Your content is not enough

I am tired and should be heading off to bed but I have a couple more things to finish off. Someone said the other day that they noticed me getting a little feisty lately - Pffft, I have always been a little feisty. It really is just the way I am.

There are lots of posts going around about content producers being hard done by on Steem and while I sympathize with them being a content provider myself, I also think that people need to develop a better understanding of the ecosystem at large. It isn't ready.

Sure, people can come here to earn and even do well doing it but the Steem platform in its current iteration is not ready to be able to do that for large numbers of people which means, it isn't ready. The ecosystem has to be developed a great deal more before it has the infrastructure and depth to be able to provide broadly and that requires a lot more than just posts.

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, there is a bit of an alignment problem on Steem where the platform is being developed from near scratch while simultaneously serving end users. It is a pretty unique situation. Yes, the UI is one thing but the tech combined with the economics, combined with the diversity of user, the immaturity of the industry all being driven by an increasingly decentralized and personal-agenda'd community sets up a 'few' challenges.

Wouldn't it be great to just deliver excellent content and get paid for it? There is that possibility, just not on Steem at this time for most people because, Steem is currently a content delivery platform, not a publishing company that buys and sells the work of authors. It could be that one day, among a million other things but, it isn't that yet.

This is a platform of relationships and if one wants to get consistently paid, one has to do more than deliver decent content. I can only talk for myself but comparatively, I have delivered decent content consistently that has on average much higher engagement than the average 2 comments a post for over two years but, that is not where my rewards have come from, that is just where they have landed.

The reason I have got rewarded isn't the content itself although that is a factor of course, it is that I have engaged with the audience, helped people out, made friends, socialized, talk hit in chats with those friends, given advice, put my nose where it wasn't welcome, had it hit a few times and thrown a few myself from time to time.

@theycallmedan posted not long back about the contributors being like Mike Tyson putting the skin in the game and I agree but, it isn't the content that is the skin, it is the community interaction, the support offered, the engagement, the conversation and the willingness to get in the odd rumble from time to time. The content is what might get the vote and it might even attract a few people in but, it isn't going to keep people here, it really is come for the rewards, stay for the community.

A content producer who isn't doing much more than producing content is actually not doing much for the community unless they are simultaneously embedding themselves in and becoming something of an information transfer hub where they have a community build up around them. Stake can have a community build around it as stake attracts many but, the same thing is possible to do for anyone willing to work their ass off to be part of the community.

As I have also said many times, this is an ecosystem and it is quite a complex one at that given all of the influencing factors combined with personal needs and desires and social dynamics. While I do think that it is going to get easier in time to interact here, I also think that the promise of reward is not going to be enough to keep people because it will always require higher prices, which will always attract more people in. At Some point, that pool is going to start becoming very crowded and even if price goes up, it is unlikely to feed everyone to the level they wish financially.

But, Steem can cater for much more than just financial incentives and if applications and communities help people embed Steem into their lives, the rewards earned will be just that, rewards, not earnings. Factor in a host of content specific applications that cater for people's daily digital consumption needs like gaming, movies, shows, news and whatever else normal people do online (porn) and the reliance on reward diminishes in much the same way most users of YouTube never have, never will or never want to earn from YouTube.

The content on Steem becomes useful and entertainment and it will hopefully also become shareable like various news sites or whatever share to Facebook or Twitter but, it will just be content. What makes Steem unique isn't the promise of crypto pay, it is that anyone is able to produce with the potential to earn and the audience is able to actually interact directly with the producer. This means that on Steem, a user is actually held to a much higher standard than on other platforms because they have to also have a personality, have to engage, have to be a member of the community, not just a recluse who pushes out great content.

This ecosystem is amazing and could be much more so in the future if it develops to cater as an ecosystem itself where contributors, developers and investors are all being driven by supply and demand through the consumers. This is the internet, good content is everywhere and it is available for free, what isn't everywhere is the engagement, the friendships, the personality that drives interaction and therefore, transactions.

Have a look at who get's monetized on YouTube or does well on Patreon and then workout why. It isn't their content alone because there are likely thousands of others producing similar, it is them as individuals, them as a force of engagement.

@theycallmedan is such a person who attracts people for more than his stake, he has personality and he isn't afraid to use it. This is the thing that people need to remember when it comes to content contribution here, the content is not enough, you need to add a few more arrows into the quiver and be prepared to lose a few more into the bushes. You have to be prepared to put yourself out there, be unique, be bold and find yourself and your place in the community or, make a place for yourself.

It is going to get easier and easier to engage with Steem but no matter how popular it gets or ow high the price goes, it will be the contributors who have dug themselves into the community who will end up taking the lion's share of the rewards because, it is the community who will choose to reward them.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and then, doing it alone would not be enough. What else do you bring to the table besides your content?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

---

View this post on Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface