100 Followers on Steemit: what I learned and still need to learn so far

First of all I want to say thanks to my first 100 followers on Steemit!

I registered in August and started taking this thing more seriously about a month ago in September. I never expected that my audience would grow so fast. I only did a handful of posts per week so far and I already made it past 100.

Here are some things I learned on the platform so far:

• This thing requires dedication: you need to stop nagging about writer's block or whatever. Don't be a wussy and start writing if you have to.

• Don't focus on the money straight away: my rewards so far are absolutely crappy. I can probably make a lot more with curation and some other tricks. But I don't want to do this thing money-driven.

Yes, we all see those posts making hundreds of dollars and we are all jealous. But it takes time to work towards that level and to figure out how to do it. If you think of getting rich straight away, please save yourself the effort.

• Try to write about various topics: I mostly wrote about beer in my first couple of weeks. Later I found out about the idea of Six Word Stories which I will continue to do so. This additional topic certainly increased my number of followers. In the long run, you can keep the topics that work best for you. But try different things.

• Comments will get you attention: I invest quite some time in commenting other people's posts or replying to other comments. The next day, I always see more followers.

• Care about your followers: whenever I can, I will answer to comments on my posts. Sometimes with a simple thank you, other times with a bit of extra information or an answer to a question. This makes people come back and upvote more often.

• Try to write a series: a series is a good way to create content frequently. I started with two series: Bizarre Beer of the week and Beautiful Beer Labels. And Dave's Six Word Stories is becoming my third one. That helps a lot to keep on writing and have your followers stay tuned for more of your posts.

• Don't always go for the trending topics: the biggest topics don't give you much visibility, unless you end up with a hot or trending post. I started using other hashtags

A few things I lack in knowledge and want to learn from you

• Increase my ranking: I've been stuck at 38 for a while now and don't have much clue to do better. Can anyone help me out? Let me know in the comments.

• Curation: you can get a fair amount of curation rewards, but the system stays a bit unclear to me. I also should invest more time in curation. What is a good curation strategy?

Many thanks!
PS: Upvote, Follow, Resteem