Dtube Confessions: Why is Morale So Low on Steemit?
Hey guys!
So if any of my friends are even still watching these videos, and they haven't yet closed up shop and left the platform entirely, then hello! It's good to see you. I really appreciate you, and you are really important.
That being said, morale is LOW ya'll. I am sure Steemit has seen its ups and downs in the past, but it seems like the thought on everyone's minds right now is, "is what I am doing worth it?" Should I continue to pursue this crazy wild west and use my time doing it, or is this all a ridiculous pipe dream?
Personally, I think Steemit is pretty awesome, but it also needs a lot of work.
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when i'm watching your video, it made think about the government why rich is getting richer is because how system was designed for. Life is always been unfair and it always be, since we still in a not fully evolved human being, greed and other unethical behavior will always exist until we fully evolved into righteousness being.
I feel like I am in a better position to be able to talk about this after being back on the platform for a little time now.
I completely echo your opinions and you're right people are leaving, its sad to see the hard workers leave but at the same time steemit is not an employer, it does not hire and fire content creators. The rewards come from inside even though i have been back since January... I joined in June last year. I left pretty much for the way you feel now. I felt I tried to contribute to the platform.
But I can say that the comment you said about for example people who are getting large amounts for shit content, you're right its not fair and you have every right to rant about it.
A woman who stands for fifteen seconds on a video and smashes a coffee cup and gets upvotes over 100sbd, while other people are working their arses off to publish good quality informative information.
And the whole crypto thing..... yep right on.
Here are the biggest problems... Whales have the trending pages, people see the money on the treding pages.
People want the money so they follow the whales, begging for support.
DMANIA!!! annoys me people posting shit memes and getting a ton for them for a ten second meme creator.
Spammers... need I say any more.
I moved away from video you already know that I don't have to go through it again but i am glad I did. Because what people are forgetting that there are hundreds of other minnows who won't give up, who are supporting each other.
This is not a quick fix and it wont be for a long time.... tokens will not fix this... until we get people investing in the platform working for the platform spreading the wealth we will always have this problem.
But we should not be discouraged a post I saw today, a guy who joined in June last year invested no sbd into it now has over 7000 followers and a decent amount of sp to be recognised.
It can be done, but you have to be consistent.... btw your buzzsteem makes you, you need to start doing that again you had a good thing with it, don't lose that it grew your audience, people like me and others relied on that, fuck Beth that was my morning video with coffee to catch on steemit world.
To me your doing what I did you are varying your content and getting frustrated... it is frustrating because thats what happened to me.
Shameless plug here today i spend six hours with a post of my first 30 days full time on steemit I mentioned you btw, I am not making 100's hell I am not even making fucking 5 dollars apost. But what i am getting is a shit load of attention from the people that matter.
Wise up people this is not gonna give you steady income anytime soon, unless your loved and thats a rarity the thing is its what we do as a collective now to make it work for ourselves without whales and dolphins.
First of all, someone has taken my buzzsteem idea and completely ripped it off with a Steemian of the DAy and everything. I saw that and couldn't believe it, felt betrayed and took a break for a while haha.
I'm SO DRAMATIC.
Anyway, BuzzSteem was also getting sad for me because it was getting harder to find content that hadn't been buried by the crap that is trending. I know people liked it but it took so much time and stopped making money and all that. I mean, I could go back to it, but meh I dunno.
I am glad that you are still going at it. I think you are awesome, and you have a lot to offer Steemit. I really hope you will stick with it. You really should.
I am going no where and I don't think you should either.
BTW I did a comment on one of heijins posts today :D accidently flagged by a whale but it turned out ok in the end. But I wont do it again.... its them and us Beth... them and us.
I just keep thinking that Steemit is going to see waves of new users gradually becoming not-so-new users, followed by a new wave of new users, and with that in mind, if we are relatively new and want the payoff that we see whales enjoying we just need to build a community with people who are at a similar place as ourselves. Theoretically, I will keep supporting the people I am becoming "friends" with now well into the future (if they stick around) and they will keep supporting me. I think what we need is way to keep track of who we really connect with, so we can remember to stay in touch.
I appreciate this post. I just started a week ago. It didn’t take long to realize that this platform is not a meritocracy. The payout on posts and quality don’t correlate in general.
Making money here seems to be a game. It’s not as simple as just creating content. It’s not what I thought it was but I’m still willing to play.
I am losing the game, and I thought I had it figured out. For the life of me I don't even know how to play anymore.
I too have started becoming disillusioned, but I enjoy reading and interacting with some of the people on here too much to leave it just yet. I plan to give it at least a year to see if the juice is worth the squeeze. So we will see you until at least December...I hope.
Something you said really stuck out to me. It was about someone creating a platform that does it right. I’m a developer and I’m going to look into doing that.
I’m a creative and a social entrepreneur. I’d love to start something using the blockchain that aligns more with my interests and talents. I’m still very green and I don’t know if my skills are where they need to be to do something like this. Starting today, I’m going for it. It may just be that I have to partner with someone more experienced.
For lack of a better response, follow me and I will follow you :). I hope you get the irony of the comment, but there is truth in it. Coalition gathering. We need ways of banding together, which I know a lot of effort is going into that in various ways (discord channels, etc.) but I feel like i need to figure out how to do it on a more personal level too.
See that's where I was at a couple of months ago. This works to a degree, but once you have a reliable social circle, you can't really make much unless your social circle is all whales or something, and then you may have all of them leave, like my social circle has done!
I hear that. I hate to say it, but I thought this after I left my comments, but I just can't imagine trying to make this a legit job. I mean, I am hoping like everyone else that it can at least be a legit side gig, but the fact that I am not depending on it is a big luxury. I understand that many people just aren't in that place and don't have the time/energy to spend on something that could just turn out to be folly. But STILL, its always better than wasting time on traditional social media. FWIW, I am following you now, and will see if I can keep up with you, but I am no whale! I found your post in a very roundabout way, so I am just going to chalk it up to serendipity. :)
I think many come here with unrealistic expectations and when their ambitions don't come into fruition within a few weeks they lose confidence. Not everyone can make it, but I've seen a lot of things in the past half + century. I think you have what it takes to make it on this platform.
My perspective is quite different. It took me over 10 years of work in the software business to finally make enough to quit my corporate job of over 21 years. Steemit is really the same way. There aren't enough whales to sift through all the material that gets posted every day.
For that reason, I don't really have a problem with using upvote bots. The idea of shit posts is relative to ones values. You never know when that idle picture that was posted on the internet with nothing more than a sentence and a $100 upvote from a bot could be the one picture that cracked a missing persons case or led to a reunion. If that person had it to invest, then are they not entitled to a return on that investment?
I think that I would have handled the visibility algorithm differently though and not allowed self upvotes or bots to affect visibility in the hot and trending that seem so important to many on here (but not to me because I almost never look there to see what is happening).
There is a big difference between Steemit and Facebook. Facebook uses your posts against you and feeds all this into a pre-crime report for law enforcement. Facebook also deliberately creates an echo chamber where it adjusts what you see according to your keyboard inputs.
Steemit isn't perfect, but people can make it either way through a self fulfilling prophesy. If you think you can make it, you probably can, but if you think you're wasting time, then you definitely are.
When I first got onto Steemit, I paid no attention whatsoever to the trending and hot pages. I always went to new pages. I get my hot and trending not from those pages but from my news feed of follows. It's the reason why I don't follow everyone. I just went to Steemwhales.com to find out who was important, then made adjustments to my follow list based upon later behavior and mentions.
The main problem I see with the platform is the pressure to post multiple times a day. I don't blog about every insignificant thing that comes up. I'm one of those people who would be content with posting once a week or so, but I went against my own grain at the suggestion of @papa-pepper who suggested posting 2 - 4 times a day to gain a following. I have a software business to run and farm chores like splitting wood, but other than that I'm almost ready to retire (I started investing in crypto early 2017 as social security insurance).
It's OK not to post multiple times a day. Just make the few you do good and meaningful ones, then if Steem become the next Reddit, your $0.10 post will be worth about $100.
This is all very true. I guess what I am most disturbed about as of late, are those friends of mine who have nearly been here since the beginning and are no further than they were a year and a half ago. They are packing up and getting out of dodge. They have worked and invested and one of them even has a 4 dollar upvote, but that isn't worth much, even if you do post 4 times a day.
I also dislike having to post so much, but when you are trying to build yourself up, save Steem and use a little bit for your daily expenses too, daily posting is absolutely necessary, but that's where the burnout starts if you are putting in countless hours without much of a reward for it. Sure I can make a few bucks on a video I worked 4 hours on, but I could also make a few bucks working at the home depot down the street, and there isn't the stress of whether or not I am going to get paid. This definitely is not a line of work for the faint of heart, but as you said, it is possible to make something eventually, I just think the levels of success here are very...different.
See, you just got an upvote from @dtube... You're one of the lucky ones. I've only had one legitimate upvote from a whale in the first week of posting from @curie and have been ignored ever since. Nevertheless, I was responsible for causing massive disruption to an important internet protocol that relies on time zone accuracy that would not allow encryption to work on smart phones that used the Olson time zone database. This happened because the company that tried to hire me three times then decided to try a lawsuit to try to put me out of business by suing a database I relied on that was used throughout the world.
Well as I said, I don't think that Steemit is an inherently bad place, just that I was down that so many people were leaving. I am also not afraid to call them out for the things that need changing, if they want to get better/grow, they are going to have to start listening to their users. If there is one thing that I HATE about this place is that it feels like an echo chamber for rah rah cheerleaders, and I can't stand it. In that aspect, it's no better than YouTube censorship, it's just...different. I think people on here would act/post much differently if money weren't at stake (or they wouldn't likely be here at all even). It bothers me though that people won't post how they feel because they are afraid of how it will affect their outcome on here. It is suffocating at times being around so much "niceness" because it isn't real.
Anyway, I will do my best to keep up and tow the rah rah line as much as I can stand, but I have never been too good at playing games and following rules.
That's one of the sad thing here, I try to be a genuine as possible... I think steemit is flawed, but I can see how it's better than many other social media (and most of these flaws are necessary if we don't want an authority to tell us what to do.)
One thing I feel could make steemit WAY BETTER is a better filtering system, a way to search posts containing two or more tags at the same time and a way to filter out a (one or more) tags you don't want to see.
I mean, I can already find good posts when looking at the new (not trending) section of #gaming tag, if I could narrow tags more it will be the best.
You, sir, got yourself a new follower! This comment is so full of great insight! I'm a newbie, and I thought a daily post would suffice, now I'm learning that if you do multiple post a day you'll do better!
A daily post more than suffices. The problem is too many posts and not enough quality. There's no built in game theoretical incentive algorithm that limits post proliferation. People would have better aim if they knew they had fewer arrows to hit the target.
Posting 2-4 times everyday?! what?!!... A good post of mine can take 1-4 hours to write, I can rarely put 2 or 3 posts in one day and not all will be my usual quality, but I can never write 2 posts everyday.
But I don't mind the time
lostinvested, I was doing the same on facebook for free.Yeah when I post multiple times a day, I find I am basically spending my entire day doing work toward Steemit. I was also posting on Facebook daily before now, but honestly not more than a few minutes at a time. I definitely never spent 1-4 hours on a post. I do understand what you mean though!
I occasionally wrote posts that cost me 2 hours on facebook, like analysis posts for a FB group. But I think I'm a strange case.
I have been on the platform since December and following you for about as long. So I am still here for now. I think the whales are what is killing the platform. They are too involved in massaging or bashing each other. They need to start looking at other content and showing appreciation for those who will be what makes this platform grow.
You hit the nail on the head girl. Keep up the fight and keep posting, I love ya!
Hey Beth!!! I give you a shoutout in my latest video here
We gotta hang on until the end! Patience and persistence! Things will work themselves out :) we gotta stay positive and be positive and do our part :)
#onelovedtube
Aw that's super nice! Yeah I totally agree that ya gotta hold on if ya wanna be successful, though I wasn't just on here for the money, and I really appreciated the friends I had made. I am not a very social person, so it has always been hard for me to make friends. Steemit makes that really easy though. I guess I'm just feeling down since so many friends in my circle have left.
I am new to the platform. I have not uploaded any content yet. I've been checking things out to learn how the system works. I do have some content that I plan to upload to this platform. I had a feeling that things were the way you are describing, the trending page made me wonder. I am not discouraged, but I know that when I do put out content I will aim for quality and not so much for quantity and I really want to connect with other likeminded people on the platform. I will definitely proceed with caution and I am entering with my eyes wide open. I don't want to give up before even trying, so I'll try. Thanks for this video!
This is an excellent place to try your hand at crypto investing. If you're a blogger, you will love not posting for FREE as with other social media platforms.
Jmho, but vloggers who love photography and diy food vids do a lot better, in many cases, than just the generic blog.
Steemit has been a Godsend hobby for me, as I get a few pennies that grow in value, and offer an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of trading, with zero coming out of pocket.
WARNING: Steemit has a steep learning curve, meaning, you have to do your own research on how things 'work'. I suggest finding a few 'experts' in trading to follow, and, treat every offer to spend your money on bots very carefully, aka run ;+)!
Btw, here's a welcome-to-Steemit tip! @evelynspeaks. And, stay encouraged. We all started with a 25; and grew our ranks bit by bit in MOST cases. Some grew the numbers by filling their Wallet with their own cash. This is a very decentralized platform. You will find a little bit of everything here. So, enjoy the view.
Best regards.
Peace.
Thank you for the valuable tips! I appreciate the warm words of welcome and the encouragement.
Take care.
✌!
Totally! This wasn't to discourage newbies at all, just an honest representation of how I am feeling today as my circle of friends starts to dwindle.
I understand. I'm glad you made this video. Thanks so much! :)
Hi @evelynspeaks! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @spiritualmatters!
@spiritualmatters wrote lately about: Crypto Tip: Some Buys Best Left For Days W/O A “Y” Feel free to follow @spiritualmatters if you like it :)
It honestly does feel like of our little gang that started, you and I are the only ones left... I've noticed that even our yoga/pole friends are earning significantly less than they were. I'm back to earning my $3 posts and I've noticed the chance of getting a random $5 or $8 comment vote has gone from once or twice a week... to zero.... and because Whales seem to have lost interest then people aren't creating as amazing content and we're on a downhill slide.
I think the problem is that we're all here to make money, and that's probably not the right approach - we should be here because it's fun and interesting and friendly and we can do things here that we can't do on other social media. I think we need to forget about the money side although and use it as a platform to do what we love.
YouTubers didn't originally make any money... they just loved the idea that people could see their videos.. and I think that's the mindset we need to have.
I'm sorry that someone ripped off your ideas.. that sucks... but unfortunately it's always going to happen whenever you do something great... so the secret is to always be improving, always be getting better so that if someone copies you... they're coping yesterdays-Beth... and they're still nowhere near tomorrows-Beth.
All our friends that have left... I really wish they'd set their accounts to follow curation-trails or delegate their SP or something... all that 100%VP just sitting there makes me cry...
Oh my gosh, I know right?!? I was really sad about @pawsdog, and @mrpuzzle and a number of others, on top of those I have noticed that are talking about leaving. And those people are like nearly dolphins. Or maybe just bass...puffer fish? Who knows?
I would love to just use the platform to just use it, and I totally understand where you are coming from, though, then why not just use another platform? I mean, sure FB takes my info and such, but I do still laugh for hours looking at my friends' memes on Facebook. Most everyone I know is still there, and even though I had to invest a little into FB, I have a fan page of over 2000 followers, and FB helped get our last video out to over 150k views. I am definitely not pulling those kinds of numbers here.
I don't know, I guess I am just sad and discouraged, and feel alone.
And @just2random too...
You're allowed to feel sad and alone... but I'm still here, I've got your back! I doubt I'll ever leave Facebook though... and while the random comments sometimes drive me bonkers, I've got a decade of life just sitting right there... with all my friends and event notifications.
I guess I've come from a completely different place... where I used to write on my own website and no one would read it... no one would comment and no one would engage (except for the 3 weeks when the TV show was on and I'd get 10,000 daily views). I'd put posts on Facey, and then people would comment, but those comments were on Facebook which meant that people Googling my page would never see those conversations... so for me Steem is a huge improvement.. and with it's high Alexa score it helps Google rank my website too.
In times like this, I think of the early adopters who have now become whales... they had no idea if this would have any sort of success, but they kept plugging away because they saw the potential in the platform. I feel the same way... I imagine that once summer rolls round that crypto will be on everyone's minds again (after a stack of technological improvements have been completed) and Steem will be back to where it was... or something like EOS comes along and is better, but it airdrops it's token to all of us and we play on both. Morale might be low right now and for the next few months, but the future does look bright to me.
Yeah, @just2random promised he wasn't leaving, just downsizing his contributions. It's hard to say for sure if we will see much of him though. It's definitely very sad. Our shitpost-searching #fight4steem group is gone. I am glad you are still here. You were my first friend, and I am happy to see your posts still!
Hey Beth,
I understand your frustration. Just as an example, I think my highest-earning post ever on this platform was under $5. And we started at the same time. Granted, I've been doing it very different than you and not as focused or intent on success. As a creative, I really, really hear what you're saying.
I was excited to comment on a post after discovering something because I wanted to share it with you. I'm still going to do that. You called out all these pop-up steemit schools with their self-proclaimed gurus, and I see where you're coming from, but I actually found one that I think is worthwhile.
No, I haven't joined a cult. LOL.
I'm actually not even going to mention the school by name here, and if you are interested all you have to do is look on my page and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Of course it's on a Discord Channel, and I've actually joined a couple different types of Discord channels, but this is the only school that I've joined.
I'll just list the benefits. Number one. Voice and communication. There's something to be said about actual interaction with a voice, and on these Discord channels the interaction is real. That in itself has been Monumental in revitalizing my spirit for steemit. The second thing I found here is community. I know that steemit itself is a community, but getting into a smaller Community has done wonders for me in feeling some sort of connectedness. Yes, there is a guru at the head of the school, but really that's not why I'm involved. Maybe for others it's their main reason, but mine is the community that I found where I'm at.
I think this community that I've joined on Discord is truly something special, and they need people just like you badly, and they're very open to people who are willing to be leaders. I also think your voice is needed there to be a realist, so that the real questions and concerns of all the new people that others may be afraid to speak up on, myself not included, will have voices like yours to bring up those issues and address those things publicly.
I don't think you're a Negative Nancy, as a matter of fact your brutal honesty is definitely needed.
I understand if Discord channels are not your thing, hell, I knew absolutely nothing about Discord before I decided to see what was going on there because I kept seeing all these people inviting people to their Discord stuff, but if you do happen to come over and take a listen, let me know.
Regardless, I just want you to know you are my favorite steemer. 😎
You're the bees knees! Thanks for such a great comment! I will check that Discord out!
100% agree! There needs to be big change here for it to make it. Abuse and bots I believe are the big problems.
First I think bots need to go and be replaced with real people that curate quality content. There are people here that I know you could delegate your SP to that do well at curating and up voting good quality content. Delegate to a curator and watch how he does if he slacks off or up votes content you don't like undelegate your SP and find someone that does a good job. Whales should be looking for quality content and up voting the good people and not making bots and letting shit post be bought. We could maybe have only one bot and a content creator could be put on a list that gets auto voted on as long as they are producing good content. They get removed from the bot if they start abusing with shit post/content. Once a creator has grown to a certain limit that they can help grow their own communities they are removed from the list. Steemvoter is a good program I believe but there has to be a limit of like 3-5 votes per day. I use steemvoter myself but only on people I know i will watch and are quality. If i cant be on steem its nice to know that the people i really want to support are still supported if i take vacation or can't make it on. People will have to choose their favorites since it would be very limited. Spam\plagiarism bots are a good thing. I like cheetah for instance.
One other problem I see also is there is bickering between some curators and creators. I have seen many people complaining about curators and that they need to go away. Many of these same people that say this don't bother to up vote on any of the comments on their own post. Voting on the comments and the people that are regular voters of your content will help you grow. When you up vote those people that follow you they gain a little power that they use on you the next week to grow your content. Its like a big circle it should start at top and trickle down. At this point it seems that content creators think they are everything. Creators don't believe that the people that sit and read for hours looking for quality content to up vote are contributing anything. The people that watch, read, comment, and vote are also important. I don't think creators have 3 or 4 hours a day to sit and dig through the crap and find quality to reward. Everyone has a job here on steem. The shitty content creator does not need upvotes. The curator that just logs on and upvotes a few random posts and says great video on a few random videos don't need upvoted.
I am not sure on how to fix the abuse though I have not put enough thought about that subject. I had thought about a payment limit per day possibly but there are a few issues with that one being gofundme type posts. I am not putting a bunch of money into this system until things are fixed. I have been on steemit for a bit over a month now and when i joined I super excited until I dug a little and seen the problems and was turned off right away from putting my money into it. Its a great platform has great potential but as a outsider coming into it its scary. I believe most people that come and see the abuse and bots are instantly turned away. Like you said its a bunch shit most times on trending and such. Does anyone think that a good first impression of steemit is coming to the site the first time and see bots and shitty content on the top?
I need to get going its lunch time! Sorry if its abrupt end! Probably alot of errors and such hope this is readable. Have a great day!