Steem blockchain if and when it scales user adoption to millions with a market cap in the billions can certainly provide a basic monthly income via content creation to several of its users in varying degrees.
But before we can get there, there's a ton of work that the people running this place have to do. There are plenty of issues that needs to be ironed out before we can get anywhere close to that.
I came across articles from two enthusiastic Steemians; Thecrytotrader and Sathyasankar on this subject and decided to address it a little myself.
I'm writing this as an early adopter and I've seen my share of ups and downs here. This post is not meant to discourage you but help you keep a realistic expectation of this place and all that it can provide.
As it stands today, we're clearly not quite there yet. In some areas we're worse off than a year ago, even as we've improved in many others. Needless to say, there's a lot that needs to happen for this platform to be able to provide you with a stable source of income.
Since earnings are largely dependant on community upvotes of your content, it's unlikely that any rewards you will be able to sustain in over a long period of time. People's interest change and so does their priorities.
Nothing is guaranteed here and never will be. You can build a large following or do a whole lot of work for the platform. But, because it's crypto things move very fast and changes are dynamic, it's not necessary that your income will scale over a period of time. It can very well scale down owing to various factors not in your control.
Income here is dependant on many factors and price of the Steem token largely determines the vote value of everyone here. Since the reward pool is limited, the amount of Steem Power in use also determines how much influence everyone has on the reward pool.
More Steem power comes into play, the lower everyone's influence on the limited reward pool will be. If Steem price was very high, we'd be okay, at current rates its a nightmare if you are looking to fund an important project or pay your bills.
Since the advent of bid-bots and large scale delegation to some dapps, we've seen influence dwindle for all. Smaller users have been hit the most as no matter how much Steem you buy, it makes no differnece. Influence reduced by more SP in system is magnified by fall in prices as the reward pool size also reduces.
Come over to Steemit, and have a great time. Think of the tokens you hold as something holds a better potential to deliver great returns over a longer period of time. The expectation here is an increase in the value of token. Steem is massively undervalued so $5-$10 is not a bad price for it. But we're a long way from getting there and hold those levels.
In the short term, don't quit your job, your studies or anything else you are doing, purely to concentrate on earning from Steemit unless you have some magical way of getting large votes or you have plenty of experience in cryptocurrency and are prepared for potential pit-falls.
Bid bots are great in the short term but you are unlikely to make any large income out of them by purchasing votes. If you have a large stake already, then delegation to bid bots can earn you a decent passive income.
There's tremendous potential to this platform and blockchain undoubtedly. But who knows if we'll ever see that due to all the current bad actors trying to make a quick buck and run while they can. That sort of mentality isn't going to cut it in the long run and we could potentially fail if the developers don't pull up their socks and fix some things causing poor retention levels here.
While it's not unreasonable to depend only cryptocurrency based income, it's impractical if you don't have a plan of action that can deliver you long term sustainability not just on Steemit, but in the crypto eco-system as a whole.
Besides, it's not a great idea to rely on extremely volatile cryptocurrency markets to earn your living. Eventually there may be enough dapps in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain which might serve your needs.
Especially for bloggers coming from the world of Amazon affiliates and Google Adsense, Steemit is not the easiest place to start off and your options here are very limited in terms of things you can do to start earning well and keep it consistent.
From purely an earning POV, keep this platform as a side income, if income is what you are purely looking at generating from your participation here.
Good luck to you.
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Defending India—History TV18's Series "Firepower" Puts Spotlight On The Indian Army
- Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- Steem.Chat Contest #32
Well, A detailed analysis. As you said before, you have a 'knack' for this sort of stuffs. Honestly saying, I was reading and re-reading this post to catch how you have constructed powerful sentences and words. I feel like my post in the same topic was pathetic in every aspect! That's where I find steemit to be very useful to me. In a country like India where knowledge in English is equated to utmost wisdom, using steemit pave ways to gather a lot of wisdom!(I mean English)
Again, if one has a lot of money with him/her and are planning to invest in banks as a fixed deposit, they can consider steemit instead. As Kevinwong posted the other day, having a decent deposit in the wallet in the form of SP never disappoints one even if the value remains downside. Only condition is that curation has to be made more profitable than now!
Good to see the opinion of more than 20 people(Most are minnows) here in comment section. The end word is that, one needn't to leave anything for the sake of steemit. I know the potential of this platform and will invest money if I win the first prize of Kerala Lottery tickets. Usually it is ₹60 lakh and for Bumper tickets first prize is around ₹5 crore! I will also buy a cardamom plantation alongside investing on steemit so that I people can call me a Farmer
Kevin has a very good understanding of blockchain technology and his post is on point. I agree with him on all counts actually.
Cracked me up! LOL!
As far as the subject is concerned I still have some hope left for this place. I'm glad that we have people trying to break away from traditional systems and make something so unique as this platform but we cannot rest on past accomplishments as there's a lot of work to do to make this sustainable and then scale.
Well if you have like 500k SP
Then go ahead.
It's officialy your job
only a measly 42$ an upvote
That's one way of looking at it...
You know, Steemit offers a lot, it really does. I think there are real issues that will be hard to mitigate just because it is a decentralized system. Still, there are a lot of positive things about steemit and how it can be used by so many for "some" sort of income whether it be full time or not.
You are right, with the volatility of the crypto market, getting a predicable income will be touch because no matter how hard you push, if steem tanks, your income tanks. It has nothing to do with you content. That part sucks. My income should be based on my ability and not because a whale moved BTC down and that caused Steem to drop as well.
But that is a fact of the platform. I am here for the long haul because I do see the value but I don't turn a blind eye either. There are issues, real issues but we will just have to see how things unfold.
I agree to this but we're far from a balanced economics here. I'm sure the code for a reward system like this would be 10x more complex than what we have. Might take a while a plenty of tweaks for this place to get better.
Hopefully we'll get there sooner than later.
I agree with you that in crypto changes are dynamic and income is not stable, but for time being I think it's a good try that should not be missed.
Wow.. Thanks for the heads up.. I was at the verge of quitting my ambitions to further my studies up until steem and sbd become this low..
I still believe dead bones will rise again, but in all, I have learnt a lesson which you have magnified in this post.
Please don't do such a thing.
Continue whatever you are doing in real life. Treat this as a long term asset or wealth creation or a financial backup.
Slowly build your crypto portfolio with some good tokens of your choice in it. It might come in handy some day. :)
Financial backup is the key phrase.... Thanks a lot sir
If anyone right now is thinking of quitting their job on what they are making from Steemit.com with STEEM at $1.26 or whatever, that person is probably good to go. When STEEM rebounds they will be making a fortune! I just voted for your witness so you can be that much closer to the top 20 and full time steeming!
Thanks a lot for your support. It certainly helps!
I believe there's a lot more to come from a platform like this. It's the first ever in the world and I hope we can shake things up eventually.
Totally agree with everything you said. Those coming here hoping for a quick buck and to replace their full time jobs will be sadly disappointed. There's still so much around here that needs to change. But I believe things will get better, and as always, if you are consistent and provide quality content, you will get noticed and followed. A bit like YouTubers, who can no longer rely on adsense, the following and engagement is what matters and diversifying your streams of income will always be the best course of action.
Thanks for your sharing this post; it's important that newbies realise this.
Thanks for dropping by. Personally 2 years is a long enough time for serious dev. We've lagged a bit here but I'm hopeful that things happen faster in the days to come.
I just read about some of the improvements coming in the next hard fork. What would you like to see change on Steemit during the remainder of the year?
Thanks for writing this post because it's really a important topic that ever stemmian must know because this is the reality of Steemit and if we are ignoring this then it's our own mistake,
I strongly not recommend anyone to leave their studies and jobs for Steemit or any other Cryptocurrency project because this market is not a perfect place to earn stable income,
So we Always needs to keep a second plan ready if we failed in this cryptocurrency world because at the end we need real money to pay for our living.
Well said! :)
After reading like hundreds of articles, including this one, and learning about the platform, one thing is for sure: Stability is not an option here.
You will earn as long as you keep putting in more efforts. Considering the recent price fall in crytos, it's fair enough to say that there's still a long road ahead of us to be sure of making Steemit our full-time job, unless ofcourse if you actually work for the platform.
Cryptos = Volatile
Earnings on crypto platform = Inconsistent
Expecting make a living "consistently" immediately from joining without ample "support" here = Kinda Foolish
Frankly I'm around here full-time but that's been a long road in itself and nothing is certain. It's a calculated risk many of us early adopters have taken to grow the platform and also benefit from it.
One life, might as well test things out for yourselves ha!
Fair point. Many expect to start earning from the first day itself not realizing that what might work for one might not work for another.
I see this amazing platform more as a side job as since now i did not withdraw not even a cent... all i do is power up all the way as i do belive on the long run Steem Power will be Financial Freedom!😉
But it will come the day we will quit our jobs because of this amazing platform... true is a long run, but that day will come!
All we have to do till then is to Steem On!
Well said! :)
Very informative post; I resteemed it. I am just starting like many, and I see the potential of Steemit. This is a rough time for all Crypto, I saw this last year. I can see there are growing pains. I hope Steemit can be more newbie friendly in the future. I understand Crypto, Ledger nano,etc. but it was still a learning curve. Someone just starting could be so lost.
Crypto world is an endless learning curve. Trust me on this!
I am too late to ready your post buddy, I have already quit my job and struggling here to make it my full time career.
Never too late to find another job or get back to the old one again and keep this on the side. ;)
The way I see it, and I'm thinking in reference to commission based jobs I've had, I felt like it was foolish to aim for what you needed to make as a goal.
What I mean is; if I needed 1000$/month to get by, I would figure out what would be required to make 2500-3000$ per month, and show that I can hit that goal with relative consistency... In that way, missing the goal still means you can get by.
Where, people who are getting by on their efforts, if suddenly a bad month comes up, and they always do, it's a decision of "what can I cut out to get by" as opposed to "what else do I have to do to make the cut?"
Just my 2cents; also easier for me to say as a noob where the dollars I see slowly building remain more of an abstraction, like the score on a video game than actual money.
Good points. My outlook is wait for pumps, withdraw a bit for the future, accumulate in the dumps and hope you don't get burned by further crashes lol.
But crypto is a beast whose direction we may never fully know for sure. So might as well just play along and as you said, consider it as a video game. That keeps things simple.
The way I see it, because so many new crypto currencies and tokens are being generated on new platforms almost weekly, the value of any individual one is being diluted.
Anyway, the extent of my strategy is to just power up until my votes actually show up on the score. (I've read that is around 100 sp) and not really an interest in selling anything unless there's both some reasonable value to justify the effort and a need that could not be filled otherwise.
It's prudent to have a variety of options.
Man - you cannot depend on it for sure..
the crypto world changes so quickly
there is supposed to be a steemit fork on EOS and there is also ONOSocial launch in July.
Lets hope for the best for steemit.
Absolutely! :)
Great points @firepower. You might also want to check out Minds.com as another way to earn crypto during this down turn. Let me know what you think of the platform if you do sign up for an account.
Thanks for the headsup. I saw that it works on Ethereum but my time is largely invested in this platform so it's hard to make room for anything else. However, if you manage to test it please drop by with your feedback. I'll surely write about it if I find time to try it.
Yeah, it's currently running on the Ethereum test net. I'm personally unsure about the long-term future of Ethereum, but that's beside the point. The platform works well, though, and is more like Facebook where you can share links to articles rather than post articles directly.
We definitely have our share of problems on steemit. Yet I feel that there is a great potential despite the problems.
In this recent slump I see that the posting rate has dropped down significantly. Only the hardcore steemians are posting at full capacity. Despite this I feel that with time we'll have more people joining - people who will become true steemians
Yeah, it's a valid concern. If price drops further there will be greater attrition. :(
We are really far and if userbase increased and real content curation works a great way we may find it as a small regular income.
Yes! That's my expectation in the long term.
I am treating Steemit as a very engaging hobby and so far it has been working out for me just nicely.
Never bought anything in real life with everything I got from here and I am not intending to do so anytime soon. From my perspective, Steemit is basically it's own universe.
That's good to know. Hopefully we'll see some better days yet again.
I think that a lot regarding that is dependent on how steem inc is handling these upcoming weeks. They need to push some changes to a lot of things soon. Otherwise....it may be dire.
I know this hard truth of steemit, good to have a part time source of income, but consider8ng it as full time, you will b taking a big gamble. Thanks @firepower for coming up with such eyeopener post. Even I am in dicey situation with see-saw condition in life, but when you have nothing good to have due to automation revolution in many industry, steemit is good to have you occupied.....
True that man. Automation is inevitable. Many industries will see application of AI and move forward towards automation.
Big investment is only option on steemit if you wanna leave your job for steemit
In some ways I agree with you, that's the only recourse.
Thanks for the advice. New users are really finding it hard now. Thinking of making steemit one's only source of income will be a very big risk. It may be okay for the dolphins and the whales but for those at the bottom, such risk will be to much. I just hope things improve in the platform
Caring content.
I don't know, I think steemit is the best platform for the, job, but you first many income, when you hudge invest in the steemit,,,, second,, when your team,, community strong 💪,, then your income well,,, so what do you think @firepower sir??????
Great post with much clearer ways! Thanks 🙏