Why Artists Use The Internet
Why do artists post their work online? A few reasons:
(1) Get Feedback: see what people think, get comments (positive & negative) to guide future work.
(2) Short-term satisfaction: It feels good to see the upvotes come in for your new art.
(3) Long-term success: Building a portfolio in the hopes of attracting larger numbers of fans over time. Building your “online presence” is meant to help get publicity, funding, better distribution, and so on.
(4) Lottery Factor: The idea that any piece of art could go viral and generate huge attention + money.
Steemit’s design is brilliant when seen through the lens of the artist. Artists can fulfill all of the above desires, and in fact are encouraged to do so.
The Four Reasons In Action
As a up-and-coming power user of Steemit, I love to see new users join the platform and post good content. I always try to provide feedback (#1) and upvotes (#2), and curators like the Curie Project 
When a user creates good content and engages with the community over time, they gain followers (#3) and may even have a post hit the front page and earn hundreds of dollars (#4).
I’ll briefly share my own experience:
Matt Sokol Joins Steemit: The Retrospective
I join Steemit in early January 2017. I visit the site, see great conversations, notice the dollar signs beneath each post, and sign up.
My introduction post, featuring an original song, gets ~30 upvotes. I don’t earn more than a few cents, but it feels good (short-term satisfaction), so I keep posting. Three days later, I post a guitar video which hits the front page of the music tag and earns me $20. (Lottery Factor). Today, that same steem is worth $200.
From that point, I am hooked. I post content regularly, all the way up until today, using fan feedback and personal introspection to develop my art. I can safely say that Steemit, and social media as a whole, has made me a much better artist in the last five months (long-term satisfaction).
Hanging Out With Tomorrow’s Crypto Titans
“Influencer Marketing” is a huge buzzword in the social media world. It’s an age-old concept: You can get huge results from the help of a single influential person.
This is sometimes worth more than many hours of personal work - because influencers can drive exponential progress, while “grinding it out” on your own usually leads to smaller incremental progress.
People want to talk to each other. We naturally gravitate towards the easiest modes of communication.
In the cryptocurrency world, that’s Steemit. It is the foremost cryptocurrency discussion web forum on the internet. When you make friends in the world of Steemit, it’s like influencer marketing on steroids.
Tomorrow’s Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and so on - they probably read today’s Steemit web forum. By participating in the Steemit community, artists get on the fast track to industry relevance in the Crypto world.
The Money Factor
Humans need money. Money, for most of us, is about survival. It represents the ability to eat a few meals a day, keep a roof over our heads, and stay clothed. If we’re lucky, we get to spend some extra cash for fun now and then.
Steemit makes you money. When you contribute value to the Steem ecosystem, it comes back to you in the form of real cash. With no advertisers or other bullshit middlemen to interrupt this cycle, there’s an amazing amount of wealth to be shared on the platform.
Artists nowadays are so used to earning no money, they accept it as fate. Steemit will challenge that mindset. When you start earning something, even if it’s a few bucks per post, you’ll ask yourself - why am I giving my content to Facebook for free?
Why are you? Steemit pays artists fairly, gives them a community to engage with, and helps encourage greater creativity in the future.
In short, Steemit is the ultimate cryptocurrency onboarding platform for artists. I’m so grateful to be a part of the early days of this community.
What do you think? Is Steemit the ultimate Cryptocurrency Onboarding Platform for artists? If not, what is?
I hope to debate / discuss this one with you in the comments :-)
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