SteemIt Guide - My Experience
I am writing a A Guide for New Users. In the guide I recommend that new users buy STEEM POWER when they start their account. I didn't buy STEEM POWER and found using the system frustrating.
To vent my frustration and provide a service to other new users, I wrote this page to recount my first 168 days on SteemIt.com.
My experience is similar to others people who are in the plankton. SteemIt.com uses analogies from the sea world to describe accounts. Plankton refers to new accounts that have so little STEEM POWER that they really don't matter.
When I joined SteemIt, I decided I wanted the experience of building an account from scratch. The decision of not buying STEEM POWER was made easier because I don't have any money.
I joined in April of 2018. As Youtube had announced policies to purge small youtube channels; a large number of people joined SteemIt.com at this time.
I spent most of my first 168 days interfacing with other newbies on the system and was devasted when I realized that most of my upvotes were being washed away as rounding errors. If the total votes for a post are less than 2¢, the system is likely to wash away the vote as a rounding error. I've had over 250 posts with upvotes that did not receive an reward.
Veterans of SteemIt.com call small votes "dust," and dust gets blown away with the wind.
In the first 168 days, I wrote 649 posts. SteemItBoard.com says my activity is 117 blog posts and 532 comments. My posts have received 946 upvotes. I have upvoted 1,305 times. According to the SteemNow upvote calculator, the average value of my upvote during this time was just $0.0005. So my upvotes were worth $0.65.
My wallet shows that I have earned 17.875 STEEM which is worth a whopping $13.11. I am not sure how much I would have to pay to move this money to my bank account.
This means I've earned two cents per post. I am a slow writer. It takes me about two hours to write a post. I've made about a penny an hour for the time I spent on SteemIt. This is more money than I have made on either Twitter or Tumblr.
As I've mentioned, I spent most of my time interfacing with new accounts. I've noticed that most people who try to build a SteemIt account from scratch get frustrated and leave once they realize that the votes they give and receive are dust.
I ended up hiring a bot named @dustsweeper. Dustsweeper upvotes posts with under $0.02 in votes. I've probably made a STEEM DOLLAR for hiring DustSweeper to be my friend. I don't like using bots. I would recommend that people buy STEEM POWER and skip the frustration of the plankton stage.