Been on Facebook 10 years after building up a profile on MySpace, Twitter for 7, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, Snapchat, Reddit... and now, another feather in the Social Media hat, you just signed up at Steem.
You have dreams of waltzing in to take Steem by storm, to show these backyard hacks how social media actually gets done. After all, you have seen the rudimentary user interface, you have read the poor content in Trending and you know you can do much, much better because, you have skills.
If you are already in, you already know that this place isn't like any of the other social medias and acting as if it is, is likely going to result in not very much of what you aim for. The inclusion of money available for everyone makes this place fundamentally different as unlike every other social media, everyone here starts their path already monetized.
What this means is, even if you know what you are doing on the other platforms, competition is already high and, the platform itself is not going to help you get yourself included. You are on your own. At least at the start.
Someone the other day said that they didn't realize earning here was going to be about "who you know". Really? On a social platform who you know didn't seem an important factor?
'Who you know' is one of the most important factors to being successful financially here in the long-term as it is those you know that are likely the ones that are going to be the people supporting with their stake, not an advertiser who has no idea who you are. That means, who you are as a person and how you behave is going to affect this too but, this doesn't necessarily good behavior and people get rewarded, there is plenty of room for scam.
So you have skills? Right, like that is going to help you here. Maybe in the long-term it will but at this point, it is still going to be the who you know that is the most important factor as for the most part, skills need to be demonstrated in order to get support and, without an audience, who is watching?
I hope you brought some cash because the organic audience is not very organic currently and you are likely going to have to buy your way into the eyes of the audience but, this is hit and miss at best also and comes with very little actual audience for long-term actors. You might make some profits though, those you pay definitely will.
Oh, you didn't know about all of the various kinds of bots, never traded cryptocurrencies, don't understand witnesses, or POW, DPOS, Blockchain, Dapps, wallets, reward pools, private keys, hacks, phishing, decentralization, chats, apps, delegation, upvoting, flagging, stake, vests, curation, immutability...
Oh, you are used to all of those management type things being handled for you? Seamless user experience, help desk support, centralized control and bad actors filtered and removed behind the scenes?
You know nothing, Joins Now.
You are in a new world, a free world, an uncensored world. A world where you have responsibility for both present and future but when you step in, the past is still going to affect you and potentially haunt you. Your past and, the past of the stake that is held that can support you or, anyone else over you.
Your content might be brilliant and hailed by all on the free platforms yet here, that means close to zero. You are building from the ground up and even if you bring 100,000 people in from your other platforms, unless you or they buy in, they can't help you too much. They will help those here already though as they push the demand for Steem by increasing the competition on it. How much do you hold?
This is different, this is new and all of those other social medias you have played on before are all possible here plus, much, much more to come. You might have dreams of taking this platform by storm but, in all likelihood, your dreams are going to be dashed on the reality of decentralized freedom, non-algorithmed content discovery and levels of technical and human behavior complexity you are unlikely to have ever encountered before.
There is plenty of good but, there is also a great deal of shady and most likely illegal that goes on in various ways. There are community projects that do their best to help and there are maximizers that do their best to take all they can.
Much like life, there are all types here and your experience and what you consider success is going to depend on what kind of person you are. This could mean you earn very little yet, accomplish your dreams. At the very least, you are going to learn a great deal Joins Now.
You sure you know what you signed up for?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]