Truth be told, it’s hard not to be jealous.
I want to be honest about how I feel. I’m jealous. I don’t want to be jealous and I’m doing what I can NOT to be jealous. Still, the only way I’m going to get over these feelings is to be honest about them. Take this as an invitation to be honest as well.
Sometimes I feel that my natural and relaxed attitude towards my artistic output puts me at a disadvantage. I don’t want it to. I believe in being natural. I could have been famous at least 3 times over with my music but I don't like to do things that don't feel natural to me. I don’t want to treat everything as an opportunity to take advantage of. I don’t want all my actions to be part of my own plot for personal success. I don’t want to have to fit inside of some widely accepted idea of professional. I don’t want to always set a schedule, always make a plan and think about profit and gain whenever I do anything. I don’t want to kiss ass. I don’t want to wait for those with more influence to realize that I’m “providing value” as they say. I don’t want to keep my opinions and philosophies silent because it won’t impress the whales. Still I don't want to watch as all my peers become dolphins without me.
I have a community to support and I feel owe them more than $0.25 upvotes. I also deserve to have it easier.
I have amazing support from lots of amazing people. I’ve looked at the comments to some of my posts in awe. I feel so honored to inspire so much conversation sometimes and to receive so much sincere feedback. I love the friends I’ve made here and anyone whose supported me in passing, so this is not a complaint towards you, not by any means.
Still I feel frustrated. I feel frustrated that my success depends mostly on having a few dolphins and big minnows, that great success would depends on more dolphins and whales, that so much is dependent on auto-vote, and that I find myself missing a lot of great posts by friends because My payouts suffer when I don’t do the rounds and try to impress more people that I have a high degree of competency and dedication towards the community.
I also don’t want to start relying on autovote even more to support users I want to support, but as I feel I need to look towards bigger accounts to find my own support, I feel less time for the users who need my support.
I feel frustrated that more users with large accounts don’t notice and invite me into their circles.
I’m craving my own success, but I am also craving the ability to help others on the platform do well.
I see users who started around the same time as I did, @mobbs, @suesa, @reggaemuffin, @heymattsokol, @guyfawkes4-20 really killing it. There are new users like @axios and @spiritualmax whose positivity and quality content is really allowing them to shine. They all deserve it! No doubt!
I am jealous of all these people though, I need to be honest about it. We’ve all managed to show the community that we have something to offer, that we deserve success, but they’ve all managed to impress more users with higher Steem power, early enough that they don’t get tired and become lazy about their content. For months I tried to do everything organically, to avoid appealing to groups like @adsactly and @sndbox for help. Eventually when I saw everyone else taking off with the help of such groups, I made a compromise and applied but both were full already.
I try to focus on what I can do rather than being jealous, but sometimes I tire myself out or hit s brick wall.
Perhaps they’re work is more valuable than mine, but in the end, it’s really just about how much steem power your supporters have. I didn’t get as far as I have because a bunch of minnows liked me. Those minnows happened to work for @ocd. I got a huge bump with help from @cryptohustlin who showed my work to a few whales who upvotes it once or twice. I get consistent payouts thanks to a few friends who believe in me and put me on autovote. It isn’t about how many upvotes you get, it’s about whose upvotes you get and who has you on autovote, it sucks.
I don’t think this post will do much to impress the larger accounts who seem to believe that you should just work your ass off forever and shut up and be thankful and one day they’ll notice and throw you a bone. I’ve spent 6 months participating here full time, 17 weeks on the Deadpost and we still can’t pull a consistently high payout despite tons of minnow support, unless a dolphin or whale notices...which they SOMETIMES do.
I don’t like going around to promote on others posts but I kind of feel at a loss here and might have to start spamming links. I may have to start using autovotes a bit more strategically in order to get some dolphins to do the same...I don’t know. I thought I shouldn’t give so much of my upvotes to bigger members of the community because I want to save it for those who deserve it more. I just know all my friends who are struggling deserve more than a tiny upvote from me and I deserve more for myself and I am trying my hardest to find a way to make it happen.
I’m mostly frustrated about the fact that Steem has caught up to SBD and so it will take a lot more to power up. I feel like I’m missing a chance to be able to carry lots of weight here and really make a difference.
The Deadpost Initiative should be trending already and i want to make sure that happens. I do not want to use cheap tactics like forcing people to resteem in order to be eligible or giving sbd to all participants so more people join. I want to make sure my influence grows so I can spread support to smaller members of the community who are struggling because they don’t fit in with the groups that have lots of dolphins and whale support.
I love anyone who puts the time and effort into reading and commenting on my articles, I’m sorry for the whining, I’m just trying to be honest about these feelings which I sometimes try to brush off to the side,only to find that they come back stronger next time. I’m thankful for my payouts and everyone who upvotes and resteemed. I’m just quite ambitious and see an opportunity here and I’m trying my best to make sure it doesn’t pass us by and that we don’t need to sacrifice our own way of doing things to achieve success.
Thanks for your continued support, I’m always here if you need me. If you have something you want to get off your chest or if you want to tell me I’m a spoiled brat, come find me, we can talk it out.
I will catch up with all my comments on all my posts later, I want to cheer myself up first and come back at your with more energy.
Somewhat predictably, I totally agree with you and I also sometimes suffer from jealousy. 😁
I too had the experience a couple of days a go, seeing someone who started around the same time as me, rocket ahead. She mostly posts photos with a single sentence but someone has given here a nice chunk of SBD so now her upvote is worth something and her self upvotes (which I personally have no problem with for minnows) means she'll get further and further "ahead".
I totally disagree that nothing you write is "special". All that really means is you're not playing the "post what earns money just for the money game".
Please don't change what you write or narrow yourself to a contrived niche. Maybe you need to be a bit more strategic and judge yourself less for it but surely you can succeed doing what you're doing.
If you can't then that means I can't. And if I start posting stuff just for the money I'll leave. I've played that game for too long outside of here. My interests don't fit into one niche. The people I follow don't fit into one niche. I don't like cats!
I'm trying to find a balance between being strategic and not selling myself out by what I post. If I can't make that work I'm off. I can make more money a lot faster in other internet stuff I've been involved in.
Could you post less frequently but do more with those posts? I have no idea as, as you know, I'm new here. But I'm adjusting my strategy as I go along and getting better results. But, of course, we're talking peanuts so, long term I'm not sure if it will make any difference.
Hope you've managed to find something to cheer yourself up with and once again before I leave - I totally disagree that nothing you write is "special".
It’s exactly that kind of experience which drives me nuts! Actually if it were only the people. I listed doing well I might take more responsibility for it. Thinking my content isn’t good enough or I’m not consistent enough with my random topics, but we all know it’s more about WHO follows you then how many follow you.
Thank you for your unwavering support! You are a perfect representation of who I write for, I want to succeed writing for you and people like you and I won’t give that up, even if I shitpost (which I may) I will try to put something meaningful in it.
I used to put a lot more into ALL of my posts without any shitposts, and there would be so many that were barely noticed, I felt like I could just keep a private blog somewhere and just send it to 2 people and it’d be the same thing. I like posting often and recklessly, it’s exciting.
I also think I write some pretty special stuff sometimes, but it means much more that you think so! <3
I can understand the jealousy and the ire. I'm not quite at my one month mark; but I've seen it.
The completely idiotic one word post, or the meme that gets $50+ in upvotes, EVERYTIME one like it rolls around.
Yet here sits your careful crafted piece, that you think witty, and wonderfully worded. Titular and tantalizing, and yet aside from your friends and the few followers that you've managed to garner a few bucks... IF you're lucky.
I agree with @suesa however. Niches are key.
I'm trying to capture my own with my pieces of writing; and I'm still feeling it all out. How I want to be known; and what for.
Patience is indeed a virtue apparently; I read an article on here yesterday about murdering Patience and how she didn't deserve it... and now homicide is stuck in my head since that personification was made and hammered home... ANYWAY off track.
Hopefully finding your own niche, or a niche to try and hammer your round peg into that square hole will help with flow and vote traffic; at least enough to assuage those feelings of jealousy; that ugly green bastard. Shrug it off and keep going man; all things in time, think the Long Game!
As for the Deadpost Init; I'm unaware but I'll give it a look-see.
Cheers!
There are many kind sof frustrating, of course I always try to keep a positive outlike, sometimes I slip. Sometimes it’s more than jealousy, you compare yourself to yourself. The posts that I put so much of my energy into to help others will get $3 and a Whitney post like this one gets $40 haha, should I whine more? I don’t think so, but i find all my problems at steemit are similar to problems I’ve had in 3D. I just kind of play to a different drum, and eventually stuff works out but it’s always a much longer road than others to get there.
Thanks for the support!
I understand you. Believe it or not, I'm often jealous too. Not when it comes to payout, but when it comes to who exactly supports me/others. So I can somewhat relate.
I was lucky, I was noticed. I screamed into the void and wasted my first 2 steemit months being in the chat almost all my waking hours. I still spend most of my free time there. That helped.
But I know you from the chat, so you're not one of the people who don't try to socialize.
I think your problem is content.
Now, don't get me wrong: I am not saying you're a bad writer. This post here is the first I've (knowingly) read by you (shame on me) and it's well-written and has a good flow. But it's nothing special.
I've scrolled through your posts of the last 16 days, just checking titles. The dead post initiative is cool, I've seen it before. But ofc nobody with high SP cares - their posts are rarely undervalued.
Your other posts look alright too, when just scrolling past - but mostly not "eye-catching". Some crypto things, some help for newbies, some personal thoughts. Might be all useful content, might all be written well.
But it's not what catches eyes.
Finding a niche is hard. And I'm not saying that, just because you found a niche you'd be getting higher payouts. This is steemit, without the right connections you basically get nowhere.
but
A niche might help you.
I hope you don't feel like I'm criticizing you or trying to invalidate your frustration, you're absolutely right to be frustrated. I hope to give you an idea of what might change things.
That's ok. I don't have any problems with anything you said. It's all very realistic advice given the situations of steemit.
"Of course nobody with high SP cares" - This is where my frustration comes from. Everyone talks about quality and "adding value" but I often feel they only want to support those who directly support them. I feel I've missed a lot of chances by helping those who need it more, rather than trying to use my upvote to make nice with some larger accounts. When all is said and done, success at steemit is all about auto-vote, if you get on a few big users auto-vote you are good to go. I spent a lot of time criticizing this and actually missed a lot of chances to get on a lot of people's autovote.
I often feel I'm not capitalistic enough for steemit...
I have a niche but it is one I created with other minnows without the support of any one with substantial power and without much monetary support to offer anyone. I was mistaken in thinking that there would be those with power who would like what we were doing enough to consistently support it. There are some who support it, but usually in passing. I felt I needed to do this because I really didn't feel myself in any of the other niches, I don't really agree with the way a lot of them do things, or in your case, it's just about different interests.
Your success comes from the fact that you contribute quality AND you fit into a niche that already has a substantial amount of power behind it. I totally understand if you don't frequent my blog, we have very different interests. There are powerful users who write about similar topics to me but most of them don't really spend much time looking at smaller users posts, even those who leave great comments, at best they have a few friends whose posts they check out, at worst they just post their own and auto upvote whoever is likely to give them good curation rewards. I could list those people but I won't.
As far as my own articles, I don't take offense because I have lots of good material that you haven't read. It's hard to be consistent though when so much of your high quality material goes unnoticed and you still manage to get a $9 payout on drunk posts about cat pics though.
Your advice is all greatly appreciated. I don't think there is anything I haven't heard before, but at least it's a reminder that my idealism and insistence on doing things my own way may be holding me back....which makes it even more frustrating but might be something I need to hear.
It's really hard to figure out....it really changes every hours... I mean, look, I got a $10 payout on this post. It's not bad, I'm obviously not a total failure at steemit, I just wish I could be as succesful as you guys without changing myself and how I do things.
Thank you so much for reading, even just once, it means something to me.
And so this is it.
I don't have to say much but that sentence is also a reminder for me as well.
It all comes down to steem power, if you are whale then you don't need to care about other voters because you will make money anyway.
You will get some hundred bucks for even a non worthy content, who is there to judge?
My writhing is kinda boring, hope you get the point.
It still needs work and time to get to this point tho. I didn't join as a whale and I never pandered to whales. Or at least I tried not to.
You need to get noticed once, by one person, who then upvotes you frequently. That's often the key to success.
And highly unfair, I say this as one of the lucky ones.
So do you think is better to spend time on the chat or on steemit leaving good comments?
Depends. Chatting is tedious, you'd have to be online almost constantly to make sure people remember you in more ways than just "I have seen this name before".
It's an option, but I think a less time-intensive way would be writing thoughtful comments. But I don't think there's a "one fits all" for this.
I can relate.... Thank you for your honesty with this. Truly. You got my tiny tiny upvote at my full power - whatever that is at this moment. This is not, sadly, a meritocracy, but it is what it is. Maybe one of these days initiatives like yours and ours (@IsleofWrite) would indeed be able to help those deserving minnows in meaningful ways, but alas, for now, it seems that we need to kiss the right ass.
Or the many smaller right asses :-)
Best to you and I'll follow to see how this plays out for you.
Well, this single post here has made about twenty times what the first eight chapters of my novel have made combined.
While it may be ironic that this post is paying so well compared to others on this blog, I don't think there's really any comparison to be made between your payout and his. You joined last month and this is literally your only interaction not on your own posts, while @whatamidoing has been blogging, interacting, and engaging in time-consuming activities that boost other members of the community.
That's not intended as a scolding, but merely to point out that you can't expect to come here and do well early on unless you're porting some massive following with you. And that if you expect to start earning more, you will need to go beyond your own content. A lot. And sadly, as this post points out, even that is no guarantee.
That said, I checked out your blog and your writing is good, and I'm not sure what group @whatamidoing had in mind, but you're welcome to The Isle of Write Discord server where we have a lovely community of creative types including many fiction writers (myself included).
Welcome to the platform and good luck to you :D
I recognize the irony here, I was not expecting to do so well on THIS post out of all of them. Trust me, I’ve been there too. I still don’t get any comments on my fiction, steemit is too oversaturated and the seven day payout limit encourages us all to keep going as readers and as contributors so I don’t think this is an ideal platform for fiction....some people make it work though. I’ve taken a break from fiction and hope that’s one day I can consistently make this kind of payout, then maybe my stories will get the attention I wish for them.
Do you know the discord for fiction writers? If not I’ll dig it up for you
I wonder if you've been by the Isle or seen the anthology project we are working on. We certainly aren't any whales I'm sorry to say, but I was recently directed to your Deadpost Initiative and it might be mutually beneficial to chat. I'm following now and will start linking your Deadpost posts in our server as well as going through them for possibly curatable fiction.
Thanks for all you do. I know it can be discouraging and I haven't done half what you apparently have here. Hopefully it's not so poorly rewarding forever. You definitely deserve more.
At least on steemit you are not paying for blog hosting or sitting on a pile of merchandise.
But, i do understand where you are coming from.
I could do what @papa-pepper does... but it just isn't me.
Its not that I don't have the knowledge, I got that in spades.
Its that I do not share my life, it is very secretive, and what I really want to do is exchange knowledge.
And thus, the article that took days to write is trounced by the quickly penned post about cat pictures.
Exactly, not all methods of "adding value" are easily classified or packaged into something bite sized.
I figured out in my first few days that holding contests were an easy way to gain attetention, but I don't like it, it feels cheap (which is not to say they're all useless, I think @papa-pepper puts a lot of effort into his contests and so they create a fun atmosphere) . I only do Deadpost cause I think its something the platform needs.
I knew using my own photos could help people relate and remember me quickly instead of slowly after coming across me a few times, but I am not really into pimping my life out on the internet.
I see that YEAH STEEMIT posts always do well and so does crypto related stuff, but I only post about those when I have something to say, crypto only now that I'm actually interested in it (where I wasn't before).
I always just want to let my cat start typing a post and add his picture when I see how my shitpost on him got a higher upvote than a lot of posts that I put hours into. This place is so extremely far from what it COULD be, but it still seems to be better that anywhere else on the internet. All I can do is try my hardest and let things play out how they will.
It's hard, this whole "adding value" thing, and the whole "being seen" thing. I've been add this for a year... and I still don't fully understand how things work around here. Every time I post, it is still with hope that what I post will be seen. I do have a handful of people who "support" me; most of them "late comers" with little influence.
I expect it's much the same thing as I experienced with blogs in the part: I don't really write much of anything with authenic meaning... and people were more interested in " story" than authenticity.
Yes, it’s very hard to “sell” authenticity and we are used to buying and selling. Also much is about timing and having the right set of eyes happen upon your work. Today I was lucky enough to be noticed by suesa who gave me a big boost and so acidyo noticed it and I’m good to go. I wish it wasn’t always but up to one or two people because I don’t really fit in to any of the cool crowds. No dolphins have put me on autovote...once again wish it wasn’t up to that. The problem is and always has been distribution of wealth, something most people don’t like to think about when they are doing well. Sp Delegation helps the community a bit, but the whole economy is still as lopsided as the world economy.
No more complaining for today, this post did well, I just have to hope the right eyes notice next time when I’m being positive and proactive and write something better than this! I enjoy yournwriting. Sorry I stopped popping in...spread thin...you know...steemit....
If you are feeling a bit jealous about others and how they are succeeding, do you ever notice yourself sitting in silence and thinking "@whatamidoing"?
Nah dude, that wa a one time thought while signing up, but that moment echos on into eternity
Very nice post. I voted. But deeply recommend you concentrate on positive goal. NOT being something is negative. Focus on BEING something will get you to a better place.
Yes, I fall of my horse sometimes when I put in a lot and feel it doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve been grinding for 3 months because steemit is the best thing I’ve got going right now as far as future prospects and I love it most of the time. I’m just a bit worn down I think.
Just hang in there man, the pieces take time to fit together. Right now it's all falling into place, but slowly.
There's also MS PACC which, upon getting some traction, will bring huge number of people to the Awesome group.
After that, the Deadpost Initiative will get another boost.
It'll work out!
(Can relate about efforts seeming like going to vain btw!)
Thanks man! That’s exactly what I need to hear, things do fall into place slowly sometimes.
Yep, glad I could help in some way buddy!