On 18th July, I received the announcement from @steemitboard for my second Steem birthday. Two years on and I'm still ticking along. There have been ups and downs in the Steem market in this time and many of those who I met when I first started are no longer active. With activity on the wane again as the next hard fork looms and the value of Steem declines, I thought I'd share a few thoughts as to why I'm still here.
The potential to earn from writing is undoubtedly what brought me here, but certainly isn't what kept me here. I had started a little blog and was populating it with some articles, but I didn't really know how I was going to go about growing it and getting traffic there. My main aim was to share what I was learning about homesteading, gardening and natural medicines, so I wasn’t overly worried about earning from it for a while. I thought I'd try and figure that out at some point. I also didn't have any expectations or urgency that I'd be able to make a decent income from it. So when I came to Steem, my expectations weren't any higher. Any earning was better than no earning and earnings weren't very much for the most part. However, I always got a little something for each article I did and sometimes got a @curie or @blocktrades vote that really jumped it up.
Later that year we had that huge increase in both SBD and Steem which made the value of upvotes go up. I managed to get an upvote value high enough to give 10% votes above dust level. Since then it's as if my SP grows, but my upvote declines.
I could focus on the negative and feel like the harder I work to build my account the less it becomes worth, or I can be pleased with the growth of my SP and see myself drawing closer to the target of 5000 SP and Dolphin. I could decide that the income is not worth the effort and stop posting, but not posting earns me nothing at all, so if I have the time to share my thoughts, then why not share them anyway and earn something, which is better than nothing, in my eyes. I don't post if I'm struggling time wise anyway, so it's not really as if it's time I can't get back. I enjoy writing, I enjoy the conversations I have on here and I learn from the articles I read. If that earns me a little reward, then that's even better.
I don't get into arguments and discussions I don't enjoy. If I made it a chore to post and earn then the chances are it wouldn't be worth my while being here.
If there's anyone reading this who's new, these are the tips I would give if you want to stick around. Firstly, seeing upvotes is nice, but think of it as the icing on the cake. If you want people to be reading your work and communicating with you then you need to put yourself out there and communicate with them. This takes a certain amount of commitment. Be aware that many of those who have been around a while want to help and encourage newcomers, however, they won't keep going out of their way for someone who doesn't respond to them. They already have connections which they work on and keep up with, from the fact that they have built their accounts and they'll be more likely to maintain relationships with those who do respond. So if you want to keep their attention, respond to those who took the time out to comment on your post. If you got a good conversation going with someone and they seem to like you and what you're doing, but you haven't heard from them for a bit, drop them a comment on their last post to remind them you're there. The chances are that they've just been busy and forgot to check in on you, but it's not personal. A comment will remind them, “Oh yes, I enjoyed this person's work and/or our conversation, I'll go see what they've been doing recently.” You see, even if you follow someone, you might miss their work in your feed if life gets busy and many of those who have been here long term have busy feeds.
Communities are a good thing to get involved in, but you get out what you put in. If you only drop in fleetingly, expect the response to also be fleeting.
I find it sad when people complain about the lack of interest their work gets, then leave without trying to build any audience up. Unfortunately, this isn't a site where an audience is guaranteed. There are sites which try to drive an audience to you, but there is only so much they can do. When it comes down to it, if you want an audience, you need to put in the work to build one. Website algorithms can only do so much to drive traffic to you, but your response to the traffic that takes an interest in your work will dictate whether or not they are likely to come back.
So, yes, at the moment things are quieter here than they were. There are people, who I normally vote on, not appearing in my feed, so I have spare voting power and have been looking further afield to use it. So if you're continuing to post, then the chances are higher that you'll start picking up some votes from those wandering around looking for new articles. You may also make some connections ready for when the Steem price goes up and things get busy again.
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