I spend a lot of time hearing about people that are getting nowhere on Steemit, they aren't getting upvotes or follows, but mostly they aren't making any money, and let's be honest, whether they admit it or not everyone is here because it can make us money.

See Steemit isn't amazing. The concept is, the platform however needs work, it's especially hard for newer users to get anywhere and the learning curve to use it is a little steep. Or maybe I'm just not very smart, that's also a possibility.

Regardless I wanted to write a post about how I use Steemit and how I've made money through it. Looking at my wallet I'm not even at 1000 sp but I've managed to build that from an initial investment of $200 AUD. I have withdrawn over $1200 AUD in profit and probably gifted around 150 SBD here and there to people I thought deserved it. 

Maybe my method isn't the best, maybe it isn't the fastest, but it's working, and if you see Steemit as a long term thing then it's a good long term plan.

# Step 1.   Network

Everyone says this. If you ever ask how to be successful on Steemit people will say "network" but most don't explain the best way. Usually they say by going to peoples posts and commenting, reading their content and giving a valuable response. This can not only earn you an upvote or 2 on your comment but they may well visit your blog as well.

Thing is, by using this method i have made, hmmm let's see. Maybe 15% of all my "networking" money. It can take a long time and if you manage to score yourself a dolphin or whale then sure it might be worthwhile, but otherwise you may well be pissing a lot of time into the wind.

Discord.
That is where I have made almost all my connections. A majority were throughout the PAL server. See if you go out with the aim to make money, people smell it on you, they can sense it and they don't like it. Try and just make friends, friends are the people that will vote your posts, and not just once off but regularly. See its great to get a curie for $30 once every 6 months. It's better to have 15 friends vote most of your posts for $1.


# Step 2.  Invest

Depending on where you live this may not be viable, also depending on your income, but in all honesty if you're from a first world nation you should be able to throw in $5-10 every so often. You'd be amazed what difference 200 sp can make from 0. The chances of me paying attention to someone with basically 0 sp is minimal, as much as im here to make friends I'm not here for a one sided friendship. I don't want to be upvoting you with 800 sp while you vote me with 12. If you can contribute a cent or two then your vote becomes so much more valuable.

As well as an initial investment you should be trying to invest your Steemit returns. While the system is a little all over the place between printing SBD and not pringitng SBD I like to split my posts 50/50. Unless the price of Steem is much greater than SBD i like to have some SBD to play with. For me it's nice to have for gifts etc but as the past has shown us, SBD is slightly more volatile than Steem. I got lucky enough to be holding over 100 SBD when it hit $12 USD last year. now in hindsight I should of sold 50% of that for SP and taken the rest as profit but I was being greedy and took it all.

Basically though I would of gotten a lot more SP for my SBD because I had held onto it than I would of had i gone 100% SP payout or traded it in quickly. Patience can be a virtue, remember this bitch ain't a sprint, this is like a marathon.


#Step 3.  Use your stake!

If you have some SP then you have some powerrr. I let my vote sit unused for far too long, wasting away at 90% because I wanted to be careful of what I voted and make sure I had enough left in case I saw stuff I liked. Thing is, this was a waste, especially at only 300 or so SP, my vote was worth a whole handful of fuck all and I didn't wanna give it away.

If you post often you may benefit from delegating. In return for your delegation you can get upvotes on your posts, some services have a limit on the amount of votes you get, some are diminishing returns and some dont vote you at all. Check before you delegate and decide based on how much you post what would work best. If you have under 300 SP I honestly wouldn't bother. Work on getting some more stake before you give it away.

If however like me, you don't post super often or use a whole lot of your voting power, you could sell your vote. Whilst you don't get to choose the posts you vote I find this far more valuable in terms of profit than curation. See curation is only effective if you get in early and have a decent vote on a good post. If you sell your vote not only do you get paid for the use of your vote, but you still earn curation rewards from whatever you vote on, win/win?

Personally I sell my vote to minnowbooster, and while it depends on a multitude of things I found I could earn as much as 0.5 SBD per day at 500 SP to 0.05 SBD per day at 800 SP. I guess it also depends on if your vote actually gets used. The benefit is you can set your vote to only sell above a certain % keeping enough VP for you to do some manual curation too.
While it may not seem like heaps, if you continue to reinvest what you make you will only make more and more.


It's easy to make money here on Steemit, you just need to be patient. :)

Steem on