Is Steemit a lottery? ( rig it in your favor! )

YES!..NO!..Kind of?! Read on.

I'll try to answer a question that a lot of people ask, The answer is not as easy and clear-cut as it might seem.

Let's begin.

The question we try to the bottom of today is this:

Other connected questions:

• Is it worth spending hours on a post?
  
  
• Is there any connection between the time you spend on a post and the rewards it gets?
  
  
• Does content matters or is just as random as hitting the jackpot on slots?

I'll try to address these concerns that I'm sure, many new and old posters have.

First, you need to understand that steemit is designed with the "casino effect" in mind. That is: some posts will hit it BIG! And that's by design and it's something that is supposed to bring people in (Maybe my post can make a lot too!) and also increases the stickiness of it (I won once, I'll keep writing until I win again!).

Give the diversity of the trending content, from long, mindful posts, to troll posts, funny posts and downright "is this really trending" kind of posts, it's easy to see why a new steemer [ and some old too] would think:

ANYTHING COULD MAKE IT TO THE FIRST PAGE!

But is it really so?

As I have stated over and over and over again, I'm a big believer in the quality of the content and the presentations of the said content. So maybe i'm biased but...

If you look at the posts trending and the authors who constantly make good money on posts, it's almost without a miss on posts that are well written. If they aren't exceptionally well-written that it's a very interesting topic but always! ALWAYS well edited and presented.

Did these people hit the steemit lottery?
YEAH!
Are the odds skewed in their favor?
Ah, now that's the question...


The thing is this: rubbish content has excatly 0% chance of winning this steemit lottery. So if you think you can come and post a few words and wake up rich tomorrow: I'm sorry , this is not the site you're looking for [ probably you're looking for a shortcut to work that it doesn't exist ]

But if you do put in the hard work and write good/ great content then you have just bought a valid ticket to the greatest lottery on earth: steemit. I say this because when you hit it, you won't just get money, but also feeback, recognition and a bit of fame. Don't we all want to be recognized for our good writing and idea?
I think we do. I know I want to.

So obviously, the better the content, the more the odds are skewed in your favor but there's no 1:1 connection either. If you put a lot of work in an article it might make less than one that you spend 20 minutes on. This might make a less than wise man to jump to the conclusion that: quality doesn't matter!

Can anything be farther from the truth? Look at that post of yours who "won". Seriously, look at it, wasn't it actually kind of good? I'm sure it was. That's the thing, it's not about the time you put in, it's what it goes out of that time. A Hemingway might write in 20 minutes what I couldn't in 20 days.

So again I say: the odds are skewed in your favor if you write well, if you have something interesting to say, if you are GOOD. But what does this even mean? It means that effort is rewarded and more effort will always lead to better output, hence, better rewards.

Being in "The Zone". If you write you surely experience that, it's a magic time when you write fast, you write well, everything just CLICKS. So a post written in the zone might take you 10 minutes, but those are very very powerful minutes. That's why I don't think there's a direct correlation between time spent and rewards.

That being said, if you don't click " post" unless everything look at best as it could to you, you're effectively minimizing your chance to hit the winning ticket. Don't do that :)

I'm doing all that but can I improve my chances to win the steemit lottery even more?!

IF you did all the above then you might think: well, i wrote the best article i could, I edited to the best of my abilities, I chose the best title, the best photos...it's out of my hands!

NOT SO FAST!

Every one of your posts could be a golden steemit ticket

If quality content + good editing is about 33% of the best odds equation, this is another 33%. What is it?

It is posting at an US-friendly hour? No, but it's a good idea to mind the american time as most whales are from the US.

Is it promoting your post everywhere? No, but a little promotion never hurt anyone.

No, the answer is CONSISTENCY!

You need to be consistent with your writing. This is the equivalent of buying more tickets to the lottery. And when you'll finally hit a big upvote, people will get interested in your blog, don't let them be disappointed by your content.
Keep on writing good stuff, keep posing them and then all you need is....

A bit of luck!

There's no getting around this. You need to get lucky. You need someone to see your post, you need them to like it and upvote it. That's why we call it a lottery after all :)

But I hope my post convinced you that luck is about 1/3 of the whole deal and that you can influence the odds in your favor and as long as you keep writing, it will surely happen for you too.

PS: this post took about 3 hours to write.