There will be times when the fingers fly
All one can or many of us do is try try try
The mind races to keep up with the flurry
If to or not to post should cause you worry
Commenting thoughts on posts of another
Will free your mind up to sister and brother
So you see my dear new/old friend Steemian
This is just one in the sum we all be dream'n

- Hive account@cryptologyx ⁽¹⁾

Lets talk about Success!

There are two basic factors in success, and many ways to achieve them.

^{(img source: Hive account@yusaymon via: "Freedit")}

But first.... let me end this fallacy right now!

You... don't... need... to... post... every... day!!!!

At least, not if you want to put the effort in it requires to deliver higher quality content. Posting a few times a week is enough to reassure folk that you are still here.

Quality Content

Here are some ways that I've been learning to improve my own content. Mind you, this post was in response to people complaining about rewards. I'm don't want to try and tell anyone how to live, or blog. What I want is to offer more productive steps for people complaining that they don't get enough rewards on their posts. I feel a bit pretentious doing so because I'm brand new to steemit. Here it goes, I'll work on this as time goes, and when I can't edit anymore, eventually I'll have to re-work this into some more complete guide.

Title, Preview Image, and First Few Words.

The most important thing is your Preview Image. It should Pop and really get peoples attention.

For your title you want your words to be clear, and, perhaps, intriguing.

The first few words of each blog post should be integral to the heart and make sense outside of the context of the rest of the post.

Remember. These are the first three things that people get to see before they decide to open your post or not.

Layout

Are you adding high quality images that you've appropriately sized and aligned? Sometimes centered, sometimes left align, sometimes right align. Occasionally using bold and italics? There are plenty of articles about how to this stuff, so I'll link to some of them at the bottom. Make sure you have enough line breaks or "White Space" as I've heard it called.

Content

Did you write an article? Or did you mention an article, add a link, but not actually go over a bit of what's in the article? There is nothing wrong with a post that is mostly a quotation from a great book, just don't expect to get paid for it.

I notice that Artists do very well when they make a post that shows the artwork in stages, not just the final product, but an explanation of how it came about.

Also, it's helpful when posting videos to write a bit about what you will be talking about in the video, you don't have to write it all out. I do notice that major news organizations often do this, however. Maybe you do videos about news topics. Consider, that some of your followers might want to be able to read and reference after they watch.

References

Even the nicest article written can be nicer by adding a few references. Especially, if your articles are primarily for informational purposes. We have to care about our readers. What if they want more information?

This goes for images too. How am I going to find who my newest favorite artist\photographer is unless you add a link to their account? Even when getting free stock photos that don't require attribution, it's nice to the creator and to your readers.

This is a nice way to add an image reference with html:

<center><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Ancv5Q1.png"></img></center><center><sup>(Image By @zombiedoll via: <a href="https://steemit.com/art/@zombiedoll/slime-strawberry-shortcake">Slime Strawberry Shortcake</a>)</sup></center>

Another thought on this, is that amidst so much copypasta, spam accounts, and wasted storage space, a link to where you sourced your information is nice to alleviate any concerns. Moreover, since we hope to get actually paid for this stuff, that also brings up concern of lawsuits. Often, when searching for a good reference on something which I could have just wrote about, I learn new things about my topic. This makes for better content, and a more fulfilled me. I always wince at this, when I see an article that I really liked that doesn't add references. Mind you, nobody has to add these references. Especially if you're not complaining about your lack of post payout.

Something else important to remember regarding references is that it's helpful to reference your own posts. At the bottom of your post you can add a part where it says "Here are a few other posts you may also enjoy:".

It's helpful whenever linking and referencing in the text of an article to also make a reference list at the bottom so people don't have to search through the post looking for links when they are done reading.

Resteems

If your blog feed is full of resteems, it can be difficult to find your content. Also, without a large following of people who engage with your content, re-steeming is unlikely to benefit you. Certainly, it can gain you a bit of good will from the author. For me, I try to re-steem no more than twice between each of my posts, and it tends to be material which is related to my blog, or i think is important for everyone to be aware of.

Subject

Do you write posts about what everyone else is interested in? Personally, I came to write articles about social skills. Active Listening, Body Language, Networking, ect. First of all for my own education, but also for all of you, and anyone who is curious. I was gonna blog, somewhere, anyways. I've been meaning to start writing for a while, I'm just grateful I found the Steem blockchain. My problem is that my subject matter does not have universal appeal. Maybe I need to work on my titles, or simply haven't connected with enough people, yet. In fact, I've had a hard time finding other authors who write in my "main" subject area regularly.

So, I expanded my subject matter to include what more people are already interested in \ exposed to here. Not just what everybody is interested in, but I'm interested too (even if it's not what I originally planned to blog about).

^{(image source Hive account@creativesoul via: @spaingaroo Make Out Like an Artist Contest)}

Sourcing images and other materials for your Blog.

It enriches everyone's experience here to source art and other material from within the blockchain. This also strengthens the platform over all.

I write posts showing off the art of my new friends, and have gotten permission to use some of their images in my blog, a trend which I would like to encourage. Everyone loves art, and all of our blog posts need images.

If you aren't posting the art that you make, and collaborating with other artists on the site; I hope, that you will consider sourcing the images for your blogs here on steemit.

Some artists will be happy with a simple linkback, and "remember me when you're rich". I always pay whatever I can afford to pay. Typically it's a small sum way under the actual value of the image comparing how long they took to make it. Even if they are super talented and it only takes a few minutes, it still probably took a long time to get that talented. But yes, I will remember you!

It can also be helpful to contact people if you want to write about them or refer to them in your articles. Unless it's a simple @ tag while mentioning something that is common knowledge, on the block chain, I try to get a hold of people before I reference them in my blog.

Writing about Steemit

I write about steemit sometimes, but always in a positive fashion. Not because I have rose tinted glasses. Consider this, how do you think you are gonna get that whale vote when you are talking about how horrible steemit is, and bashing whales? Anyways, I doubt most of the people writing scathing opinions of steemit have taken any time to try get to know the people who run this site. Nor have they, likely, taken the time to find solutions. In a moment of mistrust, jealousy, anger, or frustration, they've lashed out at the community who's support they hope to attract.

If you do decide to write something critical of steemit, please try to stay positive with it, or at least polite and not offensive. Otherwise, people are gonna start getting muted pretty quick around here.

It would help if you put more effort into researching the issues, and possible solutions. Think of Fair and Balanced, not like FOX news, but actually.

Good examples of this have come from Hive account@rycharde, who is fairly new here, yet managed to highlight possible improvements to the system(due to his mathematical prowess). If you like his ideas, maybe you could work to promote them. With public support, we might be able to get some implementation:

Ideas for Future Rule Changes - Voting, Earnings, Maximum Social Benefits - a Discussion Document

The best that can be achieved, in the game theoretic sense, is to make optimal social behaviour more attractive than the sub-optimal equilibrium point. This must be encoded in the rule-set...

Proposal for New Rules Regarding Self-Votes and Voting-Rings

There has been much discussion of these issues recently. It can become very heated, especially when behaviours are given a moral interpretation. What I seek to do here is to clarify a few things and then concentrate on encoding rules that encourage behaviour that is beneficial to the whole reward pool and that reward people who have different strategies.

^{(image credit: Hive account@zombiedoll via zombiedolltv.deviantart.com - Dancing in Central Park)}

Community

How to gain Visibility on the Blockchain

We need friends here, not just for payout, but for a real fulfilling experience. But how do we make them?

Comments

This is number one, and an area where I have room for improvement. When you engage people in the comments, they see your comment while engaging with the site(compared with chat). This makes it very easy for them to jump to your profile and get to know you \ vote on your posts.

I was encouraged by Hive account@sift666 in chat:

When you post or comment, separate each idea with a line break.

Idea... ENTER.

Unless you do that very few people will understand what you are saying.

The more well thought out and complete the comment, the better. I'm sure everybody reading this knows don't say "follow for follow" or ask for followers in someone else's comments. If you want to ask for people to follow you, do it in your own posts. No begging for followers in peoples comments. Engage. If you leave a good comment, they will check out your profile, and perhaps follow you.

I tend to vote on and respond to every real person comment on my articles, often I upvote the replies too. It's also a good idea to check out the profile of people who leave you comments.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that the blockchain is stronger when meaningfully self referenced. If I see an article about a topic I write on, I leave a nice comment and a link back to my post. This is a helpful way for everybody to continue to read about the same topic. I do the same thing with the links of other peoples posts which I think add to the conversation. I don't do this all of the time, and I do it manually. Too much of this without thoughtful comments may get you flagged, however.

Don't be rude

If someone writes something you don't like, it might be better to ignore it than to leave a sarcastic comment. We can go back to the old adage of "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all". (yes, I see the irony of my post complaining about complainers)

See: How to avoid saying things that you'll regret

Upvotes

Recently I started checking out who my biggest, and most frequent upvoters are. That way, I can check out their blog if I don't know who they are, or send a thank you for the support. Not a bad idea to show some appreciation to the people who regularly upvote and comment on your posts.

I learned about how to do this from the article @cikxaijen steemit upvote bot review:

In the article Hive account@cikxaijen explains that when you click "votes" the list is ordered by who paid the highest.

Something that helped me feel good about using way more upvotes was an article by Hive account@timcliff. Here is a selection from that article.

Let's assume:

You want to vote 40 times per day.

You don't have a vote slider, so all your votes are cast with 100% strength.

With pre-hf19 voting, each of your 40 votes would have added 1 cent to the payout of a post.

Under the new voting, your votes are 4x as strong, so they now add 4 cents.

If you start voting 40x per day, what will happen?

After a few days of doing this, your voting power will drop until it reaches an equilibrium at around 25%.

Each vote you cast will be 1/4 as strong (since you are voting with 25% voting power).

Each vote you cast will use up 1/4 as much of your total voting power (since only 25% is left).

Each vote you cast will be worth 1/4 as much, so they will now be worth 1 cent instead of 4 cents.

Will I run out of voting power?

No - not if you are casting around 40 votes per day.

Each day your voting power will dip down to around 5-10%.

Every day your voting power recharges by 20%, so you will gain what you spent back.

@timcliff - Minnow Voting, it is still OK to vote 40 times a day

Collaboration

A useful tool for collaboration is hackmd.io. This allows you to share what you are working on with other people while you work on it. It even allows you to edit an article with someone else in real time (click there to view this article on hackmd). A big thank you to Hive account@reggaemuffin for telling me about this.

_{I might as well mention for a moment that I started talking to Hive account@reggaemuffin during the bandwidth crisis because I was concerned that there weren't enough witnesses talking to people and reassuring folk of what was happening to deal with it. When I initially messaged Hive account@reggaemuffin, I didn't really expect much. To my surprise, I received a relatively quick response to my concerns.}

_{A note for contacting anyone here, but especially witnesses, is to assume that they are always busy. Don't be demanding of their time or attention.}

_{I've managed to chat with a few witnesses, briefly, to get their opinions on different matters. Possibly, in part, because I wrote some helpful articles about technical matters in the past. It wouldn't even be a bad idea to drop a comment on their posts, thanking them for their service.}

So, collaboration. It's a great way to make new connections and expand the audience for your material. I'll include in this linking to other articles that are related to your topic. Also, whenever I want to mention anyone in an article, I make sure to contact them, if possible. It's good to let people see how you want to refer to them, or what type of content you want to use their art for. So, whenever possible, I contact and

Another good idea is to write about other people here. By nature of the way this site works, we do not have a link list for our profile on the side. Ideally, I would be able to pin my favorite articles on the right side of the screen for any of my readers to enjoy, any time they see an article I wrote. I'm sure something like this will be added eventually. For now, it's helpful to go through your blog, find notable posts, and make a post highlighting the best material you've presented. This is a way for new readers to find our material. The same goes for other peoples blogs. I'm sure most anyone would love for someone to read their entire blog feed, point out some notable posts and write about the awesome that person does. If I want to do this, I ask, first, if they would mind for me to do a writeup, and typically people are ok with that. I've learned a lot writing my "Steemian of the Week" posts.

I would encourage others to try the same thing.

Chat

steemit.chat

There is steemit.chat which has a help channel. Hive account@timcliff and Hive account@drakos answer the technical questions which we all have from time to time. It's actually quite impressive to me how all the questions get addressed, even if they were asked a while ago but there was no one around to answer at that time. Besides the #help channel, there are some steemians who use steemit.chat but not discord, so even though I don't use it all the time, it's nice to be able to keep in touch with people.

Discord

It is entirely out of the scope of this article to go over all of the discord channels. All I can say is that it's a way better design than steemit.chat. In fact, I do intend to write about all of the discord servers someday.

Hive account@swelker101 wrote an article that highlights a number of them:

Using Discord to Enhance your Steemit Experience - The incomplete list

A good thing to remember, is don't just jump in a room where you don't know anybody yet and expect people to flock to your profile. Get to know some folks, have fun, and find one or a few where you feel comfortable.

I don't spend too much time in the chat rooms, as I tend to be busy on steemit.com and writing articles. But it's great to be able to chat with my new friends :-) I am told by some people who have spent a lot of time in chat that it can distract them from producing content. Typically, I have a lot of Direct Messages open, so I can catch up with my friends, on the fly.

Contests and Trails

There are various "Trails" in steemit, where users with similar interests all interact with each others posts. There are often contests, and weekly digests which you can be chosen to be featured in.

Check Hive account@steemtrail for more information: Steem Trail Daily Introduction

You can find the existing trails and participants in the steemtrail discord server

There are many contests where the entrants all look at, vote on and comment each others articles, even if you don't win, just entering these contests can get more eyeballs on your articles.

One example is: [Minnows Accelerator Project SIGNUP [WIN 200 SP Delegated] Aust10-17

(You'll have to find the most current signup application because soon this post will be un-editable, and I can't keep going back and changing to the newest signup page)

Hive account@spaingaroo regularly holds:

"Make out like an Artist - Daily Love and Steem Dollar Give-Away"

Hive account@sammosk also holds the Creative Competition, be sure to check that out!

Creative Competition - All Are Welcome - New entrants here!! 10 SBD Bonus

Those are just a few of the contests, I don't really know too much because I haven't entered too many contests. Mostly, I'm concerned with continuing to develop my writing and material. However, I do know that participating in contests are a great way to build community.

Followers

One of the funnier things I have done on Steemit when I was first starting out just followed a lot of people. Naturally, it did not take very long before my feed was filled with so much “stuff” that I 100% missed out on anything I ever cared about. ^{Hive account@enjar - (from the comments section)}

This is a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up. Everybody has their strategies, personally I don't just add everybody. However, I do make it a point to occasionally go through my followers list and look at everybody's profile, try to comment and vote from time to time. In the process I discover hidden gems. It's always a good possibility that if someone is following me, that I might enjoy what they have to offer. This also helps me to catch up with people I haven't connected with in a while. I do the same with the people I'm following.

Ok, I feel like I've covered a lot here.

Have Fun, and Steem On!

Feel free to leave feedback.

Unless otherwise noted all of the content created by Hive account@inquiringtimes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Additionally, while not required, I am easily contacted if you wish to use these materials for any purpose(excepting a quotation in comments on the Steem Block-chain, where a simple @ tag \ linkback is sufficient).

References:

Other Resources:

Image Credits:

Hive account@yusaymon - "Freedit"
Hive account@creativesoul and Hive account@spaingaroo in a collaborative work "The Song of the Whale is the Soul of the Ocean"
Hive account@zombiedoll "Dancing in Central Park" via: zombiedolltv.deviantart.com

_{(Final note: my highest paid posts take quite a bit longer than a few hours.)}

See Welcome to #Art-Services for more details

How to actually Succeed as a Steemit Blogger. Spammers, Upvote Rings, and Gripers (oh, my!) [Part 2] (with updates)