The Life of a Minnow - Why You Should Care - Part One
This post is not a whine, I don’t want anyone to give me anything I didn’t earn. I don’t beg, and I feel a bit sick when I watch others beg - openly or covertly.
Why did I feel the need to make this post? I have noticed that whales and even some dolphins do not understand the user experience of the minnow. Honestly, some of you are really out of touch and thus you keep giving people advice that is just adding to the frustration of the minnows.
First off, I am not the average user currently on the site. I am an average person without a lot of exposure to CryptoCurrencies. I just turned 50 which I think makes me a geezer on this platform. I don’t write professionally, nor have I ever wanted to. I recently went into semi-retirement after 25 years in Start-up, Medical Technology - SaaS world. My focus was CRM (Customer Relations Management) now I have a hobby farm, extra-time and a good income, so I have time to invest in SteemIt. I also have some experience in Customer Experience and Client Facing issues. I spent my whole career attracting new users and making sure the company retained them. I was quite good at it. This is why I think you should care about my “end-user” experience.
As a new-user (nu) I signed up for SteemIt after hearing about it via James Corbett. I read a bit about it. Saw reviews both good and bad, and I signed up. I just landed in the middle of the trending page, no obvious place to look for support, no getting started manual. So, I started reading all of the “SteemIt” tagged articles from the site, each article sounding like they spoke the truth gave totally different advice. When to post, how to post, identify yourself, don’t identify yourself. How many votes I get per day, how to use them. Next message said, you are minnow don’t even bother to vote just make comments. Summarize this section to say, I was bombarded by conflicting information.
Slowly, over the next days, I began to understand there is no right article, no set advice. We are in the wild world of Decentralized Block Chain. I spent a few days being frustrated by the User Interface, and the lack of user friendly tools used by most blogging sites, like the ability to simply upload a picture. (despite not going on the block chain this could be automated?) I began to make posts. The silence afterwards was deafening. It worse than not making money, I had no idea if anyone had seen the article at all. At this point in my journey I know about whales, dolphins and minnows, but I still have this naive little view of whales pouring over new posts, looking for interesting articles to upvote. Yet, I see the trending page day after day. Same people, even dolphins seem to get a set number of votes. (Yes, I am still reading everything I can get my hands on, on and off Steem, I am well aware many think it is a scam) So, I begin to notice the patterns. As I start watching the “new” feed, I noticed many accounts receive 50 or more votes within seconds of being posted. By this time I am well aware of bots and voting groups. Someone approached me about a Minnow group called MinnowsUnited. We would vote for each other’s work, give encouragement and help each other to grow.
On day two in the chat room a well known whale popped into our group and said in caps, “ KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE FU***** HASH TAGS” and he left. About that same time some articles trended, with a theme of “Entitled Minnows” “Whiny Minnows”. Etc. The comments in many posts had “whale comments” basically saying, “We made this site, we mined it, and we will do whatever the hell we want with it, we are FREE.” Another user did a post kind of like this one, just trying to explain the experience. A huge whale said, “Sounds like you are just pissed nobody is voting for your shit.” Imagine the impression that leaves on the nu
Fast Forward to Today: I am about 5.5 weeks into this experiment and I am interested in staying. I missed out on Bitcoin and I want to stay in this one. I posted yesterday, regarding where I am now, but I will briefly restate I have posted every day, I read every day, I vote every day, I comment every day. I have had a couple of good posts coming in over $10, but mostly my posts are worth around .25 cents. Maybe I am a terrible writer, but that is not the feedback I normally get. Maybe if I centered my pictures better or got the commas just right. Keep working on it, right? I will, but I also want you to know, I have been working on this at least 5 hours a day for about 40 days. (40 days in the desert?) My sense is this is more about Networking than writing quality content. Which is good, because it is supposed to be a social network. We just need to start talking about that!
Yet, I am a optimist. I think I am getting ready to have a break through. I have built my followers, I have put my opinions out there, not always popular and I feel like I am starting to make some good friends. I will trend soon.
This is not an “I am quitting note”, it is a “Can You Imagine The Minnow Experience” post.
In my next post I would like to address some simple solutions which might help make the new-user experience more fun. Those topic will include:
Greeters
Minnow Mentors
Minnow Best Practices
Online Web Classes on the Interface
Minnow Help Rooms with scheduled volunteers to assist
Mentoring the Whales to Be Nice to Potential Investors
In my professional life I have designed and implemented these ideas, and I would like to do it here in order to assist the Newcomers.
Look for Part 2 of this post to have suggestions and duties I personally am willing to perform if there is interest.
Follow if Interested… It’s a Decentralized Block Chain Thingy
All art in this article is "Bad Art" by @whatsup. (Have you noticed how fabulous my bad art is?)
Adding part 2 https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatsup/life-of-a-minnow-and-why-you-should-care-part-2
Thanks for sharing your minnow experience. So far I have done 60 posts and never crossef the 5 $ mark. In that sense you do well. The whales should care about people upvoting because in the white paper they are saying they are competing with Reddit and they calculated the value of a vote and second they ard the biggest investors and if they still want to see some money for their mined steem they better attract and retain new members.
I want to post it with some solutions in mind also, so look for my post tomorrow or later tonight, depending on how interesting the debate is. LOL. Thank you for your comment.
hey I know how you feel, im just a tiny minnow like you. but one day we shall grow into tadpoles then frog and maybe even dolphins or whales one day ^_^
Agreed, we are building each other and our own accounts. I now realize it is a lot about networking and figuring out who and how to support each other.
I agree that there needs to be more focus on the end user experience, especially for newbies, and I'm sure it will happen in time.
Try editing your posts in steempower.org it simplifies the whole markdown process to a more traditional editor and a side by side view so you can see how your post looks as you write it.
Thanks for you thoughts and I will give Steempower.org a try.
Yup, that is very similar to my experience as well. One of the good things is, that here a lot is done by just people banding together. Some of the things you mentioned?
There are some things, that could be done also, one of them is improving the UI to improve UX, but I really hope that guys from #golos, will send their UI stuff upstream, since making better UX is one of their stated goals. :)
So, if you have an idea, try to find some other people interested in helping out, and fill that niche, that is one of the lessons I've learned from Steemit, and I hope that helps.
Some of my cool ideas sunk, because at the time I was unable to utilize the network effect, but the team I am working with @rusteemitblog, we are pushing #spreadthepower, in that the rewards that posts get are used to powerup the translators. While they aren't significant yet, it was still something that kept me going on, because at the time my posts usually haven't broken $1.
Even now, if my posts bring me ~$5 consistently, that would make me happy, but at least being active on Steemit somehow landed me a job, which is another good thing, that can happen. :-D Best part about it? I am in Siberia, my employers are in central Russia & moving a lot, but we can colaborate over the internet. :-D
Thanks great info.
Great article, I read it all the way through.
Come and talk with us at http://steemspeak.com - I´m sure you will fit in, 50 years of experience should not go to waste.
Sorry that my upvote is worth so little, but with steem and sbd being "ruined" in value, the system don´t let me upvote with what my account would normally let me.
Almost nobody is making money right now
Thank you for the vote and taking the time to read my article. I consider it to be my best post yet. Not due to the money, but it was well received and held a message which many identified with.
@whatup
Make Two of us at least, I am sure there are many more out there.
I do Support for #steemquad #minnowsunite
Thank you for sharing. That's what the platform is all about in Steemit social media.
Whether you get paid or not doesn't matters. I guess people only looks at the size of the pot before they give you an UPVOTES.
Thank you for the support and the comment, I would like to see this get to the "hot" list at least. I don't care if I earn money on it, but I would like to feel like those who matter at least saw it.
I understand your frustration @whatsup! I can only recommend you keep pushing! Don't stop, just keep going. We are minnows for two simple reasons: we came late and/or we have low capital. I would liked to know about STEEM and steemit just 6 months ago, you would be receiving an upvote, resteem and follow from a dolphin or maybe a whale, but you know what? We can still keep growing! Real fish can't pick to change species, we can! We are actually little whales growing, not any other species. Just keep up the hard work!
Also recommend you to follow the tag #usesteem, we are blogging about why it is critical for everyone here to #usesteem, where to use it and strategy for becoming a whale. You can join the cause by just using the tag :D. We'll report progress periodically.
-- @develcuy
There was no frustration in my post. Only trying to get people to see the disconnect. Thank you for your comment, and I will check out #usesteem
This is a very good post (and some good comments from others). It is important to understand the experience that people have coming to the site as new users. Obviously this is changing as improvements are made to the platform, but much more is still needed.
Appreciate you stopping by and reading it. Thank you.
@whatsup, this is a top shelf post. I felt everything you felt. I remember when your name popped up on one of my post. What a crazy month and a half. This post is personal, because I'm like you. I'm into the networking...I love the social.
I even mentioned you in my where am I now post yesterday.
@whatsup, I would say you are my favorite as well. You've always had the most genuine comments on my post. Do you think we have a chance? I'm going to be reblogging some of your posts in the next few days. Wondering if you go back and reblog some of your favorites of my posts.
I sure will. Also we could promote each other to the various groups promoting Newbies.
@Whatsup, thank you for following me. I mean it. I'm an idiot about a lot of this stuff. I get confused when you say groups. I'm the last guy to ask how to navigate ane work steemit. Are you talking like #minnowsunite?
Robinhoodwhales or curie.. there are others.
OK
Now That meme of Bernie....
Well, I never saw that one, lol.
I say Go For It,
I will stay tuned for next Part Two.
And You Are Never To Old To
Steem On!
Anns, I have really come to appreciate your comments. :) At first I wasn't sure. Thank you for always making sure I know at least someone saw my post.
And I also loved my meme of Bernie! Ha. I kill myself.
Your-Welcome!
:))