I was just thinking..
It's awesome to see a post you've made about a subject your passionate about making even just a couple of dollars or less.
When you're so used to never making any money at all from what you share online and doing it all out of the love in your heart, and then.. You start to see some money coming in.. Even if just in small amounts, but it's from doing something you love.. And would do for free anyways, so.. It's just like.. Such a cool feeling.
And I mean.. I'm not new to steemit, I've been here close to two years now. And I used to make more money than I do now, lol. Especially when I had a whale following me for a period there..
Recently I actually have lost money in a sense since starting the Information Finding Championship in order to make it work and promote it and help build it.. But.. I look at it more as an investment than a loss and.. It just hit me the other day again really hard.. Just how awesome this is.
Plus.. Especially for people in poorer places in the world! It's a major game changer for them. But.. Even if nothing else.. It's just really neat to see a post of mine about veganism, or conspiracies, or philosophy or whatever.. Making a couple dollars or less.
There's something really intriguing about being able to be compensated for sharing your thoughts with the world. Or art or just about anything you wanna share.
I know it intimidates some, and they don't want money involved.. And I respect that(You do have the option to decline payment on steemit if that's the case), some people even think that you'll be more pure if you don't involve your passion with money, which there might be some truth to, though to me.. I kinda see it as.. If I make more money, then I can help others even more!
However once again.. I think I just wanna stress and say that.. Pretty much everything I've been sharing, was the kinda stuff I was sharing before for free and not making any money from.. I think that's one thing that helped me do so well, is that.. I was doing this out of the love of it already, so.. The money factored in less for me than for a lot of people who come to steemit looking to make money.
So I mean.. Why not? Why not start making some money for something I was already doing for free if some people see a value in what I offer?
It's sorta like being tipped for doing a good job. Even if it's just a small amount. Someday maybe it'll be more significant! There are people on steemit making a LOT of money.. Though.. Even just a few dollars here and there, I think is a really fascinating step in the right direction for technology and society in my opinion!
And now with Facebook and Twitter both taking 20% hits to their value and reporting less growth.. I'm wondering.. How long till more and more people discover steemit and want to do what they were doing before, except also to make money for it and to not be censored by corrupt oligarchs?
And there are other platforms out there and in development, though.. I still think steemit is the best out there right now for the time being.
Who knows what will happen with Facebook in the future, or steemit... But I'd like to think this is the beginning of a shift towards corrupt in bed with government monopolies dying, and new less centralized and better options becoming more mainstream. :)
Artwork done by @jimramones
110% ma friend! It's not an expense it's an investment in growing IFC the marketplace and helping others! Spot on!!
Agreed! I mean.. Even if steem did somehow die and I lost everything, the IFC was something I didn't lose and which can survive if steem dies.. Hopefully it does not and is around for a long time! Though.. This idea is it's own being and.. It's been well worth it in my opinion to invest and work on it as much as I have.
Even if I didn't make any money at all from any of this.. It was worth it just to have the experience and to meet all the awesome people involved in the IFC like yourself and learn a bunch of new things about life! :D
I agree! I love to write posts mainly because I love to write. It's extra cool to know that other people read them and enjoy reading them. It's triple extra cool to make money on it. I'm still working my way up to a few dollars. I still get excited about 30 cents or so. :-)
At this point, I'd really like to see more people commenting on my posts. The upvotes are nice, and certainly appreciated, but I'd also like to feel as if I am engaging with the reader a bit more. The discord channels just don't do it for me in quite the same way.
Agreed!
I'd like to see more interaction and there's definitely a lack of it in a lot of places that I look including my own blog, however.. I have a decently popular Facebook account to compare this one with and it's very similar on Facebook as well.
I think unfortunately overwhelmingly most people just wanna post their own stuff and don't spend much time on other peoples pages.
I personally try to avoid that and I try to spend a good amount of time on other peoples pages, but even with that effort I still feel like I spend way more time creating my own content rather than visiting other peoples pages.
So.. It's a difficult equation but I'm glad to see various groups on steemit and individuals who do enjoy curating, and who even do that more than they post themselves.. So.. It's out there, it's just outnumbered, hopefully in time it improves. :)
I wonder if there's something we could do the flip the equation. Steemit already provides rewards for upvoting other people's content, so I don't think it's the monetary aspect. It's got to be either cultural or ease-of-use.
From my perspective, I struggle to find content that is interesting to me. I think part of that is my own ignorance of how to use the search feature on the feed, another part is the limited tags we are allowed, and the third part is that there really is a lot of content that is poorly executed. I get discouraged after clicking on 15 posts in a row that are little more than "here's a not that great picture - upvote me."
The other thing to consider is the culture of steem. It seems like the vast majority of the folks on here are primarily interested in growing wealth, or growing the steem community (ergo growing wealth philanthropy). It's quite different from the users on other sites like Facebook.
I too have Facebook, but I rarely post there. Fun fact: I've posted more links to my steemit blog in two months than I've posted anything in the past 2 years. I use Facebook primarily to see what my friends and family are up to, or what is a hot topic in the news, or catch the latest silly video. In other words, I am a consumer on other sites and more of a producer on steemit. I think it is similar for many people here.
If we could somehow adjust that balance to increase the demand for quality content, I think the authenticity of interaction would increase and with it, people's monetary rewards would also increase.
I love your thinking and how honest you are about sharing your thoughts. In the 2 years I've been on Steemit, I've never thought of this platform as a job, so my mindset has always been on creating content that interests me.
I love that it feels like a tipping economy - and it's been working. I don't expect to make anything, and certainly not hundreds of dollars per post, but I won't lie - it sure is nice to see the dollar value go up.
As always, I'm more excited if the comments seem to corroborate the given value. That, to me means the traffic is more organic and not all bots. I think Steemit is awesome and no matter how many times I flake out and go away, I come back because the community we're building is second to none.