48 Hours Later -- Here's What I've Learned About SteemIt. P.S. THANK YOU!

I made my account on SteemIt two days ago after reading a post by @kevinwong talking about upvoting fiction and things like that. And I wrote an introductory post that I believe was well received. 

Since then, I've been doing everything I can to try to learn the ins and outs of SteemIt. I figure if I understand those, it'll make thing easier for me. Ultimately, I want people to read the novel I am writing for SteemIt, but if it's not found, my experiment is dead. 

So ... Here are some of the things that I've learned on SteemIt since I made my account 24 hours ago. 

1. The Bots Are Crazy

I submitted a post yesterday about what I believed to be an interesting arbitrage opportunity and within a minute, I had 30+ votes from bots. Not a single penny worth of earnings, but a lot of upvotes. 

I'm not really sure I understand the point of these bots, but I've narrowed it down. They simply don't understand that each vote reduces your available voting power for 24 hours. So by upvoting everything, you're really getting almost nothing. 

On the other hand, if you can always get 1% of the top posts (for doing nothing but writing a program), it might make it easier to earn curation rewards. 

But right now, those bots are nuts. 

2. There's some serious jealousy

In any community, there is going to jealousy and envy. You have the people who make a lot of money and then those that don't make a lot of money. 

But there's also a little bit of an underlying sexism. I saw an exchange yesterday that suggested women might only be making a bunch of money because of "bewbs." 

The reality is that for a lot of us, we might never make it big. We may never gain traction, we may never see people interested in our content, and that's okay. It's important to be true to yourself and not get filled with jealousy and rage. 

3. The whales are wanted

I've seen more posts about whales than probably anything. People are trying to find a way to convince guys like @dan and @ned to come along and give an upvote. And why wouldn't they? One vote from them can be life changing. 

That's led to discussions about the perfect time to submit a post. I don't think Friday at 5PM EST is the perfect time, but hey, I'm here to write, not to try and game the system. 

At the end of the day, the whales will find you if you're creating great content. Why? I'll tell you ...

4. The average person matters more

Want to know how I believe you get votes from the whales? Have a bunch of, what are now called, superusers upvoting your content. These and a couple heros can give your article the boost it needs. 

Here's the thing ... You don't need to hit $1,000 in minutes to make a ton of money. You need to get enough quality votes early on that the whales recognize you. 

What does that mean? It's imperative that we build friendships with people. I want people to come read my writing. One whale is only one whale; I want hundreds of people, if not thousands, to read what I write. 

5. People are awesome

The last thing I've learned is that the people here are really awesome. Whether it's in steemit.chat or just the comments people leave, there are some really genuine people here. And I love that. I am hoping that I can stick around for a long time and learn more about what everyone is doing. 

Thanks for reading!