Man, what a day it had been. It had been a complete emotional roller coaster. But after a night's sleep, I am finally able to take a step away and look at all this objectively.
You see, I had been a long time fan of Mr. Fred Wilson. Every once in a while, I would go to his blog and read everything he's written since the last time I was there. After hearing about Steem first through coinmarketcap, I've spent a lot of time reading about Steem, it's potential and possibilities, and taking it all in. I became extremely excited for Steem, and felt extremely lucky I could become a part of this at a relatively early stage, still.
However, I also had some concerns. I wanted to get the opinion of someone much more knowledgeable and experienced than I. So I went to Mr. Wilson's blog, hoping to ask him what he thought about Steem. You can imagine the surprise and excitement I felt when Fred posted about Steem before I even asked about it! And what a coincidence, I went to his blog pretty much the moment he made that post. I was probably the first person to read it.
Now I'm not religious, but man, that almost felt like a sign from god.
At this point, I was simply ecstatic. I wanted to share this news with everyone in the world. So quickly, I copy and pasted Fred's post. Not wanting to be accused of trying to steal other people's content, I added a very short blurb of my own, which probably look less than a minute to write. I simply just wanted to get Fred's message out as soon as possible. I mean news is only news because it's new, right?
Of course, this was the result:
My post ended up with 20 something upvotes, and $80 dollars. The other post, made 6 hours after mine, made over $13,000, and is still growing.
Lessons Learned:
1. Earlier isn't necessarily better. Timing is key.
There is a Chinese saying "来得早不如来得巧", which means that to arrive early is not as good as arriving at the most opportune time.
I had thought that the most important thing for news articles is to post them as soon as they come out; after all, no one reads the news from a year ago. But this is not the case. Putting the post out too early will only make it get lost in the noise, when people wake up and actually start reading and curating posts.
The best times to make posts should be when the majority of the users on Steemit are awake. Since most of the users are based in the US, posts should be made during daytime in the US (especially so that whales will get a chance to see your post).
2. Choosing the correct tag is extremely important
I figured since Fred's post was about Steemit, and Steemit was a popular tag, that's what I'd go with. I didn't put much more thought into it than that. However, picking the most popular tags is not necessarily the way to go, especially if you are not already a well established poster.
Tags like "Steemit" are so over saturated that your post will get lost within minutes. It is extremely important to find relevant tags that are not too crowded, but at the same time have some existing interest. In that way, people will have a much longer time frame to find your post.
3. Content matters, but presentation matters too
No one likes to read a huge block of monotonous text, even if the content itself was really great. Adding pictures or gifs when appropriate, using bold and italics to emphasize important points all help in making your post more friendly to read.
4. Add value, even if your post is not 100% original content
I had thought that since I was trying to share Fred's post with everyone, that there was no real point in me saying anything. And I didn't really have much to say about Fred; he is much more knowledgeable than I. I also naively thought that everyone who was interested in tech like Steem would know Fred Wilson. Ha.
Even if the main content is some external news event like in this case, there are ways to add value. 
5. Always create the best content you possibly can, and remember that every post you make is a representation of you
Imagine you were interviewing for a dream job. You know that this job is perfect for you, and you are the perfect person for this position. But the interviewer sees you picking your nose and wiping it on your pants.
Opportunities come not always when you expect it. This is why you should always be at your best.
When I made the post about Fred Wilson's blog, I did not have success in mind. All I wanted to do was to share my excitement with anyone who might bother. So I didn't take care in creating a well made and well thought out post. As I result, I lost out on a potential $13,000. But not only that, the people who did see my post will end up assuming that my other posts are probably also of a low quality and not worth exploring. This is detrimental to someone who does not yet have an established presence.
Unlike picking your nose which you might be able to hide, your posts will always be there for everyone to see. Every single post is a representation of you, so you should always present the best you possible. If you are writing a post but are not sure of the quality, then take the time to fix and polish it. If you can't, then leave it for now until you get the inspiration to make it better, or just write on something else instead. There's no benefit in submitting a bunch of sub-par content. All it will do is make you look incompetent.
Finally, with all that said, it is an undeniable truth that posters who are not well established will have a much harder time getting their content out there, and making successful posts. This is true on Steem, as well as anywhere else.
Originally, Steem created an amazing innovation by rewarding curation and activity. This should theoretically allow hidden gems to be more easily found, as curators benefit greatly from being an "early adapter" of particular posts.
However, there are some problems with the way posting, curation and activity rewards currently work. I wrote a post yesterday detailing the problem and my proposed solution here.
Unfortunately, it did not not gain enough traction, I believe partly because of the problem I detailed in the post, namely that
There is not enough incentive for curators to try and find new, hidden gems.
The best way to curate is to follow all of the big, established posters, and like their posts as soon as they come out, hoping you get there before everyone else. It's basically a 100% fail-proof method that takes very little effort to follow, especially if you have a bot.
This is potentially a problem, because Steem is a platform whose selling point is that everyone has a chance to post stuff, and earn money if their posts are good. It is bad for the community and bad for the future of Steem that only the few established posters ever have their posts curated and earning.
But if we look from the perspective of a curator, why should I spend the time and effort trying to find these "hidden gems", when there are posts I know will become successes with 100% certainty? Not only is trying to find unknown posters time consuming and difficult, there's also the risk of wasting a vote if the post does not gain enough traction.
From the perspective of the community though, why do we need curators for already hugely successful posters with an established following? Having curators "discover" these super-posters give very little benefit to the community. Instead, we should have better incentives for curators to actually spend the time finding hidden gems. This would benefit the community greatly on so many levels.
More people will be motivated to create great content, and more great content can be discovered, creating huge amounts of value. This in turn, will attract many more people to the platform.
I will quote my previous proposal here:
"Curators should be rewarded for putting in the work to discover new content. On the other hand, established posters shouldn't be penalized for consistently creating high quality content, either.
I'm not sure if there are more recent changes, but this seems to be the way posting and curation rewards currently work. According to that,
"Steem currently allocates 2 STEEM every block toward content + curation rewards, after these change the 2 STEEM will be divided like so:
60% to author of post
25% to comments (at all levels) on original posts
15% activity rewards"
My proposal is that we create a new variable E, denoting how established the poster is on a scale of 1 - 2, with 1 being completely unknown, and 2 being an extremely established poster (exact definitions to be determined).
The actual values for content + curation rewards would be calculated thus:
0.4 * E = rewards for the author of the post
0.625 * (1 - 0.4 * E ) = rewards for comments
0.375 * (1 - 0.4 * E ) = rewards for activity
In this way, we can give weight to how much value the curation actually provided. Established posters will be able to get a bigger share of the pie, because even without the curation, they would still be near the top. There is also more incentive for curators to discover content from posters who have yet to establish themselves, and for the new posters, they get the benefit of being discovered. It's win-win-win. "