Steem Deep Dive - ROI for a Freelance Writer Vs Loss of Proof of Brain
Introduction
I've been writing on steem for a long time now, with well over half a million words published. It's clocking up to 2.5 years of near consistent daily writing on this platform.
I worked out on my Rep 70 - Without Bidbots post that I have written the equivalent of 7.2 novels in word count alone, half of which were in the fiction category. That equals aprox 3 novels worth of fiction on steem.
People might say "so what, loads of people have written that much material on this platform."
I can only analyse my steem journey in relation to being a professional freelance writer who is currently working on a novel. From my perspective, I have invested a huge amount of my time and talent into this place which might well have been better spent elsewhere.
What does it involve to get to reputation 70 in an honest manner by writing quality content without using bidbots? According to steemworld, I've been writing on steem for 2 years, 3 months and 33 days and in that time, I have created 486 posts.
Out of these posts, over 50% were poetry or fiction. And with a little help from the wizard of SQL queries @abh12345, I have been able to work out that my combined word count for work published on steem is 578,250 words.
The average word count for a paperback novel comes in around 80,000 words... so I have written the equivalent of 7.2 novels. Given that well over 50% of my output has been fiction and poetry, it is safe to assume that I've written at least 3 novels worth of fiction that has been published exclusively to steem.
Quote from my post Rep 70 - Without Bidbots ✨💪 published on steem 3 months ago.
In regards to financial success on this platform, I have noticed a few clear factors in building ROI for your time for a mid to high level writer.
Networking is King
Building consistent rewards takes many hours of networking, or alternatively, becoming involved in one of the ongoing steem projects.
The quote below is taken from my 2 years on steem anniversary celebration post, 2 Years on Steem - Learning While Earning. At the time I worked 20 hours/week for various steem projects, and that was when I saw my rewards increase exponentially.
I worked in @promo-mentors for 6 months running creative writing workshops.
I have, and still do, work for @curie curating mainly creative writing.
I ran a segment on the Monday night whaleshares show for six months called Literary Corner (when Whalshares was still part of steem). This show interviewed the talented poets and fiction writers of the steem blockchain.
I worked as part of a team building the @projectgiving charity which helped fund a community/environmental project in Tanzania.
Quote from my post 2 Years on Steem - Learning While Earning published on steem 3 months ago.
One of my biggest concerns about steem is still that content essentially takes a back seat to networking considerations. How good you are at brown nosing witnesses, orcas and whales comes into play. Also, as in the example above if you are willing to put in crazy amounts of time into working voluntarily on projects you will also see post rewards increase.
Forget about quality of writing, this is essentially a lame duck... a secondary consideration to most of the orcas and whales on steem.
Putting aside the lucky few who were around in the early days writing well - those who caught the eye of whales such as @trafalgar when steem was a smaller pond and landed an autovote - what does it take to see quantitative ROI for your posts?
What I mean by quantitative ROI is that a post's payout reflects time, effort and above all quality.
There are four main factors in how you will be rewarded in the current climate on steem.
- Steem Power - the more you have, the more the steem elite might notice you.
- Catching the eye of a curator from one of the guilds.
- Writing, talking, networking, promoting around steem-centric subjects.
- Creating good content around certain specific niches, and being lucky enough to be invited to one of the private groups that reward with large upvotes.
Some of the communities or individuals that proliferate these biases are concerned with the quality of the posts they support, and others are not. We are essentially in a closed loop on steem, as it is virtually impossible for the average user to assess the traffic that their posts generate from outside of steem.
So where is the true value of content on steem?
I've argued many times in comment conversations that the continual focus on steem-centric content by a lot of curation entities, and whales, is counter intuitive. From an outsiders perspective, this makes huge swathes of the trending content on steem inward looking and insular. Trending is often made up of the same handful of people, writing the same style of post, about the same old subject!
Steem.
And that is a subject that anyone outside of steem wouldn't understand, or necessarily care about.
What we need is a variety of interesting, creative and informative content that shows up on the first page of google, as we had in the past.
For example, last year I posted a month of daily Haiku. If you type into google search engine A month of daily haiku what will you find...
5th on google front page
13 out of 19 images featured on the first page of google's image search were from my haiku posts
I have no way to truly assess the traffic that flowed to steem from these posts. It's difficult for any 'non steemian' readers to comment, and there is no view counter on any of the steem front ends. However, I suspect poetry being a niche subject that the traffic from outside steem was moderate, while very audience focused.
Which brings me to the end of this introduction.
If any of the front ends, @steempeak, @steemit, @busy, or even any of the tribe front ends, could find a way to program some type of metrics function, then we would be cooking on gas! Similarly, a guest comment function would be amazing on all front ends, something that I know @steempeak already has on lockdown.
Massive props to @steempeak for being the best front end for interacting with the steem blockchain from one interface.
What is a Freelance Writer to Do?
The current rate of pay for me on steem is completely unsustainable. Let me clarify one thing here. I understand that many people write blogs without any monetary return. In traditional blogging it's par for the course to spend 6 months to a year building audience before you even get a sniff at monetizing your content through advertising.
Steem has one overriding advantage in that it offers more freedom in your choices. But none of this takes away from brass tax!
Just over a month ago I decided to follow a trail to try and increase what I saw as pretty poor, and unreasonable rewards for my writing here.
The catalyst for this was seeing yet another post that took 4 hours + to write and produce make around $7, which equates to approx $3.50 after curation rewards are removed. When you factor in the photo editing it took to make some unique digital art for this post, I'm clearing around 87 cents an hour.
In my commissioned freelance writing work, I make between $8 - $15 per hour. Do you see where the problem lies from my perspective. I could spend that time working on my novel. I could spend that time canvassing other websites for commission work based on my current portfolio. But I have invested heavily in this platform, both in man hours, and emotionally, so I don't realty want to throw in the towel.
Following a Trail Vs Steeming Like a Pro?
The simple answer is that it's not worth it. You end up locking up your steem power and voting people you don't know who may not make the best content. Also, if you need to lease steem power to boost yourself up to the level where the trail vote will actually give your post a decent payout, the financials aren't great as I will outline later in this post.
The benefit of a trail could be if you're a digital nomad who can't put the time in networking, and has limited access to internet; using a trail could allow you to schedule posts and let things run automatically. But for that to payout a decent amount, you need to own between 20000 - and 50000 steem power at least.
I am an old school steemian who finds it difficult to read and comment on someone's post without showing some vote support. This means that over the last two months I have conducted this little trail experiment, I've had limited contact with many friends I've built up relationships with over the last few years.
Before I move on with this analysis, I want to apologize to everyone who I've got to know particularly over the last year and a half over this bear market.
I don't want to turn this into a tag-fest, you guys know who you are.
Sorry for disappearing into snail trail land.
From now on I will find more time to visit, read, comment and vote your posts. Between the huge amount of time voting/commenting the subscribers to my new community The Ink Well I shall make it a priority to visit my new and long term steemian friends.
The Numbers never Lie
Lovers of spreadsheets, hold on to your hats and try not to get too excited. I know that math/s is cool, but lets try and avoid a sticky mess in the old boxer shorts!
This analysis is based on a spreadsheet I kept during the month of January to track returns on my daily posts, and make an assessment of ROI taking into account the price of the 35000 steem power lease that brought me to the tier where I would receive a $9 vote.
Click to enlarge
Looking at this spreadsheet from left to right the fields are - post url, date posted, payout date, steem power payout, liquid steem payout, total dollar value (as of payout time) and total steem value. There is a totals section at the bottom of each row and I also recorded every week's curation rewards in a separate mini-table below the main table on the right.
All fields in this spreadsheet show data from steemworld after the 50% curation reward has been removed.
The cost of my lease for four weeks was 400 steem, and for some bizarre reason none of the leasers withdrew their leases on time so I got an extra 6 days.
The smallest table at the very bottom left shows totals for - full steem value, full steem value minus lease cost, full dollar value and full dollar value minus lease cost.
To give an accurate assessment on ROI we need to take a few factors into account.
- I missed one day posting on boxing day 26/12/2019.
- The delegation lasted an extra 6 days.
- About three of my posts were upvoted by @theycallmedan.
Lets get down and dirty with the math/s
The total Dollar Value after lease is 242.89.
Divide that by 33 days posting.
242.89/33 = 7.36 per day
Then we need to take 5 days off the monthly total to get an accurate reflection of a true four week tally following the trail.
7.36 5 = 36.8**
Then subtract that 36.8 from the original monthly total of 242.89.
242.89 - 36.8 = $206.09 per four week period.
Which still works out at a payout of around $7.36 per post, of which around half is liquid.
😆 someone with better maths skills could have probably told me it would be the same daily rate.
**What about weekly? $7.36 7 = $51.52 per week, of which around $25.76 is liquid.
Given that my average post takes 3-4 hours to write a conservative estimate for my time writing on steem is $2.4 per hour while using the trail.
Now some people might start getting riled at this point and say things like "that steem could be worth $3/steem one day."
Maybe. We could be mining water on Mars by the end of the century!
There is only one thing that is certain now, and that is the stats and realities right now! Anyone talking about a $3 steem at the moment is a cheerleader and this post is concerned with facts and analysis.
Conclusions
Before I wrap up this analysis I want to make it clear I am not attacking anyone who uses a trail. Nor am I attacking the trail that I used for this experiment. This analysis is simply meant to point out why it is a bad idea from my perspective as an active steemian and also that it doesn't make financial sense unless you're already an orca who doesn't want to engage with other steemians.
I've made it clear earlier in this post that I am a freelance writer who puts a certain value on his writing, and $2.4 per hour is less than minimum wage in my country. It is also less than one fifth of what I make on an hourly rate for a commissioned article.
But I have a lot of time for steem and what it represents. I have seen the potential for steem to bring freedom of expression to people living in oppressed parts of the world. I have been involved in helping people through steem with @projectgiving, and I've just set up a community The Ink Well to help improve the standard of writing on steem.
I wouldn't be here if it was just about money!
But having had to go to food banks to be able to eat in the last year, I have to say that I often get angry watching the same people rewarded on steem over and over again. Usually for content which covers the same subject over and over again.
But enough of that 😉 If you want to see what I'm about go read one of my poems or short stories.
[Patterns in Chaos](https://steempeak.com/hive-170798/@raj808/patterns-in-chaos-sci-fi-short-story) would be a good recommendation if you like Sci-Fi.
To trail or not to trail, that is the question...
To my mind, the answer is no. From a financial perspective the calculations above tell me all I need to know. I will not be following a trail again for two main reasons.
First, you actively remove yourself from the proof of brain mechanism. Some people may still vote your posts based on the quality of what they read, but the very act of locking up all your steem power to vote on the trail means you are unable to maintain relationships and vote on the content you truly enjoy.
Secondly, I have found it to provide no better return monetarily for my time writing on steem. I have no way to be sure exactly how much you end up either better or worse off following a trail without making a four week spreadsheet while steeming normally. But I'm pretty certain there would be little difference.
Given that the catalyst for my experiment with a trail was anger and dissatisfaction over a $7 payout on the post True Stories: Glastonbury Festival 98 (Part 1) - The Wall. There is a universal irony that shows that my daily average following a trail was $7.36.
Perhaps this was the steem gods sending me a message to revert back to proof of brain instead of proof of trail.
Whatever the case, I'm back to my old habits no. It is much more enjoyable reading and curating the amazing creative writing in The Ink Well, or browsing my feed to discover an article with a title that jumps out at me.
This is the way steem is meant to be.
Thanks for reading.
I would like to invite any lovers of poetry and short stories to visit the new hive community I started with @stormlight24 called:
[The Ink Well](https://steemit.com/trending/hive-170798)
The Ink Well is a place where the current story tellers and poets of steem can find support for their work. This community also provides a space for learning through the sharing of ideas and content, as well as encouraging new creative writers on steem.
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