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In this extensive guide you will learn how to look at success differently and get a much better idea of how to measure and achieve it. We will start with how to measure success on SteemIt:

# 1. Followers
You can describe success on SteemIt in one word: followers. There is nothing more important than followers! So why are followers so important? 

## Exposure
The more followers you have, the more people actually have the opportunity to read, rate and potentially reward you. Having a lot of followers gives you a larger consistent exposure without having to rely on trends, luck or investments.

## Indirect followers
You are probably aware of [Word-of-mouth marketing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word-of-mouth_marketing), resteeming is exactly that. For every follower that resteems your content, there is a chance that one of their followers does the same. This is potentially an infinite pyramid that covers all users. So next time you get a new follower, understand that you got more than just 1 follower worth of value.

# 2. Stats
## 2.1 Followers
### Number of followers
This is the simplest stat to look at and is used as one of the main measurements of success, but it isn't conclusive. The more followers someone has, the more likely it is they will achieve success, but be aware that there's more to it that just quantity. Factors like reputation, STEEM POWER and indirect followers influence your potential success.

### Follower growth
This is what you should be focusing on as an author on SteemIt! This is much more important than how much money your content has made today, this week or this month.

The only way to measure growth properly is measuring relative growth. Absolute numbers are irrelevant. If you want the true growth of your account during a certain time period you measure the relative growth in followers or the relative growth in certain types of followers (followers that meet certain criteria).

## 2.2 Publications
### Number of quality publications
This is a the number of total posts you made since the creation of your account. It's a good way to measure author activity, but not conclusive.

### Frequency of quality publications
This is the relevant statistic that allows you to measure author activity. The more quality publications per day, the higher the user activity.

## 2.3 Post details
### Number of votes
This is a reasonable way to measure success. The more votes a post has, the more likely it is that the author has produced high quality. But for this data to be relevant you need a larger sample size than just one post.

### View-vote ratio
This statistic is important on SteemIt. If the number of votes is lower than the number of views it will likely indicate that your content doesn't meet the quality benchmark. On SteemIt the most popular posts almost always have multiple times more votes than views, this means that people assume quality even without reading the content. This could be because of factors like the number of votes, the number of votes gained in a certain period of time, the current author reward or the reputation of the author.

## 2.4 Comment details
### Number of comments
This is a reasonable way to measure success. The more comments, the more likely it is that you have provided some sort of value. Even negative comments can be considered value sometimes, for example when you started a discussion about a controversial subject. 

### View-comment ratio
This is a more relevant statistic. It shows viewer engagement. Ideally you wrote something so valuable that 100% of the viewers felt obliged to leave a comment!

# 3. Money
Notice this isn't at the top? It's for a good reason, because it's the **result** of your success, **not** the success itself! Making a lot of money isn't always because of a good product or service. There can be many reasons why someone has made a lot of money. It's best to stop focusing on money, but focus on the quality of your product or service and eventually the money will find you.

# Mindset
If you want to achieve a goal it's important to create a plan. You should be realistic and even then probably still lower your expectations. You should focus on short-term goals rather than achieving the end goal. Every time you  achieve a short-term goal you achieved success and you did everything you could to reach your end goal. The rest is outside of your control. You have to accept that life isn't fair. Executing your plan strictly and working hard gives you a very big advantage over the competition and a much higher probability of reaching your end goal!

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*Don't forget to follow, resteem and browse [my channel](https://steemit.com/@calamus056) for more information!*