Every city and country has its beggars, no matter where you are from. You can always see people on the street begging for money, asking you to give them just a little bit so they can afford food. Those people who can't get a job and have no place to stay have an understandable situation, and they are so desperate that they are begging for money. However, there are other people out there who have a place to live but they are so lazy that they'd rather spend all their time on the streets asking for money rather than find a job.
And I understand them, more or less. Why wake up in the morning and go to a job, when you can just go on the street and take advantage of the good people who are giving you money? It's an easy way to make something, and some people are taking advantage of it. Nothing new.
But apparently these days another type of beggars appeared, people who are asking for your money online. You can always see them, and if they don't ask for money, they ask for something else. They beg for likes, for shares, for comments, for subscribers, etc. I'm not against people who ask for those things in exchange for something.
If you have a YouTube channel where you create all kind of content, it's okay to ask for likes or subscribes at the end of each video. I can't blame youtubers like LinusTechTips or PewDiePie, or JackSepticeye, or CaseyNeistat if they would ask for likes and for subscribers, because they are actually providing something. It's a fair deal - they give us content, we give them likes and comments.
However, I start feeling bad whenever I see random people asking for likes and shares for no reason. You all know them, because we have a lot of them here, on Steemit. I will never understand why people are asking for upvotes and follows if they have absolutely nothing to offer, or if they don't have high quality content that would get me interested.
I see people out there even donating money to others in order to get more followers. It's called reciprocity. I give you something, so now you have an obligation to give me something as well. If I donated $10 to your Steemit profile, then you can at least follow me and upvote all my posts so I can get maybe $100 from you in the long run.
That's wrong and that's not how it should work. If you want me to upvote your posts and if you want me to follow you, then you'd better create awesome content that would get me interested. Donating money and asking me to follow you won't suddenly change my mind and make me realize what an idiot I am for not following such an interesting person that somehow managed to post twice in the past 365 days.
It's hard for me to understand why normal people don't go out to beg for money, because they have "dignity", but they feel it's okay to do that online. Is it because no one can really see your face, or because you are, more or less anonymous? I don't really see a huge difference between a guy who randomly comes to me on the street and asks me for $20 and a person who comes on Steemit and asks me to follow him or her.
More people should realize that asking for upvotes and follows won't get them anything if they don't have something to give in return. You could get 200 followers in a day and lose them in a week, after most of them will realize you're not providing anything useful, and you're not creating the content they would like to consume or at least content that could be consumed.
A few days ago on one of my articles I got a comment from a girl (or at least I think it was a girl), that basically told me something like "Great article, when I'll make this I'll post a pic for you, also, love that GIF!" The article was called "Invest in yourself". I looked around 3 times through the post (just to humor myself) and searched for a GIF. Either she saw something I didn't , or she just added a random comment to get my attention.
Well, she got what she desired. I either check the profiles of people who leave great comments that are useful and provide some insight, or the profiles of people who leave such stupid comments that I just need to see what is on their profile. I wasn't disappointed. It was nothing on her profile except around 10 articles that featured, each, a video, an image, and maybe some text.
That's not the way to do it. That's not the way you can get a lot of followers and that's not the way you can get a lot of money. People think that the more followers you have, the more upvotes you receive and that means you'll get more and more money. It's not like that at all. You could have 1000 followers and maybe get 20 upvotes on each post you create, if it's not really high quality.
If you look at people on Steemit who make a lot of money with each post, like 
I've been lucky, several times, to be rewarded by 
If you're new to this website, understand that high quality content is the only thing that will get you any rewards, not the amount of posts or the amount of followers. I've seen people with thousands of posts that barely made $10 in two months. That should be a clue about the quality of those people's articles.
People should think about asking for followers and upvotes like asking for money from random people on the street. If you wouldn't do that in real life, then why do it on the internet? Just because you're not in front of another person? Just because you're in front of a screen and you can't see the other guy or girl making fun of you?
Most of the people who ask for something in return when they leave a comment on one of your posts are not better than all the "keyboard warriors" we can find online, kids that are insulting everyone all the time, that threaten to find you and beat you, all that because they are in front of a screen and they can't actually get hurt. In real life, they're the best people in the world and they would not hurt a fly.
Have some dignity when talking to people online. I guess you have no intention of changing your Steemit profile soon, so why get a bad reputation for your profile? Why make people get away from you before you even post something? Why ask for followers without even providing good content? It doesn't make sense. Making money on Steemit is fairly easy - work, and you'll get paid. Just like in real life.
If you're not willing to do that, and if you're not willing to spend hours every single day trying to create high quality content, then you're on the wrong place, because here, you won't make more than a few cents for every single article you post if you don't do a great job. People who make a lot of money are those who put a lot of work into what they create, and that's why they are way above us.
So, before commenting with "please follow me, I follow and upvote you!!!!!", think of that as going on the street and asking random people "PLEASE GIVE ME MONEY!!!!" If you wouldn't do that, because you have too much "dignity", then stop doing it online. You're just destroying the reputation you could have by showing people how desperate you are.
Do you want money? Sure, get up early in the morning, eat, drink some coffee, sit in front of your computer and start writing for the next 15 to 30 minutes. Then spend the same amount of time editing your article and making sure it's as good as it can be. Post it, take a break, do something else, then repeat. Spend another 15 to 30 minutes writing an article, then another 15 to 30 minutes editing it, then publish it. Take a break and repeat.
Do that for around 3 times a day, every single day, and you'll get the results you want, more or less. There's no better way to succeed, at least not if you want to get followers and money. If you just want to be annoying, just copy this and paste it on each comment you write: "plz f0llow me, i follo iou and i upote You plzzzz!!!".
Good luck!