After sharing my introduction, a bunch of readers of my actual blog JohnnyFD.com asked me why I would post on Steemit instead of there where I already have an established audience base. Other people asked why I chose Steemit instead of Medium or Linkedin. Here are some of the comments that were posted on my facebook page when I shared my original Steemit introduction that started the conversation.
Cameron asked:
" In what scenario would you post a blog on steemit vs. just posting the blog on your personal website? Or would you post the same blog on both? Trying to wrap my mind around the point of a platform like steemit or medium vs your own personal website blog?"
My answer:
It's complicated. On one hand, if you're just starting out, even if you posted the best content in the world on your own personal blog, there's a good chance no one would ever find it. That's when platforms with their own built in user base such as Steemit, Medium, or Tumblr are valuable. The downsides is the fact that you are bound to their rules, their platform, and you are building value for them and not yourself. Assuming you are writing great content, that content is being indexed by google and other search engines to help the SEO of that site, not yours. In cases such as writing on Linkedin, Tumblr, Reddit, or as a contributor to another platform, they are making money from the traffic you are bringing them through ad revenue, and you get none of it.
If you already have your own audience like I do, it can seem pointless for me to post anywhere but my own site as why would I build up another website's traffic, content, SEO, and credibility when I could be doing that for myself? The 100,000+ monthly visitors that would normally go to my site JohnnyFD.com would instead go to the other platform.
So Why Am I Posting Here?
First off, I've never posted a single article, no matter how long or short on other platforms such as Medium or Linkedin and I don't post on Reddit. But obviously I'm posting here. So the real question should be, what makes Steemit different than Medium, Reddit and other platforms?
It's because Steemit is designed to be win/win for everyone involved.
While Medium and Reddit make it easy for people to create and share content. At the end of the day, it's the owners of Medium and Reddit that profit. Not the content creators or users.
According to TechCrunch, Reddit just raised a new round that values the company at $1.8 billion
And according to Recode, Medium is valued at over $600 million.
The content creators, curators, and users of those platforms get exactly $0.
Why Steemit is different.
"Steemit pays both the content creators when their work gets upvoted, as well as the people who curate the best content on the site by upvoting others work."
Breaking that down, the reason why Steemit is different, and better is the fact that it rewards high value content (content that gets upvoted), and it unlike even blogging on my own platform, it rewards users who help curate the best content so the largest amount of people can see it. (done by upvoting great content)
Currently, there's no real incentive for my readers on JohnnyFD.com to curate my best content. There's no upvote feature that brings my best articles to the top. The only real way for me to have a system to show the "top posts" is with a widget that shows my most popular ones, but since it's not human checked, it's often showing bad content, such as the expired job posting from 2 years ago that still shows up as the top 2 posts on my side bar even today. Content such as that should be downvoted and never seen again on my site.
That's where Steemit comes in. Readers are able to push the best content to the top, thus sharing it with the maximum amount of people and giving the article max exposure.
And they are rewarded for it.
My Thoughts and Plan.
I love the idea behind Steemit, I genuinely believe that cryptocurrency is the future. I think Steemit is a great use case for crypto and would love to see it succeed.
I like the fact that us as content creators are getting rewarded for putting out good content.
I love the idea that my readers are getting rewarded for sharing and upvoting my best content.
Thank you for being my reader. Thank you for upvoting and sharing my content. Let me know what your thoughts are on the best use cases for Steemit and when you think it's best to post here verses on my own site?
Warm Regards,
Johnny FD
Follow Me for more or leave a comment below to join in on the discussion!