Taking a break from my usual posting schedule, today I am going to go on a little bit of a rant - feel free to skip to the best bits or just ignore it all together. My journey on Steemit has been quite a roller coaster ride, from joining in March 2016 under the good advice of 
Hive account@old-guy-photos I had a look around - decided I had no idea what it was about and left it all on the back burner. Insert Cringe link here https://steemit.com/introduction/@c0ff33a/my-introduction-post-on-steemit-by-c0ff33a
Four whole months passed and bless Hive account@old-guy-photos he kept at me, we found each other on YouTube thanks to a shared friend @Bobbell69 https://www.youtube.com/user/B0bsVl0gs/videos and his main channel https://www.youtube.com/user/Boblovestech/videos and Hive account@old-guy-photos kept pointing out all the effort I was putting into YouTube and my Twitter could be really earning me rewards here on Steemit. He was right of course, my YouTube has never made me anything, the vlogs I have have done for a few years now are really just an epitaph to my life, that hopefully will live on long past my own time for future generations to discover what I was like through them (I could just have left them a note saying I was useless at vlogging) Anyway I took another look at Steemit and Hive account@old-guy-photos posts and his followers, read through the New tab seeing what people were posting and I realised Steemit seemed to be mostly a Photo sharing site - and I had plenty of those. So my way forward started, I would post photos and join the challenge groups.
That start was slow, as I am sure many who are starting out now feel as well - this post did quite well I though https://steemit.com/photography/@c0ff33a/red-sky-at-night and then I reached new and giddy heights with this post https://steemit.com/photography/@c0ff33a/ballater-one-of-scotland-s-finest-locations-201781t18151353z 0.62 SBD Rewards - my best yet. At that point I also resteemed Hive account@old-guy-photos post achieving an impossible 21.11 SBD reward - an impossible dream at that point.
Like any good story this has a message, for a good month after that I kept plugging away creating posts and getting...0.2 SBD if I was lucky - many were even less 0.04 SBD. It seemed I just could not connect with the Steemit community - I could not work out how to build a loyal following - and because I was time poor putting myself about getting known by people so they would check out my posts and maybe give me an upvote bone as it were was not happening. At this point in your Steemit life it is disheartening - you click the hot tab and see people making posts that 100 SBD plus rewards and think - what am I doing so wrong I can't even get 1 SBD reward? To be fair I do have the personality of a dyslexic newt (and that's really doing an injustice to both dyslexics and newts) my photography is terrible and my writing is worse - so I was sure I was missing some secret trick because the Hot list had plenty of people making only marginally better content then my own but with massive rewards compared to my pittance.
And then I came across this post https://steemit.com/steemit/@simplifylife/getting-on-the-hot-list-made-ridiculously-simple-for-newbies-and-beginners by 
Hive account@simplifylife - who I must also apologise to because afterwards I totally lost track of him and he was my biggest booster on Steemit. Until I found his post I had realised there were various services and options to boost your posts visibility with upvotes and resteems but had never used them because I thought they were a scam. I tried his methods and my next post jumped from those lowly fraction of a SBD to an amazing 2.24 SBD - at that time this was truly a revelation. I realised the problem I had wasn't just that I am a short, bearded old fool - but I was not marketing my lack lustre efforts and thus not getting any reward from them.
So then we go back three months, and I started to grow just a little bit https://steemit.com/mushrooms/@c0ff33a/rise-of-the-fungi-it-s-that-shrooms-time-of-year my post rewards were dictated by how much I had earned from previous posts to then push some of that earnings into promoting the next post. This system - earn, spend to promote, earn more, spend more to promote is what I am still using today - all that is happening now is I am earning more from each more and putting that extra in to earn even more again.
At this point we need to pause, and try to think exactly what Steemit and it's founders really want of us? Because I still don't know what I am doing - or even why or how what I am doing is helping a blockchain make Cryptocurrency. On the page https://steemit.com/welcome we can learn a little -
"Creating Posts
To create a post, click on the "Post" link in the upper right corner.
Posts have three main parts: Title, Content, Tags.
You will want to make your title attention grabbing, and relevant to your content.
To create your content, you can either use "Editor" or "Markdown" mode.
There are several guides for creating posts in the "Helpful Posts from Steemit Users" section below."
But it doesn't help a great deal, what should we post? What is good, what is bad - more importantly what is indifferent?
The more we look through Steemit and the posts of others, the more we can learn. What I have learnt is every user on Steemit has a voice to be heard - and every poster delivers content that is worthy of great rewards - For Steemit to grow it needs content of a wide and varied basis, and it needs to present this in a friendly caring community platform - this is to me a social media with the bonus of content rewards - everyone deserves a reward from posting a picture, a little story, maybe some new news they found interesting and wish to share. More posts, more content more for people outside steemit to find and think - this is an interesting place I want to join.
At this point in my Steemit journey I reach a conflict of interest that bemuses me. If you have spent a good amount of time on Steemit you will know that the Whales, the founders or those that have been in a position to buy themselves into a high position have massive upvote power and can make or break a minnow - the smaller starting out users at a whim. Like the Gods they can choose the fate of the underlings with a single lightening strike. Towards the end of November 2017, some six weeks back I was fortunate enough to be selected by 
Hive account@fulltimegeek for a Steem Power Delegation. The term for this process by him and his enlightened group of whales is Stewards of Gondor - they have for the good of this platform shared out their massive Steem Power to members of Steemit they feel can help encourage new users to grow and stay. The problem Steemit has is just like my own experience - if you spend a long time getting fractions for SBD per post while seeing others getting 100's of SBD - then quickly you just think it's not for you and leave. But Steemit needs every user it can - the whole blockchain is based on content the more the better. If you would like to see what some of the people like me have been doing with this delegation see this post https://steemit.com/stewardsofgondor/@abh12345/seasons-greetings-all-stewards-of-gondor-and-lord-of-the-steem by 
Hive account@abh1234 who also has a delgation, some serious blockchain crunching skills and is living the dream having moved from the UK into the warmer climes of Europe and soon to be relaxing on Reunion Island.
While I very much appreciate Hive account@fulltimegeek giving me this amazing Steem Power boost, which I have done my very best in using to encourage new and developing content creators - in fact while not only encouraging new and smaller users with my bigger upvote power, and encouraging comments I reached out to members of the @GuideSteemit Discord https://discordapp.com/channels/374566683920171023/374576552068775946 and supported many of the content creators getting very little rewards for their posts with a Secret Santa upvote bot boost - in many cases posts getting 0.3 SBD rewards suddenly boosted to 8 or 9 SBD - giving the content creators extra funds and Steem Power to go on and progress their own posts even more. My problem is that at the very top level of Steemit I can see no clear guidance on what they want or desire - some feel the upvote bots are bad and against the community spirit - even though most of the upvote bots are managed by their own equivalent whales. The upvote bots are the only way I have been able to progress my own account, and get the rewards near to those on the Hot List who seem to manage it with no effort - how can something that helps the smaller users grow be a bad thing - unless it maybe just devalues the top end privileged.
What really spurred me into creating this post though was reading through the blog of my friend and fellow Steward of Gondor 
Hive account@coolguy123 - you will see from https://steemit.com/stewardsofgondor/@abh12345/seasons-greetings-all-stewards-of-gondor-and-lord-of-the-steem that he is doing the greatest of work with his delegation - reaching out with 1000's of upvotes to the growing minnows on Steemit. In fact he is so dedicated to making the most of his delegation he is spending nearly every waking hour here on Steemit to make the best use of it while he has it - true dedication and you can see Hive account@fulltimegeek saw the potential when he viewed the stats on the Steemit blockchain for Hive account@coolguy123 With this in mind, I was surprised and a little saddened to see one of his posts - tagged NewsWire and based on a piece of news that interested in - totally rubbished by a higher reputation user - I don't want to go into detail but it basically went "How does this cut and paste content help Steemit". While I appreciate Steemit is all about unique and creative content - as I have grown I have done my best to make every one of my posts truly mine - my own pictures and own text - constructive criticism should be just that - constructive not derogatory. Hive account@fulltimegeek has invested his time and his hard earned Steem Power into encouraging users on to grow on Steemit - people just outright destroying people's effort with harsh and unwarranted shaming just destroys his effort and if I was a minnow viewing that post and comment I would most likely leave Steemit immediately thinking that is how everyone will treat my efforts to grow. Also, it was an interesting piece of news I had not seen elsewhere and so was entirely relevant to re-post here - the source was cited. For many years I have made Twitter my go to news feed - when something happens in the world someone on my Twitter timeline lets me know. If Steemit is a Social Media should it not be the same? Does every Steemit post have to be an arty creation, amazing pictures and text about our wonderful first class journey to the furthest reaches of the planet staying in the most opulent hotels and eating only the finest foods? Because if it has to I'm certainly in no position to post privalaged content and will have to leave.
Steemit 2018 - Where am I going? I really do not know, I'm as confused now as I was in March 2017. I love this platform, it has some wonderful content creators and so much potential - but right now I see on a daily basis so many conflicts from users that are supposed to be leaders - but instead want to be enforcers. Investing in your posts using the upvote bots to me seems the sensible way forward for the small creators who just can not get their content seen any other way - yet then I see posts like this Taking a break from my usual posting schedule, today I am going to go on a little bit of a rant - feel free to skip to the best bits or just ignore it all together. My journey on Steemit has been quite a roller coaster ride, from joining in March 2016 under the good advice of Hive account@old-guy-photos I had a look around - decided I had no idea what it was about and left it all on the back burner. Insert Cringe link here https://steemit.com/introduction/@c0ff33a/my-introduction-post-on-steemit-by-c0ff33a
Four whole months passed and bless Hive account@old-guy-photos he kept at me, we found each other on YouTube thanks to a shared friend @Bobbell69 https://www.youtube.com/user/B0bsVl0gs/videos and his main channel https://www.youtube.com/user/Boblovestech/videos and Hive account@old-guy-photos kept pointing out all the effort I was putting into YouTube and my Twitter could be really earning me rewards here on Steemit. He was right of course, my YouTube has never made me anything, the vlogs I have have done for a few years now are really just an epitaph to my life, that hopefully will live on long past my own time for future generations to discover what I was like through them (I could just have left them a note saying I was useless at vlogging) Anyway I took another look at Steemit and Hive account@old-guy-photos posts and his followers, read through the New tab seeing what people were posting and I realised Steemit seemed to be mostly a Photo sharing site - and I had plenty of those. So my way forward started, I would post photos and join the challenge groups.
That start was slow, as I am sure many who are starting out now fell as well - this post did quite well I though https://steemit.com/photography/@c0ff33a/red-sky-at-night and then I reached new and giddy heights with this post https://steemit.com/photography/@c0ff33a/ballater-one-of-scotland-s-finest-locations-201781t18151353z 0.62 SBD Rewards - my best yet. At that point I also resteemed Hive account@old-guy-photos post achieving an impossible 21.11 SBD reward - and impossible dream at that point.
Like any good story this has a message, for a good month after that I kept plugging away creating posts and getting...0.2 SBD if I was lucky - many were even less 0.04 SBD. It seemed I just could not connect with the Steemit community - I could not work out how to build a loyal following - and because I was time poor putting myself about getting known by people so they would check out my posts and maybe give me an upvote bone as it were was not happening. At this point in your Steemit life it is disheartening - you click the hot tab and see people making posts that 100 SBD plus rewards and think - what am I doing so wrong I can't even get 1 SBD reward? To be fair I do have the personality of a dyslexic newt (and that's really doing an injustice to both dyslexics and newts) my photography is terrible and my writing is worse - so I was sure I was missing some secret trick because the Hot list had plenty of people making only marginally better content then my own but with massive rewards compared to my pittance.
And then I came across this post https://steemit.com/steemit/@simplifylife/getting-on-the-hot-list-made-ridiculously-simple-for-newbies-and-beginners by Hive account@simplifylife - who I must also apologise to because afterwards I totally lost track of him and he was my biggest booster on Steemit. Until I found his post I had realised there were various services and options to boost your posts visibility with upvotes and resteems but had never used them because I thought they were a scam. I tried his methods and my next post jumped from those lowly fraction of a SBD to an amazing 2.24 SBD - at that time this was truly a revelation. I realised the problem I had wasn't just that I am a short, bearded old fool - but I was not marketing my lack lustre efforts and thus not getting any reward from them.
So then we go back three months, and I started to grow just a little bit https://steemit.com/mushrooms/@c0ff33a/rise-of-the-fungi-it-s-that-shrooms-time-of-year my post rewards were dictated by how much I had earned from previous posts to then push some of that earnings into promoting the next post. This system - earn, spend to promote, earn more, spend more to promote is what I am still using today - all that is happening now is I am earning more from each post and putting that extra in to earn even more again.
At this point we need to pause, and try to think exactly what Steemit and it's founders really want of us? Because I still don't know what I am doing - or even why or how what I am doing is helping a blockchain make Cryptocurrency. On the page https://steemit.com/welcome we can learn a little -
"Creating Posts
To create a post, click on the "Post" link in the upper right corner.
Posts have three main parts: Title, Content, Tags.
You will want to make your title attention grabbing, and relevant to your content.
To create your content, you can either use "Editor" or "Markdown" mode.
There are several guides for creating posts in the "Helpful Posts from Steemit Users" section below."
But it doesn't help a great deal, what should we post? What is good, what is bad - more importantly what is indifferent?
The more we look through Steemit and the posts of others, the more we can learn. What I have learnt is every user on Steemit has a voice to be heard - and every poster delivers content that is worthy of great rewards - For Steemit to grow it needs content of a wide and varied basis, and it needs to present this in a friendly caring community platform - this is to me a social media with the bonus of content rewards - everyone deserves a reward from posting a picture, a little story, maybe some new news they found interesting and wish to share. More posts, more content more for people outside steemit to find and think - this is an interesting place I want to join.
At this point in my Steemit journey I reach a conflict of interest that bemuses me. If you have spent a good amount of time on Steemit you will know that the Whales, the founders or those that have been in a position to buy themselves into a high position have massive upvote power and can make or break a minnow - the smaller starting out users at a whim. Like the Gods they can choose the fate of the underlings with a single lightening strike. Towards the end of November 2017, some six weeks back I was fortunate enough to be selected by Hive account@fulltimegeek for a Steem Power Delegation. The term for this process by him and his enlightened group of whales is Stewards of Gondor - they have for the good of this platform shared out their massive Steem Power to members of Steemit they feel can help encourage new users to grow and stay. The problem Steemit has is just like my own experience - if you spend a long time getting fractions for SBD per post while seeing others getting 100's of SBD - then quickly you just think it's not for you and leave. But Steemit needs every user it can - the whole blockchain is based on content the more the better. If you would like to see what some of the people like me have been doing with this delegation see this post https://steemit.com/stewardsofgondor/@abh12345/seasons-greetings-all-stewards-of-gondor-and-lord-of-the-steem by Hive account@abh1234 who also has a delgation, some serious blockchain crunching skills and is living the dream having moved from the UK into the warmer climes of Europe and soon to be relaxing on Reunion Island.
While I very much appreciate Hive account@fulltimegeek giving me this amazing Steem Power boost, which I have done my very best in using to encourage new and developing content creators - in fact while not only encouraging new and smaller users with my bigger upvote power, and encouraging comments I reached out to members of the @GuideSteemit Discord https://discordapp.com/channels/374566683920171023/374576552068775946 and supported many of the content creators getting very little rewards for their posts with a Secret Santa upvote bot boost - in many cases posts getting 0.3 SBD rewards suddenly boosted to 8 or 9 SBD - giving the content creators extra funds and Steem Power to go on and progress their own posts even more. My problem is that at the very top level of Steemit I can see no clear guidance on what they want or desire - some feel the upvote bots are bad and against the community spirit - even though most of the upvote bots are managed by their own equivalent whales. The upvote bots are the only way I have been able to progress my own account, and get the rewards near to those on the Hot List who seem to manage it with no effort - how can something that helps the smaller users grow be a bad thing - unless it maybe just devalues the top end privileged.
What really spurred me into creating this post though was reading through the blog of my friend and fellow Steward of Gondor Hive account@coolguy123 - you will see from https://steemit.com/stewardsofgondor/@abh12345/seasons-greetings-all-stewards-of-gondor-and-lord-of-the-steem that he is doing the greatest of work with his delegation - reaching out with 1000's of upvotes to the growing minnows on Steemit. In fact he is so dedicated to making the most of his delegation he is spending nearly every waking hour here on Steemit to make the best use of it while he has it - true dedication and you can see Hive account@fulltimegeek saw the potential when he viewed the stats on the Steemit blockchain for Hive account@coolguy123 With this in mind, I was surprised and a little saddened to see one of his posts - tagged NewsWire and based on a piece of news that interested in - totally rubbished by a higher reputation user - I don't want to go into detail but it basically went "How does this cut and paste content help Steemit". While I appreciate Steemit is all about unique and creative content - as I have grown I have done my best to make every one of my posts truly mine - my own pictures and own text - constructive criticism should be just that - constructive not derogatory. Hive account@fulltimegeek has invested his time and his hard earned Steem Power into encouraging users on to grow on Steemit - people just outright destroying people's effort with harsh and unwarranted shaming just destroys his effort and if I was a minnow viewing that post and comment I would most likely leave Steemit immediately thinking that is how everyone will treat my efforts to grow. Also, it was an interesting piece of news I had not seen elsewhere and so was entirely relevant to re-post here - the source was cited. For many years I have made Twitter my go to news feed - when something happens in the world someone on my Twitter timeline lets me know. If Steemit is a Social Media should it not be the same? Does every Steemit post have to be an arty creation, amazing pictures and text about our wonderful first class journey to the furthest reaches of the planet staying in the most opulent hotels and eating only the finest foods? Because if it has to I'm certainly in no position to post privalaged content and will have to leave.
Steemit 2018 - Where am I going? I really do not know, I'm as confused now as I was in March 2017. I love this platform, it has some wonderful content creators and so much potential - but right now I see on a daily basis so many conflicts from users that are supposed to be leaders - but instead want to be enforcers. The upvote bots for many like myself are the only way we can get our content seen - but the more I read they are considered a blight on the content and community of Steemit. If the Bot's are so bad - why were they every allowed to evolve at all? https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html#bid<< The list on the main Bot Tracker grows every day and the bids are growing too - in the last few weeks the potential upvote you could receive for a given SBD spend has halved for the biggest bots - in fact often now so many people are sending bids the actual upvote barely exceeds the money you put in. Then I found this post https://steemit.com/steem/@grumpycat/warning-to-vote-buyer-sellers-introducing-grumpycompliance-mandatory-in-14-days-no-post-promotion-allowed-after-3-5-days where it seems the Bot managers are being held to ransom - and only allowed to upvote posts in the first half of payout period. It's all so confusing - how are the new users, the minnows supposed to know what to do and how to do it? Where is the guidance posts from the whales? I get daily requests from people wanting me to guide them - but I have to be honest I have no idea what is going on - Every post I make could be terrible for the platform as far as I know.
So many people believe in Steemit, I even believe in Steemit - but now more then ever as Steem is growing in value we need guidance and help - encouragement. At every level, people need to realise that reaching a certain Reputation is not a privilege so they can look down on others and dismiss them - but an opportunity to guide and teach. We need clear guide lines - are upvote Bot's good or bad? What content do you want? How should it be presented - how much content per day - 10 posts, 5 posts, 1 post - the new Tab is just a blur to me I can't work out what I might like from the posts that seem to occur every second now.
While my idea and creation of this post was from the negatives I have seen on Steemit - I still want it to be seen as a positive - I am not a very social person, my photography is pretty awful, I can not draw even stick men and my travelling extends to very local to myself in the UK. I constantly find great content creators on Steemit who are struggling to get the rewards they deserve - the real challenge right now is how we get them seen. I am one person with very limited time in my busy life to do this - Hive account@fulltimegeek somehow saw something in me to entrust some of his precious and hard earned Steem Power so I could go out and find and encourage new users. I have done my best, but right now I would like to reach back to you and say - what can I do moving forward in 2018 to help others when you pass this blessing to another? Right now I still do not feel I can guide people when I don't really understand what I am doing or even why I am doing it - and so many people are posting that what I am doing (not specifically - just related to upvote bots) is wrong - if they are wrong how are people supposed to get their content seen and upvoted for good rewards.
Finally, and at the very start I did say this was going to be a long rant - I really want to share something truly positive and amazing that Steemit has done for me. I do not know or remember how I came across 
Hive account@cryptopie but he stands out as something that Steemit and the community in general should be very proud about. A prolific poster who deals on a daily basis with struggles must of us can not even comprehend. Despite every struggle in his life Hive account@cryptopie manages to post multiple times a day, in English which is not his native language, using a tablet and bluetooth keyboard that must make creating the posts even more difficult. To say his posts are eloquent is an understatement, every single one is a great work of literature and I am sure he has a short story or even novel inside him if he could manage to write it. What stuck me most though about Hive account@cryptopie was how the Steemit community took to him and cared for him, upvoting every post he did and ensuring he was rewarded because whatever he earns from posts goes towards the medication he desperately needs to help manage his condition. Personally I feel Hive account@cryptopie puts into Steemit far more then he gets back, but also he is a good example of how this amazing platform can help the most needy - an upvote and nice comment can mean so much to so many people.
If you enjoyed my post don’t forget to leave an Upvote, feel free to comment on what you liked or where I can do better even. Follow 
Hive account@c0ff33a for regular and varied posts, photography, my weekly VLOG, posts on coffee roasting and brewing - just follow and see.
JoinSteamfollower and get upvotes in return for upvotes
https://steemfollower.com/?r=158
It’s free, simple, easy to find new content to upvote and get your own content seen by more users and possibly upvoted.
My Dash Wallet
dash:Xqjemfc9gEmrnXQ7KPdADmNpdpncMHB47C
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Feel free to help me fill them if you have any spare crypto currency you would like to share ;-)
For more upvotes and content sharing join the GuideSteemit team discord https://discordapp.com/channels/374566683920171023/374576552068775946
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All photos are my own, taken with my iPhone. All my steemit posted pictures can be freely used by other Steemit users in their own blog posts - all I ask is that you follow me and credit Hive account@c0ff33a linking to my post you took it from.
!steemitworldmap 53.766547 lat -1.801500 long Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. d3scr
