I joined steemit in April, and on August 06, I will complete 04 months here.
I started my journey writing about cryptocurrency, trying to tone down hyped up news and amplify the importance on stuff not getting enough attention. Over a few weeks I realized that it was difficult to find an audience here without bots, so i started sharing my views on posts that had an audience. That helped me to start earning my first SP. From that point, my evolution on steemit has been very different than what I had imagined.
In July, I found tools built on top of the steem blockchain - 
Here is what my bio showed on 31 July at 11:59:59 PM -
Here is what it was at the end of last month -
Also, here is the post from last month -
In terms of progress, my influence level increased by 6 levels in July compared to 3 in June. I was closer to 55 than 54. Here are the top reasons -
Much of it was achieved because of steemhunt. I have been actively hunting products on that platform now. In July, a couple of my projects finished in top 10 in terms of hunt score. That helped received a big upvote from sh. Hunting for a 'cool' product is time consuming but comes with benefits - upvote, & you learn about new apps and innovations.
Second largest help or upvotes came from
. His bots regularly upvote my posts and I am truly grateful for that. Its nice to see regular appreciation for some of the effort i put in.
I think letseat is number 3, upvotes from which have helped me gain more SP. Guys, i can't emphasize using letseat enough. This is my favourite tool. Its the most fun and a great way to progress towards becoming a minnow.
Actifit is a relatively new tool that i have started using. I recommend that if you guys walk a lot daily, install this and post about it at the end of day. You get upvotes and get to collect actifit tokens for completing activities. If you missed out on steemit, benefit from becoming an early adopter of actifit.
Last but not least, have to mention
, and
for regularly upvoting my posts and also commenting. Your support and appreciation is genuinely appreciated. Also
for topping up my dustsweeper account. Thank you for that!
I also started following 13 more people and gained 24 followers. Followers have more or less stabilized now and not growing as it grew in the past few months.
This was also a pretty active month in terms of number of posts made, 359 to be precise, mostly on steemhunt. Interactions on steemit have now taken a hit, as i am commenting less on other posts than i was earlier. However, i have started upvoting a far greater number of posts on steemit and have improved my curating game for sure. There is one rule though, i don't upvote posts that have a self upvote.
The idea behind sharing this is so that others out there, who are trying to evolve as a blogger on steemit or want this place to be a source of extra income for them or want to increase their stake in the platform can find some of my experience helpful. If you do, then please let me know in comments.
I also want to mention about 
Use tags like #nobidbots, #minnowuprising and #upvoteplankton started by 
The game is simple, engage engage engage - write good content. And please dont use promoting bots. They are a disgrace to this platform in my opinion.
Thank you for reading.