There's something I've been thinking about for a while now, and it's about Steemit, or better said, about publishing on Steemit. I tried to put my thoughts into words, but I couldn't do it, until last night, so I decided to talk about it here.
Basically, publishing on Steemit doesn't seem to be something that will matter in the long run, at least on the website.
Obviously that's not an objective truth, but something I've been feeling for a while now, so let me explain better.
Let's say you're a person who just starts publishing on Steemit, and you start writing a few articles, interacting with some people and you even make some money. Great! You spend a few months on the website and you're making some progress.
Then, at some point, you kinda stop. You don't get a lot of followers any more, you don't get crazy rewards, and while you're doing okay, you don't really feel like you're making progress. But you keep publishing. And you do it again, and again, and again.
The thing about the system Steemit is using is that when you publish a piece of content, it usually has around one or two days to get rewarded, resteemed, seen by a lot of people. But after those two days, it's kinda gone. The website is like a fountain, and your content is like pennies you throw into the fountain wishing for something. If it happens, great, if not, well, the coin is lost forever.
If you do make something with your article in that short period of time, then awesome, if you don't, and a few days pass by, well, that article, while still there, it's kinda forgotten. You won't make any money with it any more, no matter who discovers it, and people won't often go back to read it.
So basically, while Steemit feels extremely rewarding when things go the way you want them to, when you get rewards and attention, it feels pretty... "empty" when you don't get those things, because you know that once a few days pass, your article is gonna be buried under a lot of other articles, most of them crap, featuring memes and bad "jokes".
It's a shitty feeling that you get if you ever get in that position, but it's there. It simply feels like you're creating content for the now rather than for the future, no matter what topic you approach. Even if you create a tutorial on Steemit, it feels like if it doesn't do well soon, then it won't, ever.
That, compared to other platforms, is pretty bad. I mean, other websites like Medium or Artstation or YouTube or whatever example you want, have a way of letting you know how your old content is doing. If someone discovers it, and likes it, you get a notification. You get statistics that show how well your old content is doing, and if people still see it.
With Steemit, it looks like every time you publish something, you "gamble" with your time and content. If a post gets the rewards you hoped for, then great, if not, and a week passes, then you can forget about it and focus on the next "big thing".
As I said, this is not an objective truth or anything, it's just a feeling I've had for a while now. It's not bad, it won't make me quit publishing on Steemit anytime soon, but it's still a strange feeling. It just seems like the platform offers you no ability to "succeed" with your old content, because once it's published, it gets buried under a lot of crap within minutes, and in rare occasions people may find it. If not, well, you tried.