After a year on Steem(it) I have a strange feeling that the opportunity is slipping away from our hands.

The idea behind Steem(it) is both intuitive and unintuitive.

On the positive side, our comparative advantage is the ability to "tip", to give incentives to content creators we like. At first glance, it would be expected to have a constant influx of new users. The same users who are already sharing their content on various social networks and platforms. Why on Earth they are not joining Steem?

It was puzzling me for a long time, and maybe I've found some explanations.

What I see as the biggest problem for Steem communities is the inability to define the product.

We are constantly trying to build the community(es) and deliver something from those communities. What I think we should do is completely opposite. I strongly believe that we need to define the products and wait for the community to form in an organic way around those products.

Let's see the examples:

https://tangosix.rs/ the best portal about Aviation, in Yugoslavia

This website is very specialized. Topics are broadly divided into civilian and military.
Authors are posting on regular basis, 3-4 times per week. Authors are the absolute pinnacle from the field. The amount of details that could be found about airplanes and AA Defence is unprecedented. This portal is so good, that some people from abroad are regular readers although all the text are written in Serbo-Croatian. Tangosix is able to generate 100+ comments, effortlessly. example

What we can learn: we need the most relevant experts from the field. Only those are able to generate something attractive for a broader audience
The main question is: how to attract them to steemSTEM for example, or stemQ?

Screenshot from Tangosix. 11.245 FB likes, for a niche website, written mainly in Serbian and occasionally in Croatian. For the comparison, www.ausairpower.net/ with similar content, written in English is not significantly more popular

https://www.b92.net/ Serbian news portal

Before I show you something alarming, a short lesson from geography. In 2017 there were only 7 million inhabitants in Serbia. If we are very, very generous in our estimation and if we count all the people from Yugoslavia who can read Serbian and all the people from abroad, we can't count more than 25 M potential readers.

This is what Alexa can tell us:

B92, news portal from Serbia is as popular as Steemit, website that is aiming at global acceptance.

What B92 done well?

There is one fantastic aspect of B92: UX for comment section

It's incredibly easy and everyone can make an impulsive comment. The most popular articles can get more than 500 comments and more than 1500 Likes/Dislikes for the top rated comments. Comments on B92 became so important tool in political campaigns that the whole new class of activists was invented, so-called "sandwich bots". It's a long story and the phenomenon that deserves a separate post.

What we can learn: people are impulsive. There must be a method to post an angry comment. Nobody cares for 0.01 $, people want to say something. The solution is simple - guest accout(s). If those impulsive authors decide to join and open their own accounts - good for them.
The main question is: why is Steemit building fences? With the median income per post <0.05 $, "earning money" can not be the main selling point for Steemit.

https://www.dpreview.com/ https://kenrockwell.com/ https://www.the-digital-picture.com

Three websites with the same aim but 3 very different styles.

The main idea behing all three websites is to provide comprehensive and unbiased camera reviews.

https://www.dpreview.com/ was the most successful. It's incredibly popular for 20 years already, and I don't know a single photo enthusiast who missed this website:

It became so popular that Amazon - purchased it, turning it into a marketing opportunity.

The second website, https://www.the-digital-picture.com is the youngest. The main selling point of this website and the very reason why it's indexed on the first page in Google Search is the ability to produce comprehensive reviews. If you want to learn what is the difference between 4 generations of a particular model of camera lens - this is the place for you. Yes, of course, you can purchase camera related item via the website.

The last presented website, https://kenrockwell.com/ , is probably the least attractive website in the existence :D

This website became the hot spot for vintage lenses and kenrockwell is accepting tips, thus it's the most similar to Steemit...

What we can learn: beside on focusing on Steem, we should find the way to sell our digital products.
The main question is: why instead of using Steemit, we don't have more specialized websites with focused content

Instagram hribovc

This summer, I went to Slovenia, without any plan. I simply asked locals and installed Instagram to find good locations for my photos. The first account was hribovc. After discovering hribovc, I started adding the most prominent authors whose content they share.

Photos made by several authors, nejajesenko included, were absolutely breathtaking. Mountains in sunrise or sunset, with typical Slovenian fog and clouds below (not above, below).

What we can learn: you can't buy devotion. Speaking in terms of economy, it cost anywhere between 100 and 500 $ to regularly wake up before sunrise and climb. However... If someone is doing it for fun - it's free
The main question is: why we don't pick the most devoted authors and bring them to the platform?

http://www.ari-maj.com/ fashion blog

This is probably the weirdest peak I made for this list. Ok, fighter jets, cameras, mountains, but fashion blogging?

Here is the story. It's about the product, again. After purchasing a nice dSLR I wanted to make some good photos of my GF. Unfortunately, all I could find were pro photoshoots with 3 sources of light, 2 helpers and 3h in Photoshop.

After googling photos, I've noticed one face on every 10th photo. Few clicks later - I found her name and her blog.

It's interesting to see the evolution in several years:

• APS-C camera, kit lens, wrong white balance (too much blue)
• discovered that people prefer "yellow-ish" photos (too yellow), poor postures, terrible... (hair all over her face, bad frames, plain wrong)
• revolution, new style: I'm a cute girl and "I have nothing to wear Blog". She is getting sponsors
• Full frame camera and prime lens(es?) introduced. Posture is almost perfect now and I learned a lot (movement, eyes pointed in one direction, subject is filling the whole frame...)
• new revolution: "the art of femininity", way too provocative for my taste, but she was featured in the Polish Playboy. She discovered the niche

What we can learn: it takes 5+ years of devotion discovering the niche in blogging
The main question is: should we adopt the existing bloggers or should we foster our own

In Conclusion

The situation we are experiencing on Steem(it) since summer 2018 is deja vu for me and for millions of Eastern Europeans older than 30. What started as our blessing, became our course. Incentives helped us to grow during the initial phase, but the system also made us blind for the outside world. In the "real world", blogging platforms can become profitable if their content is valuable. However, if the users are evolving in optimizing their earnings in Steem - they will be able to earn Steem and nothing more.

After you learn about the ecosystem and start earning, you should focus on one and only thing: Steem price. Why? Well, it's obvious... If you spent a year on Steemit, how much time it will take to double the amount of Steem? Maybe 6 months if you become more efficient. Or... If the price of Steem goes up - your savings become more valuable. More valuable, at a much faster rate.

To achieve that, we need more users. Scientifically proven...

In order to attract users we should (according to the experience of other authors):

• find those who are devoted and already active. Instead of bringing them to Steem(it), we should bring Steem to their platforms. For free, effortlessly, but we will adopt their users, overnight. They are already established, we are not.
• we should pay pro authors to promote Steem. The system we see on Steemit is that Steem is distributed to content creators, no matter what. Why not paying those who can produce content?
• posting via guest account - the killing feature and must have
• we need to compete in free market. Steemhunt, nice try, but horrible execution because 50% of reviews are abysmal. Content creators can be tipped, but they still need to create products that can be sold
• evolution of bloggers takes too long. Instead of having the approach "bottom-up" (fostering amateurs to become professionals), we should try "top-down" approach, with paid professionals, those with proven digital products

Think about it... A PhD in Eastern Europe is paid less than 1 solid upvote from Utopian.

The total amount of Steem given to content creators per day is about 15-20.000 $.

For that amount of money, it would be possible to pay:

• 100 experts working in the Western world
• or 500 solid authors
• or maybe 1.000 student/enthusiasts

As it's impossible to have enough audience to read 1000 posts per day - let's have 50 great posts instead.

Never forget, the real value of Steem = number of users x log(num. of users)

We need to attract users, with good products, with great content or via seamless transition.

Many thanks to those of you who formed the communities. Without you, this place would be long gone