@thehappinessequation
edited
more from that month
I Left Steemit in 2017 and Came Back in 2021 While Joining read.cash
Hey guys! I've only been on read.cash for 3 days, and I've never done an introduction post before so here's a really short and simple one before going into the main topic of the day. I'm from a small country called Malaysia, and if you've never heard of us before, just know that we are the country that is sandwiched between Thailand and Singapore. I'm currently pursuing my e-commerce business full time, and consider myself a designer slash online seller rather than an 'entrepreneur', which I truly aspire to be one day. For the past 2 years I've been hard core on trying to live my life with one single motto in mind, which is to be happy in the process of what I'm doing, hence the name of this blog, The Happiness Equation. My journey in cryptocurrency began in 2017 when a team of Malaysians were enthusiastically promoting Steemit.com and was trying to create a support community among Malaysians so that we could upvote and support each other. And so, here is the story of how it was like joining Steemit and earning Steem Dollars (SBD) in 2017, why a big chunk of us left the platform towards the beginning of 2018, why I regretted leaving, why I'm back, and what I've been observing since being back. **Year 2017** A team of Malaysians led by Maverick and his friends were actively promoting Steemit to Malaysians and I attended one of their live workshops in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. I remember being so skeptical about it because by then I had already attended several 'free preview workshops' for courses related to e-commerce, trading etc. The concept of cryptocurrency itself was not hard to grasp, but rather the idea of a blogging platform that was capable of generating money from no where, and bloggers were able to gain money from the platform really boggled me. I'll be really honest though, until today I can't fully picture how blogging is equivalent to mining. Anyways I joined in 2017 and back then Malaysians were going full on with the platform and we were all using #teammalaysia to help each other out. I only ever posted 4 posts on the platform in 2017, 1 being an introductory post, and 3 being posts related to Malaysian food and travel destinations. It was absolutely eye opening as I made about 100 Steem Dollars from those 4 posts and deposited the payouts as BitCoin in my Luno Wallet. For God knows what reason, I didn't think much about the long term potential of the platform as I thought it was just beginner's luck. **Year 2018** I believe the BitCoin hype starting to fall and as a result Steem Dollars was at an almost all time low. The exchange from Steem Dollars to USD did not seem worth it anymore and since then most Malaysians from #teammalaysia started dropping off the platform, or rather they just stopped blogging. Maverick and his team no longer spoke much about Steemit, and I believe the Facebook Group that was once there isn't there anymore (or I just can't find it, or maybe they changed the name of the group). If I remember correctly 1 SBD was equivalent to 0.3 USD in 2018, and my partner who joined me during the same time on steemit also told me it was probably not worth doing anymore and we should focus fully on e-commerce instead (Which is another long story for another day lol). **Year 2020** Suddenly BitCoin became the highlight of almost everyone's mouth (digital mouth really), even friends who knew nothing about investment began asking me 'Hey, have you heard about bitcoin? Is it safe? What is it? Is it a scam? Should we jump in too?' That's when I realized, 'Oh sh*t, I have some teeny bit of BitCoin in my ewallet! Wait what's the name of the wallet again......' Cut the story short I got back my Luno Wallet after a series of password recovery and old phone recovery lol. To my pleasant surprised, my money actually grew! And then something clicked. I asked myself why the **** did I ever leave Steemit. I'm not too shabby of a writer, and I do try to talk about interesting topics that I really like. So if I had continue doing so every day since 2018, I would have probably been in a pretty good place by now. Then again, all of us have unending 'what-ifs' and 'if-onlys', and realistically the only option now is to keep moving forward. **Year 2021** It took me several log in attempts and digging my old records for my Steemit password to eventually recover my account. To my amazement, Steemit was still alive, kicking and thriving! Fun fact: A quick Google search yesterday told me that the net worth of the founder of Steemit was estimated at 600-800 million USD in 2018. Imagine what he has today, as of 2021. Being an e-commerce seller who obsesses over 'product research', I did exactly what I would, searching for trending keywords, and going through recent posts that have the most profitable upvotes (I'll get back to this later). At the same time, I tried applying the same formula (visuals that standout + topics that were BuzzFeed worthy + posting around 10am - 2pm EST + using trending tags or tags used by high performing posts) I did in 2017, and created my first quality post after a long time. I checked the next day, and to my disappointment my post got zero votes! So I decided to keep trying for the next few days, and also continue to observe the platform and what the 'whales' are doing on the platform these days. **What Did I Observe?** Boom of communities: I think the same goes for read.cash, where communities are turning into support groups for the members. In 2017, communities were not as important as using the right hashtags, but then in 2021 I realized the highest earners were either admins of a popular community, or close knit members who probably already formed a connection with each other, aka alliances. My attention was drawn to several communities such as the korean and chinese community, where posts were 100% written in their native language. These posts were doing crazy numbers, ranging from 50 to 100 Steem Dollars per post. Do you know that 1 SBD is equivalent to 3 USD in 2021? That's how much they are making per post, per day! Which leads me to my next observation. More users, much more competition: With Steem Dollars on the rise, its only natural for more people to be drawn to the platform, and with that comes the piles and piles of posts which are all competing for attention from the 'whales' of the platform. At the same time, low quality posts are on the rise and actual good quality posts are being easily drown and washed away. **So What Did I Do?** Experimented on communities: I joined communities that dabbled in niches I was passionate or interest about, and posted as regular as possible, experimenting with day time, night time and also mid day. Be a creative copy cat: I posted my own content in styles that were exactly the same as the high earning posters e.g. if they post a nice photo of the sky and write a poem or something cheesy, then I would post my nice photo of a mountain and write something meaningful OR if they are posting something really deep about meaningful thoughts or philosophy, then I got a friend (who is a champ by the way) who would write something meaningful for me. I would also use the same hashtags these high earners are using. **Three Days Later, Did It Work?** In 2017, the use of good visuals (attractive photos), a topic that is highly relatable to most people (like food and travel), and a meaningful write up (that include tips and new information) was enough to get profitable upvotes. Unfortunately in 2021, based on my 3 day experiment, getting decent upvotes would probably require a better strategy, and by strategy I mean forming a strong and reliable alliance with the whales in the platform. There are definitely exceptions though, like luck for example, as I do see a handful of new joiners who've only been around since January 2021, and are doing ten dollar posts already. I do realize through reposting the same article in communities does help to garner more upvotes, but the most I've gotten so far is $0.05 SBD. Most people including myself would agree this is still really early on and I hope to continue the experiment for at least a week, writing about different things I like and then hopefully I'll find one niche to stick to and continue to keep the blog alive. What About read.cash? In 2020 I discovered that Steemit was not the only platform and by the end of 2020 there was many other platforms being developed in different cryptocurrencies. read.cash caught my attention as someone I knew was also on the platform. I started posting by recycling old posts from Steemit, and also reposted articles written by my champ friend. A mere 2 days later, I was delighted with the results! I now have a total of $4 USD in my read.cash wallet. While Steemit lets you earn in SBD which eventually lets you earn 3 times more in USD, I'm still impressed with the results I was able to get from read.cash, in comparison to the average posts I've been scrolling through on read.cash. My Results & Quick Observations About read.cash: I Got More Tips for Lighter Topics: I was able to get the best result for my travel article which was also the best performing post I wrote in Steemit (in 2017) compared to 2 articles related to relationships and psychology that were written by my friend/partner in crime. I quickly concluded that perhaps heavier topics that used heavy jargons were not really the cup of tea for most people and perhaps the style of writing had to be more universal. Observation: Better Quality Posts On read.cash: This could be due to the reason that read.cash is still really new compared to Steemit, and hence the platform isn't that saturated by users as of today. It's only day 3 and I've been reading very informative and helpful articles here so I can truly vouch for the content creators on this platform and would definitely spend more time consuming content here compared to Steemit and of course our conventional Facebook Similar to my endeavors on Steemit, I will continue posting on read.cash while exploring several niches and communities, and hopefully my little 'experiment' will turn into a successful and potentially a long term side hustle. Were you also part of Steemit in 2016/17? Did you also leave in 2018 or did you stay on? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading! Love, J from The Happiness Equation
12 comments
Good to see a fellow TeamMalaysian here. The Group in Facebook is still there, but it is no longer really called as Steemit Malaysia anymore if not mistaken. Discord is still on with a lot less chatter (I am not sure if you were ever there, with another username perhaps), only sadden to see those who dropped off because of the low token income. When people kept posting strictly for monetary purposes only and not actually become an informative account for readers, then these "drop offs" are not surprising. About the quality of the post, this is because this site already gave enough warning before that the RandomRewarder will not tip the article if it is not worth reading, and I believe they have a particular way to find out whether the article is here first (which will gain more reward points before exporting to Steemit) to curb plagiarism. What Steemit (till this day) didn't place, a filtration rewarding system, it is here. Besides, there is no staking rewards here, so the abuse of one whale to another is hardly here because every tip here is straight from your own wallet had you not received from the RandomRewarder account. Another thing about Steemit. You missed all the drama between Steem and Hive dramas, where you actually have 1 set of private keys accessible to 2 chains, both HIVE and STEEM. Steemit.com is where you can access to blogging and earn Steem; hive.blogs is where you can access with the same keys blogging and earn Hive. Hope you will enjoy your stay here, where the rewards are in much higher value in the future compared to the struggling staking system of both Steem and Hive (with potential continuous drama). However, Steem with the new direction with Tron foundation, you should technically be able to collect TRX too, if you set it up properly with Tronlink wallet.
Hello!! Thanks for replying I'm really thrilled to hear from a real person from Malaysia lol! I have so many questions if you don't mind but I'll keep it short: 1. When you mention RandomRewarder, is this how BCH gets distributed from the platform to the users of this platform which then gets distributed among users via tips? 2. This is not a question but I'm currently still 'experimenting' with posting my articles on several platforms at once, and see whether 'killing two birds with one stone' works or whether it actually tanks my result 3. Also not a question but I was just honestly curious why Malaysians are not flocking back to steemit with 1 SBD: 3 USD, or 4 last I checked. The korean and chinese writers are thriving on steemit, and the philippine community is doing so well on read.cash, I just wonder where are the Malaysians. I do agree that creating good content should be the primary focus but having a community is like having a support group just like having mini economies in kampungs and small towns which in turn boosts the overall economy 4. Do you have any articles that talk about the struggling staking system of Steemit? I would like to understand more on why read.cash will do better in the long run. Thank you! 5. Thank you for the warm welcome! I've learned my lesson in 2018 and will strive to be more consistent on this platform and to really enjoy churning out content that I like.
Hey there! Good to see your reply. I will try to answer yours 1 by 1. 1. Yes. Random Rewarder actually rewards you according the the quality of your post. If not mistaken, there are some real moderators behind the works (I think). Once that is done, it is up to you to do whatever you want. 2. If you want to post on several platforms, you should come back to discord Team Malaysia, where it is evolving into different platforms instead of just Steemit. (It was never intended to just be in steemit) So the flow (for me) is. - Read.cash - Publish0x (you can use that to sign up with FB / Twitter. You get rewarded by real human tippers, for Ethereum tokens in ERC20 chain) - Steemit - Hive.blog (you actually can use the Steemit private key to access. See if you have extra HIVE, HBD and HP in your account!) If you are into promoting traveling content, TravelFeed (originated from Steemit) is a great place for you to write and gain travel points there! (for later real world use case. I haven't been in touch with them since MCO started) 3. After the fall out of Steemit drama that frozen and destroyed most of the big whale influencers accounts and a 7 weeks frozen accounts in Binance.com, Huobi and Poloniex. A lot of people no longer have 100% faith in Steem blockchain. It is now a centralised wallet control platform, where all the witnesses (miners) are dominated by China and Korea. Hence, it is also no longer a good sable token for seamless (no fee) economic transfers for small businesses. 4. There were just so many questionable articles that are being censored in Steemit because many were against the idea of upvote abuse, where a weather whale can just stake tons of STEEM power and upvote junks. All because there weren't a underline algorithm that actually lay down the rules - hence this is the fall of free speech, when the humans themselves abuses the free speech and the platform. Not the system's fault. It is all human deep core morality problem that is not govern by good conscience. (aka the right Faith for me) 5. Enjoy your contents here. Do come to noise.cash too. I am more active there tipping great content creators with almost daily short post challenges. Less tiring for me. lol, there is also curation rewards there as well.
Morning! And thank you for the reply! 1. That's really cool and reassuring to know 2. Thanks for the tips, will do so! Do you do the same? Repost your content on several platforms at once? 3. I was just about to ask my mom who writes in Chinese to have a go at steemit because I see the Chinese writer community really thriving. Some of them are even newbies. I wonder is there a 'secret code' to be part of being 'upvoted'. 4. I see I see.. very interesting. Hopefully the same will not happen for other platforms such as this. So far I'm really liking read.cash. It feels much cleaner and feels more like an actual blog. 5. Thank you! I'm about to read some of your articles on noise.cash. Cause I would assume that because its like twitter, it could get really saturated with mini tweets here and there and might get not really meaningful? I guess that's just my perception because I don't personally use twitter haha See you around!
So let me try to tackle some of your questions here. 2. Not immediately. Usually it could be a day or 2 late. Steem is usually posting in Mandarin, but not as often as before. 3. Use WhereIn. Download it to your mom's phone. Her blogs will be noticed by Chinese curators. I have a curation account @dses that follows WhereIn for upvotes too. All the received curation rewards by inactive delegators will be incentivised into the HIVE chain. You probably need to delegate to WhareIn too if you want better support. 4. Wherever there are humans, there are politics. But read.cash stripped away the staking rewards from writers and there is no curation rewards. This reduces abuse. 5. Well, it depends on how you want your content seen. If you were in TeamMalaysia discord before, you might remember we created an "enforced habit" to write at least 10 words of summary before adding in the Steemit URL inside for the (then) bot to trace and curate; we hope the then training is embedded into the habits of all Team Malaysia members to be able to use places like noise.cash to provide short meaningful summaries in noise.cash before directing them into full fledged blogs like read.cash. Every single "restrictive trainings" were intended for enabling great habits of original content provided by people in Malaysia, and be proud of being a good original content creator. lol. Twitter is junk stuffs. A lot of people still like to post junks there, but noise.cash is improving tremendously fast and effective to filter junk out of the picture.
Morning! Thank you for the very helpful insights! I just helped my mom install wherein to her phone and uploaded her first post there. I also created a HIVE account and after reading a bit I understand what you said before about HIVE coming out as a leg and about the decentralization and all. Its really strange though, HIVE is exactly the same as Steemit and the users are the same, they are just posting the same things but most of them seem like they get better value upvotes in HIVE. I'm in the HIVE Malaysia group and they seem pretty active there.
It is more like most HIVE-ians are originally Steemians but left Steemit because of the West vs Justin Sun (and his army) drama. So some actually literally left Steem chain and concentrated on HIVE, while some posted on both chains because they own the same private keys and account (HIVE mirrored the Steem account's data - except the ones against the Steem-xit) and most of our old posts are still there, but on a totally new chain with a new coin. However, if those who posted both posts at the same time, Steemit actually has a "trace tool" that will not upvote posts that are posted exactly the same content on HIVE, making platforms that supports multi posting before lost a lot of their supporters. Therefore I would generally advice not to post the exact same content for Steem and HIVE If you are posting in HIVE in English, try Mandarin version for Steem
Thank you so much, you have helped me understand a lot in a short amount of time! I'm getting better results on HIVE right now compared to Steemit but could be too early to tell. read.cash seems like a much more promising place for content creators, and I also recently joined Publish0x though I am not a big fan of the user interface at all lol. See you around!!
hey there, was wondering if I could ask for some guidance. I've read several articles on importing read.cash wallet, and on sending money from read.cash (which is straightforward) but the first part just leaves a lot of questions: 1. I imported my wallet to the Trust Wallet app using my seed phrase but the amount was not reflected in the wallet even after a few hours 2. People keep saying do not leave more than $10-$20 in an online wallet, if I imported the wallet, is it still considered as being online? Then what is an offline wallet? 3. Whats the difference between importing a wallet and sending money from read.cash to a wallet app? I still can't wrap my head around these. Would truly appreciate some help thank you!!
I never import the Seed words from read.cash to my trust wallet. I always transfer out when it is above $20 USD worth. It takes around 1% fee if I remembered correctly, but that beats the headache of losing the synchronising, because if not mistaken, Trust wallet supports both legacy and cash address. So what you are seeing may be because the trust wallet is pointing to legacy address?
Hmm. But if my read.cash wallet is a cash address, and I imported the same wallet to trust wallet, shouldnt trust wallet get the same cash address? I also contacted trust wallet support just to understand what's going on.
That is the odd part. Even with Bitcoin.com when the "importing address" happens, it actually moves the funds to a new wallet address instead of the same address. Which is very odd. So I never import it unless great necessary. I just move the funds to another address with a tiny bit of fee to ensure nothing changes here.