How Newbies Avoid Frustration on Steemit

I hear a lot of complaints about newbies not getting people to see their posts. Not comments about it, complaints, even accusations against the platform. That means they think it SHOULD somehow be different.

I've experienced how hard it is to get new posts seen as a newbie myself. But for me, there is nothing to complain about.

That's because I've had blogs before, both on my own website and on Medium, plus guest blogging on other people's blogs. I know that when you're starting out on any blog you expect it to be crickets except for however much you promote your post by linking to it in other places or paying to promote it.

I think the thing with Steemit that makes people have a different expectation (so be disappointed) is that this is a mashup between a blog and social media. On your own website, you know no one is seeing your article if you don't drive them there to see it. But on Facebook, for example, you only joined because you had friends on there. So there was a ready made audience and the FB algorithm intentionally showed your posts to new friends a lot for quite some time.

Here on Steemit there is the expectation of an experience like FB because it is on a platform, not one's own website. But there is no algorithm here sending people to you! And for most of us there isn't a friend/family network already here to "introduce us around." Friends of friends aren't suggested for us to follow.

In general, it's a lot like having a blog on your own website, even though it's hosted on a platform. We should feel grateful we have the chance to have articles seen at all before we have collected a community of followers. That perspective will make us feel inspired when we see a stranger upvote our post, rather than deflated when we see we only made a couple pennies on an article we put a lot of work into.

Source: Pexels - Markus Spiske

The closest comparison to Steemit is Medium, where you blog on a shared platform. Have you ever blogged on Medium? If you have, you'll realize that you have to do a lot of work off Medium to drive people to your posts there. They are shown to strangers much less than on Steemit when you are first starting out. In fact, after over a year blogging on that platform, I still haven't figured out how to get much visibility. I've even joined prominent publications on there, but still my articles are seen by maybe 50 people in months! My comments on other people's highly visible posts get a ridiculous number of likes though, so I know that people like my content when they actually see it.

Contrast that with Steemit where within my first 10 articles I've been able to attract upvotes from many, many people I never knew before. I even have some friendships growing on here that I think will last a lifetime. And on top of all that, I actually get paid when people like my stuff!

Now Medium is trying this new feature where when you like (clap for) someone's article they give that writer some money. I'm not clear on how it works, but I think ad dollars have something to do with it. Clearly they are trying to learn a thing or two from Steemit. But I think the Steemit crypto model is a better one than the old advertising model. And anyway, I go back to my previous observation that this is only going to help the established writers on the platform or new people who come with a massive following they can drive there from elsewhere.

In the end, I don't think there is anyplace else on the entire internet that a new blogger can get as much visibility and earnings as on Steemit. It is the nature of being new at anything that you have to pay your dues.

How you pay them on Steemit seems to come down to:

• Write as close to once a day as you can manage, and make it the best article you can write that day
• Comment on other people's posts a lot and make them genuine comments. Put some thought into your comments that make them worthy of being read by the people you're writing to.
• Make it easy for people to find your best articles by linking to them at the bottom of your current article (something I'm just starting to do myself)
• Remind people that you'd like them to resteem if they like the article. A lot of people will if you remind them, and just don't think of it otherwise.
• If you can afford an investment of $100, buy some STEEM and use it to powerup so that you have more SP. This will allow you to have a more powerful upvote and eliminate bandwidth issues I've heard of newbies often encounter. I did this early on since I had that much sitting in a coin on Binance that I'd grown to not want anymore, so just swapped it for some STEEM. If you can't afford this, see if you can find someone you've interacted with who has a lot of SP and ask them if they can delegate 50 or so SP to you for a month. You'll be able to use that to get a lot of traction in that amount of time, before it reverts back to them.
• If you can afford another $50 or so to invest in your career here on Steemit, consider buying some SBD and using it to pay bots to upvote your article when you first publish it. I'm still experimenting with this, and have never personally experienced it getting one of my articles onto the trending page. I may not be spending enough money on a given article. But I do see that my articles where I've done it get more upvotes than ones where I don't. So could be that just on the "new" page where you may be seen for 10 mins. if you have some money showing on your post those first 10 mins., more people are likely to check it out. Then if it is a good article, they'll upvote it themselves, both because they support it and because they want some of the curation rewards. You can check for available bots and their costs here: Steem Bot Tracker
• Keep your reward setting when posting to 50/50 instead of putting it all toward SP. Then powerup your SBD to SP. You'll get more SP that way so long as SBD is worth more than $1 USD. And if you want to earn SBD so you can pay the bots, you'll definitely be better off earning both. Right now I power up everything because my SP is low.
• Join contests! This is the way I've gotten the most visibility on here.
• Read all the many posts on succeeding on Steemit. After your 5th or so, they will start sounding redundant, but I find that every one has at least one new idea for me. If you are serious about this as a way to become a paid writer, then apply yourself to mastery of it as a professional would.

If you can do these things, and also make this mental shift from seeing what is challenging for newbies to seeing what is a blessing in this opportunity, then I think in not long you'll be incredibly happy with your Steemit experience. You'll start having more revenue but even before that, you'll start having more fun. And isn't the point of doing anything because it makes for a happy life to do it?

Check out some of my recent posts:

• Getting Started on Steemit - Step-by-step
• Likely Coins Coming to Coinbase - might STEEM be one?
• Meet Me in the Space Between Breaths

Is there anything else you can think of that can lead to newbies being more excited than disappointed about how it is first starting out here on Steemit?

Resteems always appreciated!