RE: Is blogging on Steemit profitable? How much should you earn to be "better" than average?
I appreciate your effort to quantify these metrics. A different spin from my deflated view lately:
As most of the Steem is held by the top 1-2%, they create a heavy outlier tier outside of the normal bell curve, which likely makes those figures difficult to see in reality across the world.
The large stakeholders keep selling hope and promises of profit and "the investment of a lifetime", but they're not spreading the wealth (like you generously do). These people elect to help their friends (same old story) and now repay themselves by passively getting interest on their SP, versus proactively developing the user base outside their friends. Yet, everyone still expects Steemit's community to thrive and undergo massive growth, which I can't see as possible when people don't share the wealth with people who are actively engaging and trying to adopt the platform. If someone doesn't have SP, they're often overlooked and called a small fish. That's conditioning people to be devalued and devalue themselves.
Ahh, Jerry's video is exciting, but he's far too biased to promote his own stake. I can't forget his earlier days where ethics were highly in question. The rich try to get richer and need adoption to keep their stake in this pyramid growing. No one is really buying Steem on the exchanges. That's my biggest concern. I'm on the fence of delegating everything and quitting Steem altogether because I'm sick and tired of the gross imbalance in wealth on the platform. I hate seeing good people struggle and give up. That energy brings me down. It's pay to play or find a whale or two to make your entire Steemit experience a success. I feel that people are increasingly becoming more interested in how to get more ROI than how to grow the community. Bots are making this too easy, which all prey off of people spending money to try to get visibility, rewards, attention, feel hope, have some pride for not having $.30 on their blog for 3 hours of work. Without this dynamic, the SP delegation and loans wouldn't be profitable, and everyone's SP bank would be flat... meaning they've have to start manually engaging the blockchain/people to grow their stake.
Hope you don't mind this venting. Perhaps you have some wisdom for me to consider at this low point of my Steemit experience.
I feel like an intruder between you guys, but I can't help to express my empathy and agreement with @steemmatt .. from my 6 month experience, steemit is a lobbistic and merciless sort of ponzi scheme. Once your account grows till a certain extent you get "pot committed" due to your invested money and time capital plus the potential future gains. Steemit presents the same neural hooks and brain triggers than the FB's like mechanism but it's worse due to the chimera/siren call of immediate and future money gain. In short time, you stop reading books or living real life and, instead, type till late night like a frantic hamster on a wheel without even realiseing it. I started to question whether this platform is worth my time and how alternatively I could better invest it. If I want to find financial speculation and subjection of the weak toward the powerful, I can look around in the real world, as surely there's abundance of that. In other words, life is too short to have it sucked like this. Forgive my being blunt but my sole red fish luxury is my sincerity.
Thanks @f3nix for sharing your sentiments. No intrusion! It's a public blockchain and you spoke very well on the topic from your view. It definitely gave me another perspective or two I hadn't considered yet, but could be just as valid. Keep your chin up because you're the type of intelligent and thought-provoking person Steemit needs to have for quality content.
Great comment @steemmatt. We are all here for our individual reasons. The best people are those like you who encourage and support others where support is due.
@f3nix steemit can be addictive. It’s not the only addictive platform. Loads of people live inside their social networks, and whether it is a thumbs up, a vote, a reply, a view, a follower, or some kind on monetary recognition, the more the better. To get more, people find their time is consumed by the network of their choice.
I am not sure about why you called steemit a ponzi scheme? I don’t see anyone being defrauded here. Of course when newcomers buy steem, the founders sell. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Virtually every company ever quoted on the stock exchanges was like that, and still is.
Over time steem will become more widely held. We will have fewer whales.
Thank you for your detailed reply @swissclive. I took some time before answering, apologies for that. About the seductiveness of the platform: we know that if someone wants to be addicted to something nowadays we all are spoiled for choice. It's intrinsic to the society we live in, based on consumerism underlying the concept of continuous profit/growth, no matter if sustainable or not. But I don't want to look like a Luddite here. What I wanted to mention is that the gratification mechanism of the steemit platform is peculiar as it associates to the social gratification an instant economical one. I believe that people more clever than me could study this from a neurological perspective or else according to the principles of CBT, cognitive behavioural theory.
I mentioned a Ponzi scheme as an analogy from a social point of view more that the economical fraud per se. In a Ponzi, the pyramid consisting of few healthy people is sustained by the enlargement and exploitation of the base and so on, till the pyramid crashes but the big fish (blink) are already happy and escaped elsewhere..does it recall something? As of now in my opinion there are great people here but there are also some whales taking advantage of their being on the top of the pyramid and looting the pool unashamedly. Since you mentioned the traditional markets, in every regulated stock exchange there are authorities that intervene, let's say, in case of insider trading. Why not here? Is this - together with the highly pyramidal structure and the competitive moat - supposed to create trust and attract newcomers to this platform?
Yes the gratification is peculiar because it drives some bloggers insane that they can’t get rich quickly despite their “wonderful” blogs. “Tough” is what I say. There’s more chance of getting rich in a casino (i.e. rather unlikely)
@swissclive - if you're active on discord and don't mind, I wanted to ask a little advice on something re: blogging. My discord # is 9927 if that's possible. Thanks.
See you in discord 9927...
I'm usually for an existentialist and critic approach. My point of view was very subjective but I'm glad it made some strings resonate (notwithstanding I believe there could be room for studying the long term effects of such upvote stimuli/gratification system on the brain). Thanks for your encouraging words. I'm also happy for this exchange and will follow you closer. At this point I will join @swissclive's appeal to you of keeping steeming (rebalance is fair).
I am glad you will not leave our community @f3nix. After steem’s massive price collapse of the last few days, it is almost worthless now. Those who continue blogging are the genuine folks. Those who stop were just here for the money.
Thank you @swissclive. These collapses are good as they clean the air and this is valid for the entire crypto market, in my opinion. I'm here mostly to express myself and create value, my main drive rather than money. As you mentioned, this is the secret to not get burnt of frustrated, just doing what you like with passion :-)
@steemmatt, Many bloggers are here just for the money. At present prices it isn’t very rewarding unless you are at it 24/24. Even then, a day-job would usually pay better unless you are a “star” like @jerrybanfield or @sweetsssj (I estimate that she makes around $3000 a month. A good part of that comes from her own upvote). She could have earned it in any other investment.
On the other hand, many bloggers are here for the friends and community. An upvote of 1 cent is more than enough for them to feel there work is recognised. They don’t rely on steemit for food.
In any society you will find those who chase the money and those who are here for others.
I totally agree with your point about Jerry. My feeling is that he has addressed the ethics issues for which he was heavily criticised.
Imbalance of wealth: Yes, it exists in steemit. Inbalance of wealth is a feature of the world. Equalise and production stops. Nobody who is rich did something you or I couldn’t have done. We are just too late to the party.
Please don’t leave steemit. Keep blogging for pleasure and forget the money side of it. I have been following you for ages because I enjoy your blogs. I don’t choose to follow many people. I would hate to see them stop.
Thanks for taking the time to reply with this and below. It added some coal to the fire.
While it's not a strategy, I hope this platform and blockchain thrives so the end justifies the means. I'm not a social media person in general, so Steemit has been a new world for me. It's been fun, I've met a lot of people, learned, and earned SP, but seemingly just have to rebalance it within my priorities a bit.
The only problem with this viewpoint is that the inequality, albeit slowly, is changing.
The top people are become less powerful. Steem power is being spread around. Each time I do a report, twice a month, the power of the Whales decreases.
https://steemit.com/steem/@taskmaster4450/steem-whales-are-losing-their-power-the-system-is-not-broken-report-through-3-15-2018
People continually attack the system without realizing the facts. If you want you can look at @arcange's reports from 6 or 9 months ago...they tell the entire story.
@taskmaster4450 - With all due respect, I do appreciate your response, although it appears to be an accusation that one of us in this chain is attacking the system without realizing facts. While those statistics are promising for what they are, may I suggest a slightly different focus off of such charts, reports, and numbers about power distribution to refocus on the crux of my initial point?
Many people with substantial Steem Power, in my opinion, use if for personal gain or passive auto-votes on buddies more often than generously using voting downstream to help the community feel appreciated and grow. No shock there for a veteran like you. You've heard it all.
However, for example, you engaged us here and added value to the discussion and community. I must assume that our comments weren't completely worthless if you felt inclined to reply. I feel that @swissclive, @f3nix, and myself also did the same good in producing thought-inducing content/discussion, but we were not rewarded by you. Was there any harm or downside in sending some encouragement or reward for sharing passionate feelings?
That's the general gap in encouraging/sharing/spirit that disappoints me most. It's not about power being spread or charts. It's how people use their power.
Many evangelists for the platform with loads of SP act more like politicians in my eyes. They talk the talk and get their earnings, but their actions in the form of voting, delegation, replying, following, resteeming, etc., show the truth. I don't run analysis, but everyone's activity is traceable, and I've done enough digging to see many leaders for their true colors. Let's hope that changes slowly over time as well.
While I appreciate being directed to reports and analysis by others, that doesn't take away from the behavior I've seen throughout almost daily use of the platform since August. There is plenty of valid sentiment from my observation, while charts and facts can address some elements.
Forgive me if I misread your comment as a backhanded way to tell us we're simply making false attacks without doing our homework.
I don't want to argue with anything you u say as it has relevent value. However all I really have to say is a .01 Cent post is worth INFINITLY more than** ANY FB post EVER!**
I am pretty tired of people complaning about rewards when its **INFINITELY **better then the most successful social media site of ALL TIME.
∞§∞Bless∞§∞
Well said @qinneaker. 1 cent on steemit is infinitely better than a thumbs-up that you get on any other social media site.
Totally agree maam,we need to give more time to steemit than to other social sites.I have my exams in between though i am giving here a lot of time.