Winning photography contests on Steemit - what's my motivation to keep going?

Winning photography contests on Steemit - what's my motivation to keep going?

Hello dear fellow Steemians!

Winning image of week #4 of @czechglobalhost 's daily contest

During the first days entering the Steemit platform I was kind of confused what my way will be. I saw the huge payouts for the travel bloggers, some wired posts also getting >200$ and guys from YouTube posting their videos and post here on Steemit and receiving high rewards. How are my chances on Steemit? Will it even be worth it writing posts and sharing my thoughts here? We were just planning our China vacation and I'm always really tech savvy. I knew I'll shoot over 5000 photos over the 3 weeks, film with the GoPro and even shoot drone footage. Maybe Steemit will be the perfect opportunity to go for it. Our blog wasn't very successful. I spent several hours putting up the Wordpress blog, looking for a great theme, installing it and creating the first content. But just some spam bots showed up as usual. My wife, @tabealouise, did crush it on Instagram for a period of time but it's hard to keep up during our daily jobs. Our motivation always was to share our trips with the world, engage with like-minded people and if possible earn some bucks on the way.



The Fisherman - huge upvote by @knircky and @pawos

The first posts before our journey to China did better than expected. I started out with a post about "what's in my bag", followed by some advice regarding meditation and journaling, which play an essential part in my life now, and some advise when traveling with drones.

After that I got caught up in re-steeming a couple of posts and contests and daily challenges. Most of the presented images I saw were a 4 or 5 out of 10. I said to myself: "Your photos are better than most of these ones. Just give it a try!" That was the beginning of posting mainly photos on Steemit. I love editing my photos, scrolling through old albums and sinking into the memories conntected to the photos. It's actually sad to see them stored on several hard drives and nobody will ever see them again except my wife and maybe some family members and friends.

My Lake Tekapo post received a big upvote by @czechglobalhost after winning in the contest

Over the next weeks I kept posting posts nearly every day. The topic was the China vacation we just finished. Many photos turned out better than expected and I was more than willing to share them with all of you. My family was blown away by the Fisherman shots and the drone footage. On Dtube and Youtube I shared some edited videos. Of course we made a small profit on Dtube but not a single cent on Youtube. On the October weekends I travelled a lot, so I could finish 1 to 2 videos each weekend while riding the train. Seeing moving pictures is way more fun for most people. If the underlying sound fits to the movie it's relatively easy to create a short but great movie of about 3-5 minutes.

What happened to the payouts during this time?

Well I started out with 0,00 $ of course. The early posts did not get a lot of attention and the payout was under 1 $. When I started the contests, it sometimes moved up to 2 or 3 $. I thought I could stay on the level but acutally I didn't. The videos didn't do as great as expected and I was considering stopping for a minute.
But as I mentioned above the main reason for posting is that I want to share the experiences with other people nevertheless of any monetary advantage. Over the time I enjoyed writing down my own thoughts more and more and pushing out quality content was a daily goal. I even set a reminder for 9pm every day to post on Steemit.



My Kitesurfing post grabbed @surfermarly 's attention

Dentaltips, contests by @juliank and @czechglobalhost and storytelling

By creating the #dentaltips posts I received way more attention. Acutally you guys seem to like those post. They give some short advise which is embedded in a greater context. It's easy to understand and the tips could be used daily.
Posting photos for the contest by @juliank and @czechglobalhost grabbed a lot of attention and way more people followed me and upvoted. I'm really thankful to both of them for contributing to the community in this way. It's really easy to participate in the contests. Just read over the instructional posts and you are ready to go. They also reward the participants generously and I try to contribute almost every day of the week. The hard drives are filled with new and old images that want to find their way to Steemit. Thank you guys!!! 👍🏻😀

Beside the contests I created some posts with a short series of images. I tried to surround the images with useful information. Not just basics like the place and time of the year but more detailed backround information to the city, where the photos were shot, or about the building. Some of the English-German posts also did pretty good. I bet it's because of the wider audiance. For most people it's way easier to read and write in their native language.

My CBCT, 3D Printing, Robots - Evolution of the dental industry #dentaltip post grabbed @curie 's attention

A little cheating

Steemit has a lot of boosters. They support the smaller accounts. I read a couple of different posts about them, the pros and cons and gave it a try. For me personally they turned out great. Everytime I received more than I paid. Sometimes by more than 2-3 $ a post. Of course I have to admit that it feels a little bit like cheating but as long as it is allowed I will use their services now and then.

Conclusion

My takeaway messege: KEEP POSTING - NO MATTER WHAT!

Nobody knows where Steemit will be in 2, 6 or 12 month. So many great people are on this platform. The witnesses do a whole lot for the community, there were already two SteemFests in the real world and even if the new user counts don't go up as quickly as expected, it's not worth turning the back on Steemit already. The announcement of smart media tokens and instagram-like services will improve Steemit a lot. I have never thought that I'll be able to earn 10-20 $ a month with my photos. It's not about the money, it's more about the appreciation by fellow Steemians!

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Enjoy life, have fun and take more beautiful photos!
Sebastian

Upvote, follow and re-steem if you like this post.

✌ Steemit rocks ✌