A month ago I joined Steemit with few expectations. Today I'm happy to declare that I'm with Steemit for the long run.
When I first heard of Steemit it sounded incredible. It’s every blogger's dream: you would get paid for content you would have written or curated anyway. For a while I studied how Steemit worked, examining the technology, its premises and its long-term prospects. Fundamentally, the platform rewards users for acting in their self-interest in a way that benefits the entire network, and users and developers work hand-in-hand to organically develop solutions to curb the excesses of trolls, malicious bots and rogue users.
To me, Steemit embodies optionality. I already have a blog (www.benjamincheah.com), and I'm already committed to blogging regularly. Steemit is a way for me to reach even more people and get paid for it. If Steemit takes off, I would make a decent amount of money and increase my Internet visibility. If Steemit fails, I have lost nothing; my posts will still live on in my blog, and backing up my Steemit posts takes only a few clicks.
Steemit offers negligible potential loss and infinite potential profit. Signing up was a no-brainer.
** How Steemit Changed My Life **
In the past month I have written more blog posts about more topics than I did in a year.
My schedule is jam-packed with work and life demands. If something requires effort and brainpower but does not measurably profit me, it is pushed to the bottom of my list of priorities. Until recently, that applied to blogging.
In one month I made a total of about USD $290 in cryptocurrency, far more than I have made blogging for the past half-decade. I am deeply grateful to the curators and orcas who have supported my work so far. In particular, The Daily Curie has consistently upvoted most of my posts. I'm honoured that 
The payouts have incentivised me to branch out into topics I normally wouldn't have touched. My forte is politics and writing advice; through Steemit, I expanded into photography, travel writing and martial arts, and was pleasantly rewarded for it. In fact, I made far more money from these new topics than I ever did about politics on Steemit.
These payouts have encouraged me to continue sharing my thoughts on things I wouldn't normally talk about. I am not going to give up politics by any measure, but it's easier to write political tracts when I know I can break up the monotony with travelogues or writing advice and get paid for it.
On the content side, I have learned a great deal from Steemit’s collective wisdom. There is a vast treasure trove of knowledge waiting to be tapped here, on topics ranging from cryptocurrency to blockchain applications, foreign cultures to amazing artwork, and more. Steemit provides an end-user or ground-level perspective on many issues, making it stand alongside my other go-to resource sites.
** Going Forward **
From a strategy perspective, you can't count on one-shot wonders. You can't hope on creating That One Post that a whale notices and rewards you with hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It's nice if it happens, but you can't count on being lucky. If you're not lucky you'll just burn out and quit. You have to create your own luck. You have to put in the time and energy to write stuff people want to give you money for.
Many successful Steemians have discussed how they made hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars on Steemit. They posted twice daily, religiously curated and upvoted content, and networked with other Steemians. This approach has obviously worked for them.
But it can’t work for me.
I have a day job. I can’t spend all day on Steemit writing and curating. More than that, I’m not just a blogger. My primary mode of writing is fiction. I’m presently working on a novel, and have dozens of story ideas waiting to be manifested. Every day I only have a handful of hours for writing, and I have to spend them carefully.
Instead of imitating these whales, I will do what works for me.
To stand on the same stage as the whales and luminaries of the online world, you need to build your brand. To build your brand you need to be who you are. You can't confine yourself to easy topics or niche areas few people have heard of. You need to write about everything you can confidently write about, be it fitness, cryptocurrency, writing, martial arts, whatever. People don't empathise with stuff, they empathise with people. They invest themselves in people with the same interests, goals, aspirations, lifestyles and mindsets.
My brand is not clickbait, fluff pieces, or quick-but-shallow reads. It has, and always been, deep research and penetrating analysis. Of the 19 posts I have written, only 6 earned less than $1. By contrast, 9 posts earned over $20, out-earning what I would have earned had I been working instead of writing. While these earnings are nowhere near as spectacular as the whales’, between this and the constant upvotes from the Daily Curie, the outcome has validated my approach.
I’m going to keep blogging as often as I can. I’m going to talk about everything I have knowledge in, not just what I’m comfortable writing about. Knowledge does no good locked up in your head; to change the world you must share your thoughts with others.
As for curation, I'm extremely picky about who I vote for. I'm not interested in clickbait or fluff pieces. I want to encourage people who produce quality content. At the same time, I don’t have much time to hunt for such content either. Using Streemian, I have automated many of my votes to trustworthy creators like Steemtrail (
I believe Steemit has the potential to become the future of social media. As Steemit grows in popularity, more influencers will flock to the platform, ushering a sea change in how people produce and consume content. I’m committed to making this happen through curation and creation.
We are the leading wave of a new era of social media. Through Steemit, it is up to us, whales and minnows, influencers and newcomers, to shape the future of the Internet.
--
Image credit: Steemit promotional image from
