I MADE MORE THAN p/m MINIMUM WAGE IN FIRST 24 DAYS ON STEEMIT... THANKS MOSTLY TO MSP

Here is my Steemit scorecard, after 24 days, so to say...

---

Here's the journey.
After being introduced to Steemit by @samstickkz I registered and waited 5 days for the email.

---

---

Really that felt like a letter in the mail from a university you applied to.

Let's get this done with. Steemit was sold to me as one that I can make money off. It wasn't the humour and intelligence of @sircork, the warmth of @sammosk or the brilliance and wit of @stitchybitch, neither the depth of @soundwavesphoton. No, I didn't come for the amazing community of PALnet @minnowsupport project. I didn't even know there was a vibrant Nigerian community driven by @ehiboss, @gbenga, @richguy and the rest. Biggest one: I wasn't told I could write any creative piece after TWO years hiatus, and grow a following for that.

So I made my first post... FOR THE CHEDDAR and it made me $0.00. I could just have backed down at that point.

But I've been around long enough to know good things don't come easy. Others were making different degrees of success and I knew I could cut my teeth if I gave in the hours and brain-joule. First things first I set to work on brushing up my content, looking for an angle people could find useful. Now I'm deviating from my cheddar chase motivation. That came with its success.

The next stage of this metamorphosis was the game changer. Relationship. I stumbled into this PALnet group on discord (linked above). Now this is really the first time I found any value in the discord app. Take that, Jason 😁. Much like Slack I had countless short stints with the platform. But I found a worthwhile community at last.

As was norm, the first channel I visited was the "postpromotion" where it was okay to be insane. I mean just go in here and dump your link. It's just like sliding your well written job application letter into one of these stuff...

... then hope a Fortune 500 company will pick it up. For real that was my lowest low. I used the auto upvote bots alone, despite its limits.

Thanks to Providence I decided one day to go into the "general-noposting" channel. I stayed there for a while and just read the exchanges, picking particular interest in a bright green username (I love green 😊). He seemed the center of this circle who threw the ball iteratively to the rest of the players to head back. And I noticed a peach 🍑 theme to the converse... with some occasional snake🐍. It was fun. They knew themselves. They were making reference to previous events and all seemed to know some @aggroed guy and Muxxy and Shane. Names that sounded intimidating to me at first. I felt like a kid who just joined the class in the middle of the term.

I held my breathe and threw a greeting to green guy, @sircork. He responded. I mean the guy all the girls in class were queuing up to talk to just gave me attention. Some young Nigerian with a lean steem account, and even leaner bank account, managing to keep his Huawei phone from freezing dead. Most times I just want to throw this device on a wall.

I told sir about my Africa poem and he offered to read. Elation. Then came his comment. Much more elation. To say I was buoyed was an understatement. So I made another post, dedicated to him this time, sent him the link. Sir, being sir, read that post and dropped his thoughts.

It was a Steemit home run for me. I found a community. I made new friends as a result of the Don King marketing my post got within the PAL community, courtesy of a guy whose first name I didn't even know. And guess how that post did.

(screenshot taken 24/7/17)

So just when I conceded to stay for the community, the $ came. Money surely has a history of evading man's agenda. I guess we could deduce the bitch hates stalking chasers.

More importantly, I found an audience and that resultantly challenges me to wake my creative will. That, I am putting in the hours at. The energy of the other creative geniuses in PALnet is another reason why I will stay.

To sum up, if I had one advice to give new guys craving success in here, it is to make connections. Okay. Let's make it two: join PALnet 👉 here. Now. Come for the bots, stay for the community.

In Nigeria the monthly minimum wage is an embarrassing 18,000 naira. To give it perspective, that is $50. That is what it costs to get a 50kg bag of fine grain parboiled rice here. That will buy you two fidget spinners. Yeah, some peeps work for, and live on that much here.

But in my first 24 days on Steemit I have made more, doing what I love and becoming a better person. Imagine what the future holds for poor nations if they embrace Steemit and cryptocurrency. Maybe we can defeat poverty and create a fairer world. Imagine. Steem on, dear friends.

Peace.