This week marks my three month anniversary here within the community. Three months worth of blunders and learning, as well as meeting some really interesting individuals.
I am actually writing this up a few days early, as I need to tell those who follow me why I won't be upvoting your comments anymore. It's nothing you did, I assure you. It has more to do with the fact you won't receive anything for it, despite my recent SP delegation I purchased. It appears that if your voting power is less than .03, if no one else upvotes atop to bring it to .03 it vanishes. Which gives more distribution to those receiving more than .03 if you think about it as their slice of the inflation is actually larger than the crumbs (what the below .03 votes are called) suggest.
So, please know that if I find your comment adding to the topic, instead of voting for the comment, I will instead upvote your latest post in an effort to ensure you at least get the benefit of my .02 upvote. My apologies that I misunderstood based on initial posts claiming it was at .02. I spent what little SBD I had to rent delegation so I could reward you on your comments. Once my vote becomes more than a micro crumb, I will revisit the idea of upvoting your comments in my thread. If it appears to better serve you by my voting on your posts though I may continue that. My goal if we connect is to help you make as much as is within my power to do so. Because that is the key to success here, helping those in your community build a stronger platform. Everything else will fall into place. So please understand that for now, my wallet is filled with dust that can only benefit you if I vote on your posts that have other votes.
So, on to some more of the things I have learned in my three months:
Unless you bring a following here, house odds are your posts will not make you anything. Zero. Squat. Even if you posted a mathematical formula that solved every problem in the world. Chances are no one will see it, and in the rare case some do it will be either other new people trying to build their tribe, or you lucked out and found one of the people here that actually understand the continued success of the platform rests on new people coming and STAYING. There are plenty of these kind hearted/future visioned people here. The problem is that they can only spread themselves so thin.
Bidbots are not the answer, in my opinion. I can't rule them out completely for visibility, but unless you are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars my experience when I first got here with them is you will lose money without getting any new eyes on your posts. The success of the site rests on eyes seeing posts, not bots. Your growth here depends on forging real relationships, not making whales richer. So my advice is invest that money into yourself and the relationships you are building here and not a whales growing assets.
This applies to the above segment on bidbots, but is getting its own segment. There is another avenue that many on here do not consider a bot. It is called Smartsteem, and they use a system called Smartmarket. In my experience testing them, they are the same as the bots. Even though your votes are coming from real people, these people are voting on your post from within the website of Smartsteem, and they are not reading your posts. Once again, I would advise to invest that money into yourself and those you are building your community with.
There is a growing split here regarding the use of bidbots, which brings me to the next thing I have learned and would recommend to all newcomers. There are many personality conflicts that takes place here, none of which is conducive to building a lasting structure to get involved with. All of us are entitled to our opinions, but think carefully if you are here to grow with a tribe that will reward you long term with not only connections with others, but an opportunity for financial growth. Or are you here to create enemies and have others gunning for your account? I can argue with plenty of people in my real life, so I have no need to collect enemies here is what I have come up with for myself.
So, after the initial non growing pains of few seeing my work, paying bots at a loss after my first initial failures to be seen, what happened to keep me here? Well, as I waited impatiently for my posts to receive accolades and powerful upvotes that would let me retire, I began surfing around the place to keep my sanity. And in the process began finding some really cool people. Smart people who could show me things I haven't seen before. Kind people who had patience and made gestures with me. And so slowly I didn't notice it at first, I began becoming part of some of the tribes around here. Discovering/interacting with not only those posting, but those commenting on those posts. And suddenly what seemed impossible (getting eyes on my posts) now is not so impossible. So for those of you newer here whose posts disappear into oblivion, don't give up hope. Your community is here, just waiting for you to find them.
This post is already long winded, so will begin wrapping it up. There are so many of you who have shown me kindness, engaged with me in discussions that I have learnt from. Too many to thank personally. I am grateful for so many of you, and hope that someday others will have this same gratefulness for me. Thank you for making my first three months possible.