<center> The way a lot of people are marketing Steemit  more or less sounds like this: "join us and get rich". We see all these youtube/dtube videos with people in the thumbnails telling how they earned 1000 dollars in a matter of hours. All of this talk about money makes Steemit looks like the dream  where everyone here will have success and shower in wealth. A image that might make people come to give it a try, but when the reality strikes them quickly leaves again.  

Surely a lot of you have heard about the phrase "I came for the money, stayed for the community" and I believe this is true for a lot of us when first we came to this platform. But could it be damaging in the long term that this brand we have been giving Steemit as a place where you can go and earn easy money? Creating expectations for all the new users that here we we all are becoming millionaires?   

We all would love this to be true but maybe it is a bit far fetched? Do we really need this kind of success to enjoy what Steemit has to offer? lets take a look! 


##  Steemit is a competitive environment for bloggers </h2>
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When coming to this platform, the content you are producing are directly in competition with every single other blogger who decided to post their content within the same time frame as you did. People will be scrolling through their feed or exploring different tags and usually only the once that stand out the most will get attention. On a platform like Steemit where it seems like there are more bloggers than readers(at least for the moment) it is easy to imagine why a lot of our posts gets overseen. 


With this kind of competition it is very easy to answer the initial question of the article:

 **No, it is not fair to expect making a living from Steemit, because if everyone expects it regardless of how much energy we put into it, most of us is destined to get disappointed** 

## So who can we expect to make a living from Steemit? </h2>
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If we can say for sure that probably most of us will earn just maybe a few cents or at best some dollars, then how do we know who gets the large paychecks? I believe there are a few factors to this playing a big role. Everything from strategy, investment and commitment. But there's usually one rule that would lead to success(if you really wish for it) 

Of course there are factors such as how much Steem power you got in your wallet for your own upvote, but if you think this is the only way to get success on Steemit then I am happy to say this is **not true at all**. 

There are actually a lot of great examples of people here who don't really have all that much Steem power(at least not to begin with) who have achieved great success and potentially even have been able to make a living off Steemit. These authors shares the common trait they put their energy into one place and from that found progress. 

**I believe didn't expect to make a living from Steemit, so instead they putted all their energy into it to make it happen anyways**

##  But do we even need this kind of success to enjoy Steemit? </h2>
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Those who expect everything to be served to them on a silver-plate will be disappointed if they hoped Steemit to be their easy way of complete financial independence. But those who see Steemit as an opportunity to  create this independence by putting all the energy they have into it through pure passion and talent would most likely see great times ahead of them.

But do you really need this kind of success for enjoying Steemit? No, some of us are using it as platform to casually share our passions without expecting to  even getting paid from it. If you look at other blogging platform Steemit actually provides a much easier access to an audience than many other platforms out there. Say if you start your own blog on word press probably the only people that are gonna be reading your post would be your close relations. We should be grateful for this opportunity to share our passion with other people and even more grateful if we actually would get paid to do it.

This was just a quick reflection on a topic I have been thinking about for a while, hope you found it worthwhile reading, here's a picture of me sweating from my everlasting bike tour currently in Europe! 
![IMG_0530.JPG](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXmFeX8jTcwoNdwAryELXoh4bLMYhcnwpmyDtXhf3hgBq/IMG_0530.JPG)
Also remember those few dollars you earned through a post, if you put them into Steem power it could become of much more value on long term. 

Build an investment, not a salary. 

**-holm**

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