I have been hanging around (as far away from the trending page as possible) on steemit for the better part of a year now and I must say that I am quite fond of the place.
I have found myself with 800+ followers (some of them might even be real people).
I have posted a few articles that got some big upvotes.
I have posted some articles that disappeared into the steemit abyss.
I have messed around with selling my vote and collecting interest on my stake.
I have paid some vote bots and was pleased with the results.
I have gotten sucked into the drama and infighting.
There is so much to do here, and read, and comment... it is too bad about the future of steemit though. It really is too bad.
For those of you without a time machine, please let me bring you up to speed. Steem, like most other blockchain based digital currencies, fluctuates in value rather wildly for the next while and does gain some steem (see what I did there?). Then... everyone loses interest. They don't stop gaining interest on their steem stake, but everyone loses interest that is on steemit, and 5.5% of nothing... is nothing. Steemit ends up another famous internet footnote like napster, myspace, ICQ, MSN messenger, webcrawler... you get the point!?
Now is not the time to power down just yet. There is still another year to milk this rigged shithole before the whole thing goes up in glorious flames. The SBD rewards are going to keep on paying more than double, and better than that ;) and the voting bots and master node style delgation possibilities are still ripe for the picking. You can mine a whole bunch of steem, send the SBD's to bittrex every week and start your power down next May and make it out just before the whistle blows 13 weeks later. GAME OVER!
Suggestions for maximum exploitation:
Upvote yourself often: You don't need to write big articles to upvote yourself. One word comments are enough. If you are shy about upvoting yourself, you can comment to one of your own articles and reply to that comment and let the upvotes fly.
Lease some steem: Do the math on a steem lease and think about how much better you could do by upvoting all of your comments if you had more steempower at work.
Buy some steem: Remember that steemit is doomed, but it is still the best way for slackers, tranqs and lowbo's to make a dollar with zero effort. Just remember to power it down before next May. It is a good investment ONLY if you have an exit strategy. This floating gravy boat is not going to last, but to not take advantage of it while it is here would be foolhardy. Buy some steem, get greedy, but not too greedy. Mark the power down date on your calendar (Early May 2019) and make sure that you set an extra alarm so that you don't forget to power down and take that steem to market ASAP. Trade it for your favourite, sustainable, digital asset that will stand the test of time. Bitcoin is a safe bet. That Dan Larimer is a smart one... smart enough to build steem, smart enough to leave and design EOS, smart enough to milk the programming here and power on down and sell that steem... so maybe invest in some EOS. Maybe privacy coins are your thing, z-cash, zencash, monero? Do some homework and pick your favourite crypto or 3 and trade all your steem for it.
Sell your SBD's to give yourself a weekly income: I can't guarantee that the timeline that I jumped forward to will be the timeline we end up on, it should happen, but a whole lot can happen when there is a time machine kicking around (ya dig?), so it is a safe bet to sell your SBD's to make sure that you at least get something for your troubles. Keep some to reap some rewards from the voting bots and resteem services. Get up on that trending page and look like a real big winner with the rest of the real big winner's. Make sure you sell some of those SBD's for your favourite currency just in case steem goes down the crapper quicker than anticipated. It would really suck to waste all of your time and effort pillaging the programming here for all it is worth just to have the rug pulled out from under you leaving you with a metric fuck-tonne of worthless steem. Sell your SBD's to make sure you at least walk out of here with something to show for your time.
You can even ask nicely for a whale to delegate you some steempower. Begging is also good. It makes this place a little bit more adorable if there are at least a few comments per page that include people begging for help, steem, money, love or something else. It might even work sometimes? What do you have to lose - steem? Nope... you only have steem to gain my friends. Beg on!
Some people like to play the altruist. That is a good one. They know that without new money coming in, their stake is doomed to fail... so they rally the troops to go outside of steemit to bring people here. The thing is, altruism is a very lucrative business here on steemit. People love giving altruists top notch votes and won't bat an eye at a massive vote bot purchase if it is for the good of the platform (AKA our investment).
Sometimes, you gotta hit the like button if you see a post from a top trender before they get all the love. Don't bother reading the post, really, what are they gonna say... blah blah blah, they are just milking this rigged rat-race too right? But try to beat all the others to the punch to collect more of the curation rewards. That is a good payout for NO WORK (isn't that the point here?)
There are a whole bunch of other ways to make off like a bandit here on steemit and you don't have to look very far to find out how. Just go onto the trending page, pick a trending article, click on one and look at the upvotes and who upvoted it. Then go to the wallet of the trending author and see what they did... do a bit of digging and you will find out how easy it is to make a whole bunch of steem here on steemit.
The beauty of this whole party known as steemit is that it is guilt free. Everybody is doing it... so why don't you? Some people go around preaching about how bad vote bots are while upvoting themselves every time they comment. Some make rules about how things need to change while upvoting their comments with massive steempower behind them. Others create 40 accounts and just vote for each other all day. Some start elaborate guerilla war campaigns and collect sweet upvotes at every shot fired whilst amassing a huge following just because people like watching the drama. It doesn't matter what part you play while completely taking advantage of the programming... just don't forget the real reason that you are here... TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE PROGRAMMING and make fat stacks of crypto bullion.
So... I am sure you are wondering how it happens? How steemit meets its doom?
I will tell you, but it is not going to be pretty. It might even shatter the very foundation you have based your whole steemit existence. Read the above article again and think about it as a what NOT to do article and know this truth: Any group of self serving jackasses pretending to give a shit about others just to make a dollar is destined to fail. When new people (with new money) come to steemit to see nothing but a bunch of self serving jackasses providing nothing but a steady stream of steem into their own wallets, they will not want to buy steem -- They will see steem as worthless. When the demand for steem goes down, the price goes down. When the price goes down and the demand has not gone up, the price goes down more. At this point, many exceptionally greedy and delusional people will decide to buy the cheap steem. (Hopefully you have already sold it all by now and you are already on the EOS version of steemit ready for round 2 ;). The problem is, that the price keeps on falling because nobody wants to be a part of it any more. The gig is up and the game is over for steemit.
I have come back from the future with this warning. Please... take heed. If you want to keep on making money until this whole shitbox explodes... the timeline is (should be) there for you. Pick your best strategy to get all you can before it is too late. If you love steemit and want to see it survive, it is not too late. But what you need to do is care about it. Care about what you write. Care about the people that are reading your articles and commenting. Care about how people are going about their "business" on steemit. Create quality content and use your upvote to reward others that are creating quality content.
To simplify... give a shit.
(I cannot take credit for this image... I found it on brightdrops.com)