If You Don't Enjoy Steemit, Go Hard-Fork Yourself
Try to read the title out loud, with a British accent. Yes. Pun intended, guys.
The "golden days" of Steemit are over for some time now. I wasn't there during that time and all I know about those days comes from posts filled with nostalgia and sadness.
How I Got Here
My involvement with the platform started less than 3 weeks ago. @wadepterson sent me and email a month ago, asking for an interview for a "20 Questions With..." project of him. Had no idea what was about, didn't know squat about Steemit, but I get around 2-3 interview requests each month. So I answered the questions and a few days later I got another email, with the link for the published interview. It was on Steemit and it has a box underneath it, with something that looked like a sum of money. 3-4 clicks later I understood that it was for real.
I wrote my introductory post and got more than $350. I was literally blown away.
So I took the time to read the white paper, to start mingling, to learn new tools (steemstats, steemwhales, etc). And I decided to give it a 30 days time window. I'm still in that 30 days time window. Things can go well or things can go bad after that, I don't know yet. But what's in the basket right now tilts the balance towards staying here.
Current Situation
I know there is a stark contrast between getting $2000 for a post and getting $350. But, with all honesty, I think $2000 for a post is unrealistic at best. It's simply not possible to generate in this specific market (number of people in the audience, maturity of the platform, etc) that amount of money.
In simpler words: what you got when you got $2000 for an article was not the actual value of that article, but a split. A split between the value of the article and marketing money. You got, let's say, around $50 for the article, and the remaining $1950 was "word of mouth advertising". It made you promote the network. And it was also an investment in you. And it was a good investment, as long as you still have enough patience to see which is the real price of an article. Because that's what's at stake here: how much your work is really worth of, once the marketing money is going away?
Finding that answers takes a lot of time. You need something around at least 1.000.000 people to form a coherent ecosystem, one in which real money will pour in (from investors, advertisers, market makers, etc).
Go Ahead. Hard-Fork Yourself
But instead of patience, I see a trend of hate and frustration. Why are you mad guys? Why? Because a bunch of people put some thousands in your pockets for some portion of your time? That's not healthy, you know. Hating people who rewarded you for your involvement. Generally speaking, hating people for giving you money, especially when all they ask from you is to write content - is not healthy. Write that down, on a piece of paper: "It's not healthy to hate people who are giving me money for writing content." It's important.
But you know what? It's a free world. If you don't enjoy staying here, go ahead and hard-fork. Start your own steemit. Code is open-source, just start a clone.
I think with al honesty that this will finally draw the real picture for many of you out there frustrated. If you want to build a decentralized social network you need, just at the highest level, without going into too many details:
- hosting resources (big hosting resources)
- very qualified blockchain developers (very expensive)
- qualified front-end developers (expensive)
- a community of crypto-savvy people which will act as witnesses, in the beginning
- a seed community of content providers which will (hopefully) bootstrap the whole thing in terms of blog posts and interaction
- a very, very good understanding of crypto-currency and the ability to push your new coin in at least one high profile exchange (otherwise adoption will be close to nothing)
Now, try to go into details and try to create a budget on this one. And after you make the budget on fixed costs (hosting, cost of developers) try building the budget for variable costs (influencers, content providers, lobby for exchanges).
Or you may as well read the title out loud, with a British accent.
Pun intended.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
Steemit certainly is not for everybody. It is a new way to do things and incentives are springing into new equilibrium, that were not here before. I am happy I got on board fairly early on (around the top of the first bubble, and am able to create something that has the potential of becoming a livelihood. This is a groundbreaking opportunity and it helps to have an entrepreneurian attitude towards developing your product.
A mental picture i often use is .. think of going back to 2010 and buy 1000 BTC at 1 dollar a coin. If you have that amount in Steem and figure the same potential development as with BTC, you are a rich man baby :-)
My thoughts exactly. Just do your homework, it will all come through.
I'm glad to see this is going reasonably well for you. My highest post so far is $20. And I was pretty stoked at that :-)
But for me this is more about the fun of being involved that getting rich quick.I mean, what would I do if I was suddenly getting $2000 per post? ;-)
Upvoted and followed - 'cause I think you'll be interesting :-)
That first post got upvoted by @ned, that's how it got to $350. During the last week, I got around $20-$30 per post. But I'm still experimenting. It's a very, very interesting place to learn and, if it really takes off - which is something that nobody knows right now - it will be huge. Thanks for the nice words and I'll do my best to be interesting :)
Spot on with the observations :)
We have a saying here - Much wants more. I think it means no matter how much is given to some people, they will always expect more.
I've noticed this type of behaviour and I'm thinking along the same lines as you.
I do hope the posts advising how Steemit should be changed, and declaring they're 'outa here' will stop soon. Personally, I'm taking this at face value and I like it here.
I hope you do too. I followed you :)
Thanks for the follow, followed back.
"I know there is a stark contrast between getting $2000 for a post and getting $350". I'd disagree as most people would be really happy with either. What most will actually get here is a couple of cents, and not even that on some posts. That may be enough to keep them coming back, but some will decide it's not worth their time. The algorithm is skewed in favour of the 'stars'. I do appreciate that many whales put their own money in and it's depreciated, but they can earn well from curation. Newbies will have to accept that it takes time and effort to build up SP and reputation.
I don't want to see forks of this project as that dilutes the power of Steemit. We already have a separate blockchain on the Russian Golos site. That could possibly have been implemented with a language flag on posts and then we'd all be earning the same Steem.
Anyway, it's early days. I'm hoping Steemit will prosper and become a major force over the next couple of years, and it's likely to take years to get the features and bring in people who can help it grow.
I was ironic when I was suggested them to hard-fork themselves, obviously. But I think there is no skewing of the algorithm. It's just how it is.
If you create valuable content, if you're becoming a "star", then you get all the benefits.
Not everybody can be Elvis, IMHO.
We can't all be Elvis, but we can be the busker who gets a few coins tossed their way. Okay, so people post and comment on other sites for nothing, but there has to be an incentive to come to Steemit. I've been lucky to get whale votes on a few posts, but I know they are relatively rare. Many minnows may feel under-valued. Just my impression :)
It's very, very, very, very, very early. How many coins tossed your way are coming from Medium, Facebook or Twitter? Just saying...
Yeah, I know :) I've been through this before on Tsu, but they didn't have whales in the same way. I made a little money there, but I've made more in the same time here.
Nicely said! It's important not to have unrealistic expectations. I joined Steemit not really knowing how successful I'd be but figuring it was worth trying just for fun, to see if I could make something of myself. Ultimately, I would like to make some money, yes. But I recognize it takes time and hard work to build a reputation. I'm less concerned with getting hundreds of dollars per post, and more concerned with making slow but steady upward progress. It has been thrilling to watch my posts go from making just a few cents to hitting $20-30 for the recent ones, and equally exciting to see my followers and Steem Power gradually increasing. I like the feeling of building my account a bit at a time, little by little, until eventually it starts to snowball. It's a marathon, not a sprint!
And as you say, the people who are only in it to get rich quick can go fork themselves. ;-)
As an ultra-marathoner, I totally get what you say :)
The idea behind this is fair. Hating and looking back is not gonna help anyone. Still, the whole hard-fork idea while funny is impossible.
With all due respect, it's not impossible. You can build a steemit clone in Ethereum, if you want, by starting your own blockchain. In code, steemit is just a bunch of smart contracts. But the truth is that Steemit, as a living product, it's much more than just the code, as some people are implying. There's a lot more to it, from people to influence, from strategy to vision. And that's valuable.
I've witnessed a few big online projects, both as a builder and as a consumer. I know what it takes to get off the ground a community with 30k users. It's a lot of hard work. At its peak, one of my website had 110k active registered users, and that was 8 year ago. I worked my ass for it.
So I'm pretty much on the side of the builders on this one. The fact that there are a lot of money in the hand of a few people, well, that's just they way it is. You have 2 alternatives: write until your fingers worn out or buy your share in.
It's just how life it is. Nobody said life it's fair.
I've written a lot of stuff online, and never got paid for it. Steemit is one of the first places I feel like I have incentive to continue writing, and even more incentive to make it funny, interesting and original. I like the format of Steemit, and the content from others is great too. This has a lot of potential to become a strong community built around a crypto-currency. I think the trend for steem and steem power is upwards, and I think a lot of us here at this technology's infancy are going to be glad we stuck around.
On the same lines with you :)
thank you sir . This post is very beautiful …..