Back in 2017 when I joined the platform, right after steem recovered from being worth 7 cents and its price was around $1 and we still had a very low userbase thus the reward pool was shared among fewer high quality posts, it was very common to see Full time Steemians. What I mean by Full time Steemian is somebody whose only income comes from Steem, specifically from blog post rewards.
Around June 2016 I was traveling around Central America, using my post rewards to pay for everything, cashing out all my Steem Backed Dollars to pay for food, transportation and accommodation. I used to hitchhike a lot and volunteer in exchange for housing but still, I was cashing out around $10-$15 every day. Not much if we are honest.
But I was not the only one. There were a lot of Steemians doing the same, perhaps not by traveling, but using Steem as a first - or only - source of income.
Back then it was considered a sort of success story to be able to live off steem. It meant that your blog posts were cool as hell, your follower base loved you, you had some whales behind you supporting your posts and ultimately, it meant financial freedom for the author and a proof of success to the outside potential userbase, it became a selling point.
Having full time steemians was the perfect - though it would prove to be wrong - example of why people should come and join Steem. It became a sales pitch and one of the strongest arguments when inviting people to join Steem.
Hey you, second cousing from my mom's side: Come and join the Steem Blockchain! Look at Anomadsoul, Gringalicious, Allasyummyfood or Luzcypher! They, among tens of others, are living the dream living off Steem rewards, not needing to have a job and they do what they love... and you know what?
YOU COULD DO THE SAME! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS JOIN STEEM
Whoever's been here for more than 2 years will agree with me. It became a sales pitch so engraved on our minds, that profiting from the reward pool and the potential of living off steem was a hell of an argument, especially after the ATH fever and people saw how much money a simple blogger could make with a couple thousands followers and a whale behind them.
I used to have that mindset. I bet if you've been here since early 2017 or before, you might have or had that mindset. If you joined Steem in 2018 then you might not have lived it, but you heard of these Full Time Steemians and their success stories, and how if you create amazing quality content and interact every day with your follower base as well as spend hours daily engaging on discord, you might be able to achieve it too.
Well, I hate to break it to you: We don't need more Full Time Steemians. So please, don't strive to be one. We need part time Steemians with a Fiat job, not depending on Steem rewards to survive. We need people with an income who will BUY steem, not SELL on a daily basis.
In fact, I'm already searching for a Fiat job and looking to not sell a single Steem if I can, and you should be too.
The reward pool is limited.
Being a Full Time Steemians means that eventually we will sell Steem, no matter the price, because there are bills, food and beer to pay. It doesn't matter what we use the money we get from selling Steem for, the thing is we are selling Steem on a regular basis, devaluing its price at the expense of other people who are buying. Being a Full Time Steemian with these crypto prices and this shrinking Steem community is a detractor for the price and we should be aware of it.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with selling Steem whenever you feel like and for whatever reasons you want to.
I have no reason or right to have an opinion on what you do. If you decide to sell your Steem to open a titty bar in a highway in Colombia, that's your prerrogative. All I can do is try to share my opinion on why the FTS (full time steemian) mindset is not the best to have at the moment.
Perhaps when we reach a status with greener fields and bluer skies, Steem will be able to let Steemians live completely off their post rewards, just because our market cap, our price and our reward pool allows us to. Right now, it doesn't matter if you are from Mexico, Norway, Venezuela, Nigeria or Japan, if you depend on your posts rewards to substain yourself, if you are a full time blogger on Steem, you are a price liability for Steem and other Steemians.
There is nothing wrong with being a Full time steemian, just not at these prices nor markets. We can't keep having this mentality that Steem will provide an alternative of self-sustainability and financial independence if first we don't focus in giving steem the market value it deserves and it could potentially have.
I can't be a Full time Steemian anymore and you should consider that too. The reward pool shouldn't be used for this - at least at the moment - and the amount of steem being sold in the external markets is too damn much. Every time we sell steem we are depreciating it, making its value lower and actually we are making investors lose money - oh yes, every cent you sell, it's coming out of the pocket of an investor via inflation, it's not just magic free money that comes from the cloud - so, if we want to attract more investors, we shouldn't as a community be selling so much steem every single day. Which is why I, as an individual, am getting a fiat job, to be able to not devalue the Steem price as much as I've been doing it over my Full Time Steemian stage.
In the end, who cares. If you are making enough post rewards to live off Steem, congratulations. I would advice to get a Fiat job and stop selling Steem, but who am I to judge, after all, I sold over 20k Steem since I joined the platform - all from post rewards - so this post might be taken as virtue signaling and you don't need to listen to me.
I also bought 50k Steem over the past year, so maybe I'm not just talking bananas here, but still take this with a grain of salt.