(Question) Are the Steemit earnings actually real?
I really need an answer from the community on this that's why I decided to not to put images or fancy layouts on this post.
If I see someone earning 100-500 dollars from one post is that actually real or just pushed by bots?
I recently saw Steemians with over 70 reputation making mere pennies from a post and I am asking myself if every single post I see making lots of money is actually just bought upvotes. And does it even matter to climb the reputation rank if there are still people with 70+ making around 1 dollar per post? Is there even earning potential with Steemit or is it just a zero sum game?
I would be very, very grateful for any insights from the community as I'm really getting kind of an 'existential crisis' so to say.
Thank you all!
As a fulltime-Steemian for a year I can tell you with certainty that the earnings here are very real! But forget the trending page and hot page because there you will find 95% posts that have been promoted with bots. A better way to find good content is search for specific topics and then follow those authors and check out their networks. It is not very intuitive but a much better solution than looking at those posts on trending. And a high reputation means that these people MUST have gotten some very good payouts over time. Just because some of them got low payouts recently doesn't mean they didn't had better times before.
But don't let yourself fool you: You can make some good money here and this might be the best investment of your time. Grow your account and accumulate Steem power.
Thanks for your answer! Yes I will be trying to at least be 1 hour per day on the platform. This should easily be doable besides school and sports. In general I honestly think that Steemit is a revolutionary concept and should definitely be adopted more widely.