Hello @davidfumo

Welcome to the steemit family and that's a great introduction post to begin your journey here.

I’m a 19 year old steemit blogger doing quite well on this platform and writing almost daily here for over 3 months.

I have learnt a lot and make connections with many great people ever since joining steemit.

I recently begin going through #introduceyourself tag looking for new steemians with great introduction post and promising steemit career to inspire and help in order to follow the right path (please don’t mind my age, it’s just figures)

As a minnow, focus more on interacting and engaging with other steemians because this is the easiest way to grow. When you have acquired enough steem power, you can then focus on curating to earn curation reward.

One great advice for you: “there’s one thing most new steemians like to do that steemit whales and dolphins hate to see and that’s begging for followers and upvotes” I see that you didn’t follow this route and that’s a good one for you.

For some reasons this strategy doesn't really work on steemit and it’s the easiest way to piss of most whales and dolphins that could help you.

Steemit is a gift economy and naturally you get back what you gift to others. If you read, upvote and drop a nice/insightful comment on other people's posts, they do same to you without you requesting.

I have a 2 month old article I wrote explaining the best strategy for growth on steemit.

https://steemit.com/universityofgreatness/@bania/ep-6-university-of-greatness-how-to-become-great-on-steemit-without-pissing-off-a-whale-how-to-become-a-whale-without-pissing