![CIMG3333.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPNT5SEzRc3sECzPWrkYNDK7ZyLX8YZa1Kuyp4gsyjRhg/CIMG3333.JPG)

## My general résumé upfront
* It's **hard** for new **content creators** to be seen and to get known.
You have to be well connected and know the right people in addition to creating unique, **high quality content** *(or get lucky to get upvoted or even resteemed by a huge whale account)*.
* The Steemit platform is **OK** for **investing** and generating **passive income**.
Two great ways I found for selling (delegating) Steem Power for a limited time or selling your votes:
[smartsteem.com](https://smartsteem.com?r=spreadfire1)
[minnowbooster.com](https://www.minnowbooster.com/vote-selling/?ref=790693)
* Curation rewards are relatively low with my amount of Steem Power, so I'll keep focussing on creating content myself and selling my votes / delegating Steem Power for income. Of course I'm also not stingy about my votes and give manual upvotes for good content here and there.

---

[steemworld.org](https://steemworld.org) stats:
![steemworld stats.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmaB5jZoWq3dnb1HfrhhkWZJf17EFJzpyZS5zZHxq2Z3tQ)

Date | Reputation | Followers | Following | Posts | Comments
- | - | - | - | - | -
20.04.2018 | 49.406 | 277 | 343 | 29 | 170

## Now let me tell you about my first 50 days in detail
After my account finally got verified on March 2nd 2018, I was eager to explore and try the *Steemit* platform.


### DLive Streaming
My first 4 posts were Gaming Live Streams on the @dlive platform. I played **Heroes of the Storm**, which isn't even very popular on the number one streaming site twitch.tv, and **unsurprisingly** received **0 upvotes**.
So I was even more pleasently surprised about my 2 DLive streams after that, where I switched to the more popular  game **Hearthstone** and was upvoted by **DLive** for around **$ 10** respectively **$ 13**! That immediately boosted my **reputation from 25 to** first 36, then **42**, made the post more visible and got me a few more votes worth a few cents.

I was happy but thought I was undeserving. My stream's quality was quite low in my opinion - no webcam, no fancy stream overlay graphics or transition scenes, no real entertainment other than a few educational comments here and there, no optimized video quality. So I thought maybe my documenting of OBS settings or the well structured Steemit post was the reason for **DLive's generosity**...only to find out that my two streams after that went unnoticed by DLive, back to *only* 1 vote each. I don't want to sound **ungrateful**, but I guess my **expectations** were **too high** at that point.

After an [issue](https://steemit.com/dlive/@spreadfire1/missing-broadcast-dlive-issue-random-or-reproducable-did-anyone-else-have-this-problem) with the platform and the generally low bandwidth streaming servers, I temporarily lost my motivation in streaming and started exploring other possible topics to write content about.

### Philosophy, Photography, Tutorial
I see myself as an all-round talent and so I easily found something to write about to expand the range of my blog's topics.

[![thumbnail dandelion quality.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRtJyNRMmvPyMBD3YyKdUEsFfjZ8wXWcGqBN3JYh594PG/thumbnail%20dandelion%20quality.jpg) Enjoying and appreciating the little things / Slowing Down](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/enjoying-and-appreciating-the-little-things-slowing-down)
So this was **my first article**, a **personal, philosophical photo story**. I was kind of proud of it, comparing it to most of the other related content on *Steemit*. It was a bit short, but ok for starting and trying things out. It got **4 votes** (including my own) and **1 comment**, worth less than 1 cent after curation. 

Disillusioned, not feeling rewarded for my effort, I turned back to improving my DLive stream by using a camera. Since I didn't own a webcam, I researched how to use my phone or tablet for that purpose. Then I shared my success and created a step-by-step tutorial, straight to the point, fast and easy.
[![thumbnail OBS Screenshot Finished.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXiwDCxQnSQ8fPrHXGPNs6H6hTvDoA6vQurKqrYnbNcTy/thumbnail%20OBS%20Screenshot%20Finished.png) How to: Use your Android device as camera with OBS](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/how-to-use-your-android-mobile-device-as-streaming-camera-with-obs)
It received **4 votes**, one of them for about **30 cents**, which is nice, as well as 3 comments. 

### #introduceyourself, Still Learning How Things Work
So now that I had a small variety of topics on my blog, I decided to write my own [*introduceyourself* article](https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@spreadfire1/spreading-the-fire). Maybe this would attract some followers and get more people interested in my work.

It seemed that my **wishful thinking** of being able to **post articles** and getting **organic votes** and **comments** was too **unrealistic**. 
I started trading votes and followers on [SteemEngine](https://steemengine.net/join?r=2664), which helped me a bit but I found the trade statistics numbers to be too little transparent.
Now I still received little to no organic votes, but at least there was some life going on in the comment section and the **paid votes** at least made the article a little more visible.
[![thumb reddit vs steemit.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQXfXAnhf2k19T6EX5VGLKWaYqpykZ4n1t6yjJykUFizE) 5k views on reddit - 500 views on steemit - 0 votes?!](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/5k-views-on-reddit-500-views-on-steemit-0-votes)
I even made a small experiment to see how well my tutorial was received by the **reddit** community compared to **Steemit** - the result was devastating.

### The Turnaround? Did I get a hang of things yet?
After that, it was time for a longer article. I started using [**busy.org**](https://busy.org/i/@spreadfire1) - the largest and most feature-rich alternative to Steemit.
[![thumbnail Roadtrip September 2012.png](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/Qmd9fEWWJzprniaensgCtwGeeWAWrZHeq4qgW3YrRvQg7g) Freedom, Friends and Love. A 600 km Roadtrip to Italy](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/travel-freedom-friends-and-love-a-600-km-roadtrip-to-italy)
1600 words, 8 minute read. It covered many topics from **travel tips** over **love story** to **philosophy** and more. I was exhausted and proud of my writing. Additional to the vote trading, I got some big organic upvotes (**64 votes, $ 4.94 total**) and **8 comments**. Not bad.

[![thumbnail happy easter.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcKFjmg5ASW9cr4qgYa2AWkbt3a82XeB989Lo9qRJVdtZ) Happy Easter (in a non-religious sense)](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/happy-easter-in-a-non-religious-sense)
A seemingly well crafted text mixture about **religion**, **philosophy**, **photography**, art and life.
Thanks to @sndbox, @sndbox-alpha and @fingersik, a buddy I met through DLive streaming Heroes of the Storm, this article received the 2nd highest value in unpaid votes (**181 votes, $ 7.76 total**), after the @dlive votes.

### After The Vacation
I was using **voting bots** ([steembottracker.com](https://steembottracker.com/)) by now to promote some of my posts as well as commenting on articles with similar topics to my last article. 

[![thumbnail small.jpg](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVW4hnNVx1MYHWTzmMBe68YYPqGtpnfnazFufUtuvYUXD) [Gardening] Planting And Growing Pumpkins Day 1](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/gardening-planting-and-growing-pumpkins-day-1)
I paid for quite many votes on this article (**total 163 votes, $ 17.27**), but there were also some organic votes as well as comments, due to my engagement **commenting on related articles** and **promoting organic votes and comments** that way.
By the way, the pumpkins are growing already, so you can look forward to a **new gardening article soon**.

### Next Level DLive Streaming
In light of the upcoming **Hearthstone expansion**, I strategically posted a short bragging article:
[![thumbnail win vs xixo rank 2 legend.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTZvgoqMqVycEBW6bgqkB5rnuCK7m8yHhgpQGvxFZ2dwS) Unhumble Bragging - a short compilation of my notable victories](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/hearthstone-unhumble-bragging-a-short-compilation-of-my-notable-victories)

My stream at expansion launch day got my biggest DLive upvote so far (**20 votes, $ 19.37 total**) and at least one viewer who I could engage with almost in real time through the stream **chat**.
[![thumbnail small.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbDMoP1meXaHSTyxNkjNaE8yDMHLDQTVPp6YcQVbDDMtT) Witchwood Pack Opening & Deck Building](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/f2b408d0-3e77-11e8-9f5b-0242ac110002)
That felt so rewarding that I decided to get a **dedicated streaming webcam** and to improve my stream further. I even got another upvote by @dlive on one of the following streams. When I have time, I'm eager to stream again and provide an even better quality broadcast.
* OBS output settings work great with the new DLive streaming server
* Optical enhancements: still a lot to do, but I started using scene transition screens for a better viewer experience
* **Triple streaming to DLive, Twitch and YouTube** via [*restream.io*](https://restream.io/) and [*nginx*](https://nginx.org/en/)
I'll post more details on that in an upcoming tutorial. Hopefully this will give DLive more **exposure on other platforms** and get **new users** interested in both **DLive** and **Steemit**.

### Health and Hiking
[![thumbnail comic small.png](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUBpPExz8sLeKLfacS3Y9ghgTMAhynMgUU4JjJVuvew4m) Placebos are dangerous!](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/placebos-are-dangerous)
**Risky topic** and even riskier attempt of **drawing a comic**. I was never good at painting and don't really do it...ever...but excuses don't make it better I guess. ;-)
> At a certain degree of ugliness you can start calling it art. - @spreadfire1

[![thumbnail small.jpg](https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmR7nUR2cN3PhZRsC7vb2YQjrjUWFfh7iAKMfsiJkA6zcX) [Hiking] Nockstein: Easy, Unhurried, Short](https://busy.org/@spreadfire1/hiking-nockstein-easy-unhurried-short)
As I will be **hiking** a lot with my **girlfriend** this year, you can expect some more articles like that. :-)

Mostly paid upvotes with a few organic ones in the single digits on my last two articles.
So I will use this data to improve further and continue keeping my head up, **staying positive** through everything. :-)

---

## Tips How To Succeed On Steemit
This may sound funny from a guy who didn't really *succeed* yet himself, but these are my two cents:
* Write **good quality content**. There's no way around that.
* Be engaged in the **community**, **comment** and **upvote good content**.
* Participate in **contests**. Use the right **tags**.
* **Promote** your articles using **voting bots**: [steembottracker.com](https://steembottracker.com/)
I'll buy votes for this one too, so upvote and comment to get a piece of the curation cake.
* **Keep working on yourself. One of the strongest skills to have is to recognize your own mistakes and weaknesses and improve upon them**!

### Opinions, Experiences
What do **you** think it takes to become bigger, maybe even a dolphin or a whale one day?
Did **you** have similar experiences in **your** first 50 days?
**Let me know in the comments below and let's discuss! :-)**