My First 30 Days on Steemit!

My name is Justin.

I’ve been on Steemit for 30 days.

Allow me to reintroduce myself to those who have not met me, and share my experiences on Steemit.

I’m a real person, and I do a lot of real things, so I don’t like using one word to describe what I am or what I do. If you’d take a look at my other social media, website, or Stocksy portfolio you’ll see me describe myself as an outdoor photographer with an enthusiasm for the outdoors. With that said, because photography is the main topic I post about here on Steemit, I’ll carry on with that narrow description of myself.

Before diving in, I wanted to let you know that yesterday I wrote a somewhat negative and sarcastic post about Steemit, and a few thoughts I’ve had since joining. There are some great conversational points in the comments and I highly recommend you checking it out right here! Today however, it's time for a bit of positivity. Let's start with the numbers.

Steemit Accomplishments and Stats - First 30 Days

• 132 Followers
• 360 Posts (30 Blogs Posts / 330 Comments)
• (48) Reputation Score
• $45.13 - Highest Post Reward
• 90 Steem in my Wallet
• 1 Curie upvote
• 2 resteems and daily round-up features from @Photofeed
• 1 Hive account@photocontests wins

I have put all the author and curation rewards I've earned this month back into Steem Power. I have to thank Hive account@irreverent-dan for pointing out the fact that as long as Steem is more than $1 it makes more sense to take a 50/50 payout instead of 100% to Steem Power. For the first week or so I chose 100% SP payouts on each of my posts. However, I now choose 50/50 payouts since SBD is worth more than $1, and will convert into more Steem Power. I use Blocktrades to sell my SBD and Steem for Steem Power.

A few weeks in, I sold some of my LTC on Blocktrades to purchase 41.225 Steem that I used to power up my account. I have a total of 90 Steem right now. That means in my first 30 days I have earned almost 50 Steem through author and curation rewards. This is way more than I expected when signing up. My first post started with a bang and was upvoted 173 times to $4.99! I didn’t know why it received so much attention at the time, but now I can see it was upvoted by Hive account@photofeed’s Hive account@cyrptoctupus and received some attention via the Photofeed curation trail. This was instant motivation to keep posting, even though I had already committed myself to 30 posts in my first 30 days.

A couple weeks after my first post, I wrote a short tutorial about shooting vertical landscape photos, that got picked up by Curie’s curator Hive account@carlgnash and recieved a big curie upvote. I woke up the morning after I posted it to check my Steemit, and saw that my reputation scored had sky rocketed from about 39 to 47 overnight! That was weird to see, so I scrolled down and noticed my post was at $55! This was really exciting, and provided a ton of encouragement to keep creating content and sharing it on here.

Why did I join?

I have been a part of a Trading/Investment/Crypto Whatsapp group for a few months and have put time in learning about cryptocurrencies. Through my research using Google, I frequently encountered blog posts written on Steemit. At that time, I had no idea what Steemit was, and never bothered to find out. Then about six weeks ago when the social network Vero was blowing up on Instagram for a day or two, I noticed a comment written by Hive account@circa1983 talking about the benefit of posting to a blockchain based social network like Steemit, rather than another Facebook or Instagram clone. I right away looked up his Steemit blog and immediately decided to sign up for an account. After waiting nearly two full weeks to get verified, and messaging Hive account@drakos on Steemit Chat, I received the email allowing me to finish setting up my account. That was 30 days ago, and I have had a blast on here ever since, minus the frustrations I outlined in yesterday’s post.

I see a lot of potential on this platform, and have been surprised with what I’ve happened to accomplish so far. I plan on sticking around and posting consistently for another two months, before reevaluating my investment.

Goals

My goal for Steemit is three-fold.

• To earn rewards that will eventually help pay bills or buy new gear.
• To put my photography in front of a new audience.
• To be inspired and perfect my photography craft through feedback, criticism, and encouragement.

Gratitude

Thank you to all who have left meaningful comments, offered advice and encouragement, or helped explain things I’ve questioned. There are a lot of great, real people, on here and I’m happy to be a part!

Thanks for reading!

Justin