When I read Tarazkp post it was a very sobering thought that I am already in the 1% just because I am past 500 SP. 

I thought that my growth was even too slow because my mentor was already at past 1K SP on his 6th month and I am on my tenth month and haven't reached it yet!

When I came into Steemit I was attracted to the idea of monetizing content. Sure I started with doing bad poetry but I eventually got better and soon had OCD and Curie dropping votes on me from time to time and it was great. 

It was this way that I felt that the quality of my work was good and I onboarded people that I thought would be able to do the same thing and create content that was "curie" worthy and sure enough they did get curie votes and it boosted their reputation and their first growth spurt of Steem power. 

Then it became harder and harder for them to get curie votes, they did not have enough networking skills or sunk enough time to build a following and so engagement and votes dried up. 

People then started or have always compared pay outs with other people and they start to complain about how the system is broken. 

Yet it is because they only thought about themselves. They did not think of investing in themselves Steem power wise, nor investing relationships with their community. Often these people only saw their community as a way to receive a circle jerk vote.

Do i think community votes are bad? No i don't because it is the next step in order for you to continually grow in the platform. In fact this is why I set myself to trail @helpie and even delegated a part of my Steem power (albeit just a small one because 100 SP is the only thing I can spare as I am just a minnow lol) not because it would mean a higher upvote but because I genuinely believe in its purpose to help people continually grow. 

Just like you Meno I also believe that having a healthy middle class is the way for the Steem Platform to succeed. We can't rely on getting a whale's attention because they do not owe us anything, they do not owe us to upvote our content just because we are here. They do not owe us to grow our account because it is us who control our growth by investing in ourselves. 

Sure not everyone can have the funds to put in their fiat currency and buy themselves into a minnow or dolphin. I would need to put in about 700 thousand pesos for me to get 4,000 SP to make me a small dolphin. Just as a basis of comparison a monthly salary in my country for minimium wage is about 10 thousand pesos a month so to say that 700 thousand is huge lol. 

So I put in a few thousand whenever I can, most of my earnings here are powered up, just a little are used to be cashed out but for playing with the market. Buy low, sell high, convert alts and profits into Steem and power it up back. 

So my pace has been slow but steady but I learned to have influence I also need to have the Steem Power to back it up, alongside my engagement skills and a great community. 

I have to admit that earnings are pretty low now because of the price of Steem and although I do have one Dolphin helping me he doesn't give me large upvotes all the time yet I am grateful.

I am trying to break into Dlive though because writing does not pan out so much lately and although Curie removed its reputation restriction they just seem not to go my way lol which is fine because I had the jump start from them before and their focus is on newer folks. 

I also think that I have platued in terms of my writing so I don't get much support their but it does not hinder me from keeping on trying. 

Whatever cents I get here is still more than what I would get from Facebook. So keep Steeming until we are there as part of the Steemit middle class and hope that someone will see the value that I bring in the platform.

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