When I was in high school I discovered something really interesting about me and about how the world works. I discovered, first, that I don't like school. I realized that after getting bad grades at all kind of classes, except when it came to computers. There, I was the best. I had a passion for computers.
Second, I realized in 8th grade that if I'd have to quit school, at that very moment, for all kind of reasons, I would not be able to do anything to make a living with the things school taught me. I had absolutely no idea about how the world works and I had absolutely 0 skills despite being in school for many years.
Because of that I stopped carrying about school so much and I focused on learning things that interested me. That's how I started freelancing, but that's a completely different story.
When I was 17 years old I wanted to learn Web Design & Development, and because I never in my life learned anything similar to HTML, CSS & JavaScript, I had a really hard time studying. That's why most of the time I had a motivational video or speech on my YouTube page, ready to go, to listen to whenever I felt like quitting.
I even got some of them on my phone, to listen to while going to school. One of those videos (or speeches) changed the way I was looking at making money and at creating products for people. I never knew why some people manage to make huge amounts of money, and why some people are so important to certain companies.
A video you can find on YouTube called "19 minutes that will change your life" explained that to me in the best way possible. That video contains a "speech" held by Earl Nightingale, who was a writer, speaker and author who dealt mostly with human character, personal development and success.
The way he described why some people are successful while some are not, changed my life completely, and also the way I see things now. He made me understand why some people make more money than others using only one sentence. That sentence explains exactly what we need to do in order to receive higher rewards from our work. And here it is:
"Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution, our service."
It's that simple. That quote basically says that if you want to succeed in life, you need to produce high quality content. The quality of the content you produce will determine the amount of money you'll get.
Why isn't this something we are taught in school? Why no one tells us that the better we do things, the more rewards we get? Seems obvious, and it is, but not everyone knows this, for some reason. I know I didn't knew. I was so focus on creating, that I forgot about quality. I was only focused on creating as much content as possible.
Also, if you're an employee and you also want to know how to get paid better and how to get more money from the company you work for, here's the same quote, but in a different way, addressing to the people who work for someone:
"The money you're paid by the company you work for will always be in direct ratio to the need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the degree of difficulty involved in replacing you.
I know, seems stupidly obvious, and it seems like everyone should know this, but you'd be surprised how many people don't. Just think about how many people are successful, and how many people make thousands of dollars every month. Then you'll realize not everyone is aware of that kind of information.
If you want to hear the entire speech and listen to what Earl Nightingale has to say, here's the link to the video I told you about:
I listened to this while I was coming home from school, walking around 5 km, and this made me understand, in only 30 minutes of walking, that the quality of the content you produce always has to be higher than the quantity.
That's why people who work really hard on their videos have a lot of success on YouTube, that's why people who create movies after months of hard work have a lot more success than people who create movies just for the sake of creating them.
Of course there are other factors you need to take into consideration, like what kind of videos are popular on YouTube and what kind of movies people want to see. If you work hard to create a product that is already made by someone, or a product that has no use to people, don't expect to make a lot of money just because you work hard.
"Hard work" is defined by multiple factors, like researching, learning, testing, producing, and only after that, getting the rewards. If building a successful product would be so easy, everyone would be rich. But that's the thing. Building a successful product requires a lot of dedication and a lot of work.
You also need to remember that the best way to be a successful person is to invest a lot of time into your personal development. You need to learn new things, you need to read a lot, you need to know things other people don't know. If you don't invest in yourself, you don't have any advantage over other people, and you can't expect to succeed that way.
Imagine the difference between a programmer who knows one programming language and never tries to learn anything new, and a programmer who knows multiple programming languages and always tries to learn new things about coding and problem solving.
The second programmer will always be more valuable in a company or even as a freelancer, because it's harder to replace. If he's the only programmer in the world who learns more every single day about what he does, he'll obviously be better paid because the company he works for won't risk loosing him.
That's the way people succeed on Steemit. It's not about how many posts you have, it's not about how many people upvote your post, it's about how much you work on your content. If you spend 5 minutes working on each post you publish, don't be surprised you're not making a lot of money.
Most posts that are on the "trending" section of Steemit are really long and contain a lot of value. They are high quality, and to make them, it took a lot of work. That's the reason those people succeed, not because they're lucky or because they know something you don't. They just work harder.
It's okay to create mediocre content, it's okay to create posts that take you 5 minutes to write, but if you only do that, prepare to fail. The way to succeed is to combine really high quality content with little mediocre things you do in order to attract more people.
So, that's it, that's the way you can succeed on Steemit and pretty much anywhere else, by creating really high quality content, investing time into your work, investing time in yourself and by always learning new things.