I won´t quit steemit but I nearly did...
Why?
There is something fundamentally wrong in the design of steemit: great content often goes by unnoticed while crappy content often ranks trending. That´s because by design steemit is very vertical, and it´s mainly because of how the trending page works. The result is that if you don´t have whale friends, you should have your post seen by thousands of minnows to compensate, but few minnows actually see your post because it is lost somewhere amongst the gazillion other people do. Writing quality content is not the answer, because most of the time people vote with their wallets, they favor what makes them money. So, in actuality, I experienced that growing organically on steemit is a lot tougher than in other blogging networks. That is even without factoring in the constant flame wars that are going on, which can fuck your income at any time and they will dismiss it as "collateral damage". Also, I feel sadder when I remember that sometimes the people responsible for cleaning up the platform arbitratily demonetize posts enforcing rules that don´t exist(aka. there is no clear ruleset like in other networks and you are subject to the moderator´s interpretation, mood, and whim). If you don´t know what I´m talking about, read the previous post I made about that.
I was not that mad before, because just a month ago you could make a tiny profit from bid bots if you were careful, that meant that a minnow could farm his way to a dolphin with enough dedication. Like a good steemian, I didn´t produce crap or spam, and went on using that ladder to sloooowly work that wallet. It was a horrible investment of time, because for all that time I invested, I made like 200 USD on two months, which is less than I made in my other blogs outside of steemit. I´ve spent several hours writing complicated posts that barely got noticed. Most of my free time after my real life work went to steemit, but I was happy because even though financially made no sense, I was slowly growing.
Now with the latest changes, which some may argue that are good for the network because they reduce inflation, to which I will argue that they are also bad because they take away from minnows the ONLY ladder they had to climb up. A few days ago I started reformatting and posting some of my older steemit articles into other social networks to see how hard would it be to grow in them... they were an instant hit! It was not a one time off either, it confirmed my experience that growing on other social networks from zero is quite easier than on steemit. I know that you can grow "organically" with groups that upvote you and helps you promote your posts, but the problem with them is that you have to spend and inordinate amount of time just being social instead of promoting your own content(which isn´t a requirement on other networks), and you have to fully depend on these "middlemen" to put in a good word for you. Isn´t steemit supposed to be descentralized? Because in practice it functions like the most vertical social network I have ever seen!
To recap, why I´m disappointed at steemit?
- It´s easier to grow organically on other social networks.
- It´s a constant flamewar territory. Twitter would be proud.
- The trending page system is designed to favor whales and make minnows life harder. So is the distribution of content, which is very vertical and has no personalized algorythms.
- The promotion is very vertical, for which you have to depend on middlemen "groups".
- It´s also actually easier to make money in other social networks right now with the same ammount of effort.
- Content quality doesn´t matter for it to be noticed.
- They took away the only ladder minnows could use to slowly grow.
- While promoting your work, you have to spend 10x of the time you would need to spend on other networks to achieve the same result.
- The mods take arbitrary decisions and can´t accept when they´re in the wrong after the appeals.
So I´m not quitting steemit because I love writing, but I´m reordering the priorities of my life:
1- The time I devote to my real life, my job, my friends, my significant other, my kittycat.
2- Other social networks, which I´m finding a lot easier to grow an account in.
3- My gaming time, I just love Warthunder.
4- Excercise.
5- My time for going out clubbing, pubs, relaxing, etc.
6- Steemit.
What can you expect from me and what I promise from now on?
- A single or maybe two posts per week. And I´ll put maximum effort on them, not for steemit but for myself.
- I will post my sagas on other social networks first most of the time(no more original content for steemit).
- I will keep working on my current sagas until I finish them, but won´t push myself to reach deadlines no more.