An Addendum to My Steem Earnings Post

I was happy about one of my latest posts here where I documented how Steem Earnings had been decreasing for me as late. I speculated that it could be due to the upcoming Hard Fork 21 which is now less than 24 hours away among a number of other thoughts regarding engagement. I was really happy as I was able to achieve quite a bit of engagement on the comments section which is what I dream of for not only my content but also the majority of the content I create. I believe that one of the key values that drive the ecosystem and community is the fact that we are able to get different perspectives and share our own which provide a great feedback loop for our future actions.

However, as I interacted with the comments section and also continue to look at the earnings that have continued to be constant (except for that post which was an outlier), I came to realize that I missed a couple of important factors. First, while the earnings I follow are measured in USD amount, an even more important measure are the amount of resources we get when we earn here. The amount of Steem and Steem Power that I have been generating continues to increase as the price goes down. This presents a unique and odd feature that allows us to accumulate the resources much faster.

Source

I decided to go back to my starting month here when Steem was over $4 each and see the differences. While I would get more SBD than Steem for my engagement back then, I would never be able to accumulate more than 1 Steem per day back then. This is despite me remembering getting reward for $2-3 worth of upvote on my comments (my posts never got more than $0.05 at the beginning). In fact, until the day in February 2018 that I decided to buy 95 Steem at $3.90 (my first purchase), I had only accumulated 3.89 Steem through that date! In my most recent week, I am now getting about 10 Steem per day for my activities here!

Given my long term view on how value is being created in the ecosystem, I feel much better now earning more Steem and Steem Power than earning more dollars worth of resources as my intention is not to cash out at the moment but build a foundation for the future when value is more realizable. I often think in my mind the USD value of my resources earned and accumulated at those prices and while it may take years to get there, I think the returns on our time and money could be well worth it in that point of view.

Another fact that continues to go around in my head is how much continues to develop and grow on the secondary layer that is Steem Engine. I have yet to make it a routine to go in and claim rewards as I have to still figure out the best way to accumulate these resources. However, these resources are not in those metrics that I am tracking on a daily basis but after looking at how they continue to expand may be something to surely consider. Now that Hive account@steemchiller has added more flexibility to the great SteemWorld website, this could something to do on a more frequent basis for me.

While all this is set to change in the next 24 hours, I think that the bigger picture continues to expand. The evolution of both the protocol and the passionate community surrounding it is quite an experience to be a part of. We often focus too much on the now and miss the potential of what could be. It is never an easy thought process but it is one that could be more enjoyable if we open ourselves to it. The coming days will be a great opportunity to see how we see ourselves here not only now but in the future.