Steemit is NO Easy Money - But it is the Chance of Your Lifetime

A common misconception for people new to Steemit is to assume that it will be easy money. Well, it isn't! Within my first 34 days on Steemit I made 265 Steem and 400 Steem Dollar. None of them came easy because I spend 24/7 reading, curation, commenting and blogging. Not the best hourly wage, is it? But never before I have felt so proud and excited about my work.

Be Patient and Diligent

In the first week I immediately began to post a unique and new series about How to Remember Names. Nearly every day I published a new episode. Let me explain what that included:

• Picking a person
• Finding mnemonic images for the names
• Researching great photos from the characters
• Creating a training card collage out of the images
• Optimizing all images for web
• Writing the text in two languages (English and German)
• Styling the article with two column designs using a self-made template
• Improving the design with new ideas
• Constantly changing the Footer with links to my latest articles

In total I published 25 of these. And they were relatively popular. Although each one was time consuming, I have learned a lot how to streamline my work and get much faster with each. But getting to this point was difficult. Most newcomers totally underestimate this. I certainly did.

Besides this series I wrote also many other articles. This is my 82nd post in total, which means I published 2.4 posts in average each day. Today this feels a bit easier but it is still a lot of work for me. I used the last week to come up with some new ideas.

Build up your audience

Over time you will gather followers which makes you appear on their home walls. At the moment this is one of the few ways to make people find your posts. For 99% of all Steemians it is the ONLY way to get found. If you don't hit a sweet spot with your title or topic only few people will find you with the search function. And you have to be lucky to make it into the hot and trending area, which most people rarely do and what requires a decent amount of upvotes in the first place.

That means that finding interested and sincere followers is key to become successful. The last thing you want is a follow for follow deal, where the other party will just clutter its home wall with a blur of content from authors they don't recognize. When you have people appreciating your content, they will honor it with their upvotes. Maybe they even become a fan of yours and give you always a bit of their voting power. You want to find as many of these people as possible and you want to keep them happy with your content.

There are many ways of finding your style. Some people just write unformatted texts without images and still succeed because they deliver their message over the top. Others shine out of their niche, create unique content, hit the status quo interest or do video and photo blogging with themselves in the center. But they all have in common that their followers have an idea of what to expect from them (or expect to not expect anything).

As a beginner you need to try out what works best for you by trial and error. I felt stupid after participating in a photo challenge or writing about a problem I have not even tried to research myself. No offense to the people who like to do or read that. But that is just not how I want to represent myself in the immortal blockchain. This is my chance to leave the world the gift of memory in all facets and variations and get paid for it. Thank you Steemit, I have searched for this opportunity for a decade.

Contribute to the Steemit Community

Whatever your style and niche might be, talking about Steem and Steemit is always a good idea. I have made all of my highest payouts with non-memory articles. Your niche will only speak to a fraction of readers on Steemit. At least in the beginning. We can all change that by raising awareness to it with our posts. Step by step. But speaking about Steem and Steemit will address the majority of readers here because we are all in the same boat about these two topics here.

The most valuable post for newcomers are tutorials. You need to research and learn about how everything works here in order to write useful posts about it. And that is actually not so easy on Steemit. There are many great tutorials out there but they are scattered and are often difficult to find. And when you found them you need to find a way to improve them and not just write the same thing again. Among my own Steem/Steemit based posts are really great tutorials. I was able to get many newcomers as my followers because they appreciate this kind of content. But their votes never really made these posts very valuable. Nevertheless I think this is one of the greatest things to do and I will certainly create many more tutorials.

What created the biggest impact for me personally as well as financially were my free writings about my feelings, my experience and my thoughts about Steemit. A probable reason for that is that I was being authentic and maybe able to trigger a feeling of nostalgia and agreement with what I had to say in more influential and experienced users. This post is exactly this kind of article I am referring to. I love writing about memory techniques but opening my heart to you, my readers, is what gives me the greatest pleisure. It also induces a mental healing by getting aware about ones own situation in that moment. But even though it feels easier, I still write on a post like this several hours.

Your hard work is more worth than you think

Image: Don Rosa

When you think that the $4 minus the 25% for your curators are not worth your time think again. Yes, you have spend hours of work to create another masterpiece and only few people read it and even less give you their upvotes. But that is just your status quo. What do you expect after just a few weeks? You are just a few weeks on a social media that has a tight core of experienced users and a sea of newcomers who followed the call of the new gold rush in the last few months when the numbers exploded.

All the work you are doing now is going to multiply over time. Your followers multiply, your influence multiplies, your payouts multiply and even more importantly the value of Steem multiplies over time. By the end of the year we might see a Steem price of 4-5 Dollars. Next year we might reach 10 Dollars for Steem and over a million of users on Steemit. Everything you earn now will be very likely be worth more in the future. The best idea is to hodl. No, not yodel like Heidi. HOLD your Steem and keep posting. Invest it into Steem Power and believe in the golden future when Steemit becomes main stream. I am convinced it will and I am not alone in that belief.

Try to find a balance with your work on Steemit. Make sure to be able to live from other sources first. Don't be like me, who tries to live from it right away. The currently low Steem price will make this month very difficult for me. But that is ok. Because I know that this is the chance of my lifetime when Steemit finally goes through the roof. I will be here to celebrate each milestone with you.