Steemit Users: Stop Giving Away Your Content - People Are Stealing From You!

Consider for a moment the value proposition of a platform such as Steemit. Steemit allows for individuals to be rewarded financially for the content they deliver, be it photos, writing, poetry, performances... whatever you can create and put in a post you can share and potentially earn some money.

There are a lot of awesome community support initiatives that will help noobs gain some traction when starting off, and then there are some that seem to be taking advantage of Steemit users for their own (financial) gains. Ultimately, it's up to you what you choose to do but I am going to try to explain the difference and why this matters fundamentally.

Some initiatives have been created to help noobs get acclimated here on Steemit and have created methods that will help you get your content some traction. These kinds of initiatives are pretty awesome in my opinion and seem to be created by people who genuinely want to see Steemit succeed... so they want to see new users succeed. Any legitimate methods you can find that will help get your content which is on your own page and under your own username may help to give you an actual boost. @MinnowSupport is one of these initiatives and I not only appreciated the boost in exposure it gave to my content, but the active Discord community being there to help me understand my way around this platform.

On the flipside, I've seen far too many profiles that are created strictly to benefit financially from the content other people create, and they seem to target new users who do not yet fully understand why this is counterproductive and not fair. If an account wants to republish your content in full from their page, they are going to make money from content they didn't create. You will make $0. They may promise you exposure. They may promise you some sort of reward. But I guarantee you, they are using you for content and taking money from your pocket. You know what gets you exposure? Putting out your own quality content, consistently. Shouldn't you get paid for what you create? Is that not the very core goal here on Steemit?

These kinds of accounts are stealing from you. They are gaining traction and followers as well, based on the ideas of other people. Those people are maybe getting a handful of followers for being "promoted". But here's the thing: the more you post, the better you tag, and the higher quality your content is... the followers WILL come on their own and you will get to keep all of the money you make. These kinds of promotional accounts are a very clever scam that takes advantage of noobs, and I urge you to say no to those who ask you to repost your content in full without any financial incentive.

Here is a prime example. A couple of weeks ago I did a post, BE FUCKING NICE TO PEOPLE.. Posting this on my own, I made about $33. The post ended up featured as "Hot" and from that I gained a great deal of followers. I think part of what helped me get featured was the traction the post was gaining, and I believe MinnowSupport had something to do with that (this can be very effective if you time it well). Someone I had never heard from before left me a comment. I'll post the thread below:

Of note: This individual was not a follower. He waited over an hour until I specifically asked why he didn't upvote my content if he liked it so much. Very odd that he said I didn't give him time to do it. He had time to write the comment, it takes a fraction of that time to just upvote the post. Clearly, my curiousity was peaked but he failed to explain the concept and was immediately defensive that I was even asking. I took great offense to him alleging that his asking permission to repost my content was a formality due to reposting my images. Ummm: it's not about the images, it's not a formality. To repost my content, my writing, my writing in combination with the images... would be unethical. He didn't have a good reason as to why the @OCD page didn't just resteem content they liked. Hmm, interesting. Here's why the page doesn't just resteem the quality content they find:

Maybe it's because they are making over $100 per day regurgitating others content. And what do you think those people are making? A few new followers? The guy mentioned rewards, but as you can see never explained how one would get rewards. He also claimed they do resteem people, but if you look at their page do you see any resteems? I don't.

$100 per day times 30 days in a month... thousands of dollars each month, tens of thousands each year. And for what? Generating interesting and compelling content? Or exploiting others for financial gain? Screw these people.