can understand cause not everyone enjoy my cup of tea but it feel like an insult to people like me to see a picture get a hundred dollars worth of upvote when mine take time and money to do.

Here: How The Ancient Vote Selling Worked

That’s my version why most people don’t stay on Steem in the long term. Solution? Difficult. Not even a 10x Steem price would solve the problem entirely, or not for all people. We should find a method independent of Steem price. Do you have an idea? Please comment.

How much reward do you consider fair for your work? - please vote or comment

The bottom line:

Yes, I’m also using robots to gain visibility, but I don’t like it. I would prefer another system supporting better valuable content creation.

(Cover photo: Pixabay)