RE: My investigation into Steemit for VICE Motherboard.
Corin, I have to ask, is your opinion about Steemit the same or different since you began your research? I would like to add that the Reddit comparison is not quite accurate. A more accurate description would be Long-form Reddit or Medium. Posts that contain only a link, video link or a meme are no longer receiving considerable payouts. Even superficial ones from high-profile people are not looked up favorably and are frequently downvoted, thus removing the rewards. Besides overlooking the technological advancements of the Graphene technology (which mainstream hardly mentions), and some other minor things, I think your article was fairly well-written for a mainstream audience.
Here's the question I really want to ask: would you at some point consider writing here on the Steemit platform? Would doing so create some kind of strain between VICE and you? I was just curious what a professional journalist has to say about the pull between freedom of individuals and their professional writing career.
Oh, most importantly, thanks for writing the article and spending time interviewing everyone.
In response to your first point - the editors at Vice choose the title not me so it's out of my hands! I take your point though, Reddit may not be a completely accurate comparison, though it does help to convey the idea for someone who is unfamiliar with Steemit.
At present, for the reasons I outlined in the article, I would not consider writing original content for Steemit - the rewards are too unpredictable to invest the amount of time that I put into research. The question of whether it would interfere is separate to that, but it does not create a conflict to publish work on different platforms - in fact that's the nature of being freelance.
I see. Titles are often chosen by editors, so I knew that was a distinct possibility. Thanks for clarifying that point. I suppose for mass appeal purposes, the Reddit comparison works to draw in that crowd, so I see why they would choose that analogy. What tends to sell is not often the most accurate message, but the one that can be absorbed by the most palates. Well, just know that you would have a significant audience here, if you ever decided to post your research here on Steemit. Thanks for answering my questions!
Payouts are far more predictable when you have a lot of followers.
And you get a lot of followers by investing the time. ;)
The steemit could just distribute proportionately reward author and curator for the owners of steem power ( in the form of token vote) Which would simply donate to Their favorite authors ( With a maximum per vote).
This would be very beneficial for platform, bringing sponsors willing to buy Steem power to sponsor authors.
How is that different than the current system?
Are you sure? It looks like you are easily going to earn $1k plus on this post... and imagine if you cultivated a following here...
Just curious but wouldn't even a payout of 1000$ / article (and let's say you can 2 very well-researched and 2 3 4 more personal, introspective and "amateurish" as you say, although you'd see, if you really participated that you'll start to write A LOT more) wouldn't convince you?
How much is a vice writer paid?!
You are right, this is a good rate per article. The point is that it's very difficult for a freelancer to assume the risk that an article might not achieve a payout, if you're entirely dependent on writing for your income - so a guaranteed payment of $500 is worth much more than a possible payment of $1000.
Why don;t you do both? Are you on steemit. chat? If you are give me a sign @razvanelul , would like to keep in touch. I really enjoyed this article, it's really really well written :D
@corintxt , thanks for the taking all the time and doing an article on Steemit!
A couplse of things that I think makes Steemit unique are the underlying transaction speed of the Graphene technology and the very visable growth of the new additions on Steemtools.com that the Steemit system cultivates by being open source and being able to immediatly reward outside innovators and programmers who make the enhancements or sugguestions via upvotes.
@stellabelle, +1 on your comments and questions.