How I see being a newcomer / low account on Steem
Photo by Jack Sanders from FreeImages
Being a newcomer
Basic
After much thoughts on HF22 (HF21), I've finally realized something. Surely, being a new account doesn't do well with Posts. I mean with the decrease of rewards, it is definitely not "worth it" to be a full-time blogger on steem... or is it really so?
It took me a while to realize something... that is, an aspect which many newcomers don't realize, and many low-accounts don't realize either... I'll plead guilty of that too:
Hey, you want your posts to be curated by many people, nice... but how do you want them to know you, please?
That's where HF22 comes in. You're that newbie, your account isn't worth much, & up to now, "networking" wasn't worth your time. But right now... it isn't like that anymore.
Remember you can give 11 100% votes a day. That means, that you can do 11 connections a day. Right now, your primary need isn't to post every day, it's to post around once a week (as to always have an active post) which also means you can focus on even higher quality.
As for the rest of your energy?
The answer is simple, goddamn network with people. Find those posts you can say something about. Either because it's your field of expertise, or because you managed to find relevant information about on the internet. It can even be reviews of works, in the creative content. Which author isn't happy to have someone who tells them "Hey I liked this because of..." that because of doesn't even need to be something extraordinary, nobody is asking for you to make a literary critic, it can be something super simple "it called to me as it happened to me, the hero was too forceful I didn't like it," etc. Yup, you can make simple comments.
Don't forget to also vote for that person, so that you get some curation reward, which will higher your SP and get you up the trending page.
Why use comments?
For an extremely simple reason: because it engages you with some people. Don't be impatient, not everyone will answer every comment you make, but seeing you twice, trice, etc, they will begin to interact with you, look who you are etc, thus getting traffic to your page.
Don't be a one-timer, don't decide someone doesn't deserve your comments because they aren't replying, keep commenting, keep getting engaged atop of curating.
This will get you more traffic to your own page, in an equitable way.
Think in a broader way
All those "like" (upvotes) you give aren't just free decorations. First off, they give you curation rewards, and then they give you some experience. Think about why you upvote the posts, what brought you to this or that particular person's blog... That's also what you want to achieve.
Also, brand your own posts. Make sure that you have something that identifies a post as one from your account. It can be a fixed image. I recently got this tip that it would be good for me to differentiate my posts' category (Personal / Vision Media Future) not by using 2 different accounts, but by an image that immediately tells my reader if it's personal or not. Following this, I've picked the one above for my personal ones, and the other one that you've seen up to there for the Vision Media Future ones).
There is nothing such as a free meal in life. You need to check others' account. Frequently visit the people in your own follow list, and make sure to leave comments when you can, engage those people both in comments when you aren't close, and in discord / WhatsApp / etc when you get closer, with this, you will find out that they will get a closer interest to your own publication.
Another thing is that given steem's price, there's absolutely nothing to gain for you from posting at 50/50. Directly pick the 100% SP, aim to grow your SP first. Why? Because the reward you are giving others is directly linked to the SP you have, and therefore, you can interact with people in a more meaningful way, with your SP growing, people will also want to engage with you more in order to get your attention, means you will get more upvote as the upvote you can give are more and more worthwhile.
With most newcomers doing that, the average reward will be better overall, and the people who really invest time and thoughts on the platform will get rewards. Don't forget to join discords servers when available, to get to know more people, the more people you know, the more people will follow your publications.
The change from HF22
I think that the HF 22 in this matter is that now, newcomers are more incentivized to participate, as they'll earn more from a single good quality post a week + curation, than from posting every day and not curating.
Low SP accounts
Getting out of the "low" status
There are several missions to accomplish to do that, definitely.
First is, of course, curating content. That is because as long as you are a "low SP account" you really aren't going to be all that rewarded for your posts anyways.
Second is to pick witnesses & discord server wisely. Pick one with a discord server that helps engage people together, not just upvote you. What a low SP account need is an audience, and it's definitely not going to give you one if you use bid bots for people don't read the posts / don't interact with those who are actually voting for, you won't get a thing from this end.
Certainly, nobody will take an immediate liking to your content, but you have to keep it up. You can also decide to mostly engage in curating / content, rather than posting until you are at a point where your vote is attractive enough to make you interact with people who are on another level in the blockchain.
Don't self-vote
First of all, you are only receiving 50% of your own self-vote, then you are also going to get the hatred of the self-voters hater, and you really don't want them on your back. If you have followed the advice above, as a low-sp account, you will have more in external votes than you have in your self-vote, so save yourself the trouble & hate, and get yourself into good terms with people, you are definitely going to be more rewarded that way.
Conclusion
While HF21/22 may seem like a bad thing, but in fact, it may end up being a blessing in disguise for the newcomers & low SP account holders. What they couldn't make by simply posting, they can make by curating people, getting in touch with the community at large, and investing their time in interaction will definitely make them out of that zone faster than just blindly posting and trying to figure out an audience.
Also, there's now a strong incentive to get SP, which means that indeed, buying your way out of that dark zone, and thus investing in your own account, is important. Growing the accounts to the point where you can empower the people you interact with will make your own audience grow too, which is another indirect impact that I hadn't foreseen back then.
That means that this "two-week wait" for creating an account is the last thing that's left to solve. I was thinking of a solution like making the account with > 10 SP capable to make only and exactly 1 post per week, and 2/3 comments/week and a forced 100 SP option, then put a 10SP lower limit to the power down (means you can't power down below that) would make it fair as it would mean that the people wouldn't be able to abuse that feature...
Let me know what you think!
If this post is older than 7 days, please support by upvoting my latest post:
latest post || 
latest postYours,
@DjennyFloro
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Hi @djennyfoloro,
I liked your post a lot and I believe that you pointed out something very important here on steem when you get started. People believe that it is only about blogging and writing posts. There are tons of people out there who are creating posts that nobody reads. Quality content doesnt' bring any readers... Contacts bring you readers!
What I would suggest to new users is to follow a certain amount of people that have some SP but not too much and that tend to interact on comments.
It's a good idea to read their posts, give upvotes but also to give real comments to start a conversation. I believe it's important not to try too hard and really follow people that post stuff you like and where you have something to add. Let's imagine that you commented the last 4 posts of an author and gave regular upvotes. The chances are big that this author will start to follow you too and maybe also give an upvote to your first post. Like that both of you win.
How to start with SP?
I suggest strongly to power up as quickly as possible because if your SP is below 100, you will not even notice the curation rewards! They will be below 0.001 and therefore go back to the reward pool.
At the moment Steem prices are very low and for about 16$ you can get these 100 SP.
Where to power up?
With all the tribes it's a good question what to do with the coins that you earn? I believe it's better to concentrate on few tribes (2 or 3) and power up there so that you can multiply your income.
Best regards,
Achim
Thank you for your addition of how to start & where to powerup!
While it's true that purchasing is an excellent way, I'm also thinking of those who just don't have the ability/finance to do so, there are also such people since not every country's economy is the same, and wealth isn't equal overall.
For those who can't use your solution, interacting is definitely the best way to go!
About the all tribes and so, I absolutely agree with you that it's definitely a must to focus on the tribes that stick for your "global account's theme" aka, if you mostly post poems, you should try ccc rather than Leo for example. Respecting the tribe's go is definitely important too, as it's part of how to properly interact with people.
Thanks for commenting :)
Good advice.
It was useful to me - thanks
Thanks so much. I never knew there are some steemians who don't like self-upvotes.
Thanks very much for the advice. I think this is going to make sense to me and I am going to utilise this opportunity very well.
The reason why so many people dislike self-vote is that each vote directs a bit of the steems on the reward pool toward the post that's voted on.
As a result, if you self-vote, you are deciding unilaterally that your post is of good quality enough to be a reward. It might be inconsequential if you upvote your own "real quality" post with a low-SP account. But when your vote takes 100$ out of the reward pool toward a 10-word post, now that's abuse.
Plus the quality is a very subjective matter... what you think is quality isn't what other thinks is quality, as a result, thus self-vote becomes a sensitive question, don't you think?
I disagree.
That's a very positive look on the recent HF. Many do not share the same thoughts as you. I personally think that the longer term effects from these changes are hard to predict. It is all hinging on whether there will be sufficient manual curation after all these changes
That's why I applaud your call for more manual curation
I will admit that I was a die-hard opponent of the HF21, however, I've begun to think differently when I reflected on how things works now. And on I could grow my audience.
I am perfectly fine with saying white in Day 1 and black in Day 2 when there is sufficient reasons, and enough doubt about the white and black of a given subject. It's why despite all the ill I've thought and said about HF21, I've decided to take another look, and see things from another angle.
All those reflections led me to the post above, where I've remembered what is the problem of newcomers, and how to make up for them, and what the HF21 can bring on the table. Finally finding the above-mentionned points, I decided to honestly post what I think!
What's your own point of view about it?
I think that the changes will be overall beneficial to the entire platform if we have enough manual curation. However, I think as it stands right now, we really don't have enough active users to generate sufficient manual curation.
Hopefully, as what you have mentioned, low SP users can start to engage in more manual curation since the curation reward is now higher. But, given that these users have low SP, the rewards might be negligible. And in order to get more rewards, these users might want to vote for bigger users since their posts are likely able to generate more rewards. Thereby skewing the "wealth gap" even further on this platform
Overall I think there are too many moving parts. The convergent linear reward curve could have been introduced later on to reduce the uncertainty for this change. For now, I really don't have a good sense of what might happen in the longer term. I'm hoping for the best, but always prepared for the worst
Dear @djennyfloro
Sorry for such a late comment.
I didn't have a chance to comment on your post earlier on (simply because of the fact that STEEM blockchain was down so I took few days off and allowed my eyes to rest a bit :)
Life on Steemit for newcommers is becoming harder and harder and personally I'm amazed that we still have new users ... still trying.
I think it's not only about reward system that isn't working in favour of newcomers. There is simply no way to be noticed and even best content will not help any more.
Trending page is dominated by large stakeholders. People who quite often know each other for some time and support themselfs. Nothing bad about it (I'm not complaining, just saying how I see it).
So if new user cannot find any value in being active on steemit (no rewards, no traffic, no engagement) then such a user will probably give up quickly.
That's obviously my own opinion and I hope to be wrong :)
I failed to understand what do you mean.
ps.
What's your impression so far after latest forks? One week after hf21 and hf21 has been introduced?
ps.
Check out my latest publication..
It brought some real emotions. I've been downvoted by over half million SP (attack of few accounts), however I also received solid support and few strong upvotes and now I will be enjoying the biggest genuine payout in my lifetime ;)
Strong upvote on the way!
Yours
Piotr