Measuring success on Steemit is a personal thing. What is success to one is not always success to others.
If you come to Steemit expecting nothing and end up with a following of a couple of hundred and posts worth $5 - $10 you might consider yourself successful. But if you come to Steemit expecting to make $hundreds a post and only make $10 you will probably consider yourself unsuccessful.
Having targets and clear expectations are one thing but how realistic are they without some sort of benchmarking?
So to aid with your success, to help you see what is achievable and attainable, I have created this benchmarking report as a reference to your (and my) growth on Steemit.
I have taken the Comments posted table from the Steemit SQL held and managed by 
During this time there were 513,413 Blogs. This is the number of new articles or posts written, NOT Comments…..
How did July posts preform financially?
Looking at all of the posts made in July, accounting for the 7 day pay out on posts made at the end of the month, I can summarize the financial performance of posts as follows
What is interesting from this set of data is that 7% of posts earned no rewards. That seems to be a considerable amount. It is also very clear that the majority of posts (73%) earn up to $1
Setting financial targets help to keep you on track. But success for many is not just financial success. For a lot of people financial rewards on Steemit are a bonus. For me financial success is important as by creating content on Steemit takes time away from my own online business, and has a negative impact on my revenue. I need to ensure I can reach and attain a certain level as a trade-off.
Obviously I am not looking to break even immediate. I am hoping to reach the higher end of $51 - $100. Glad to report I am on my way to reaching that level. A number of my posts in the last two weeks have broken the $51 mark. Prior to this my posts were <$20. Hopefully next month I will be reporting that all of my posts are holding in the $51-$100 bracket, which only 2% of posts reach.
How many comments were made on July posts?
In my opinion comments made on a post is a very important metric for measuring success. Many people on Steemit are using voting bots, I myself am part of Minnowsupport. Therefore engagement is more reflected by comments than votes.
Only a fraction under 50% of blog posts on Steemit get 1 or less comments on the posts.
In a previous post (only two weeks ago) my personal target for success was 11-20 comments per post. I am delighted to see that in only two weeks I have exceeded this target. My posts are on average now between 21-50 comments. This is the top 5% of posts. Over the month of Aug I hope to sustain this, as with the summer months, many people might be on holidays and not reading the posts. I am not anticipating growth to the next bracket.
What are your targets for success when it comes to comments on your posts?
Posts Net Votes in terms of Success
7.5 million net votes were cast on posts. That averages out at 14 votes per post. Let’s see how this really spreads out on Steemit
An overwhelming 57% of posts get between 2 and 10 votes. As a measurement of success, the number of votes is not top priority. I have mentioned in a previous post that for me, the number of votes shows a certain level of social proof and contributes to success. For me however it is not a measurement of success.
In the last two week 4 of my posts have received more than 100 net votes. That puts these posts in the top 2% (disclaimer : I do use minnowsupport)
I would love to hear what you consider 'Success' on Steemit. Please do comment below
Interested in more posts by me? Then you might like these
Proposed Changes to the Trending Page Algorithm
How to get a post on Steemit Trending - What the data tells us
Why I love View.ly and you should too - Tips for Minnows