You can be the person who takes steem to the next level. You don’t need dev skills or a huge audience to do it.

https://i.imgur.com/RnezjXk.jpg

The great gift of cryptocurrency is that anybody can make an impact. This is a young industry in a rapidly changing world - there’s a ton of *low hanging fruit*, big ideas that nobody is quite ready to act upon yet.

The sooner you find your own big idea and bring it into the world, the faster cryptocurrency can go mainstream. I find it useful to focus on steem specifically, since it’s one of the best places for non-devs to participate in a blockchain ecosystem.

<h3>How to Measure Your Impact on Steem</h3>

At first, we focus on our personal statistics. We want to see our posts earn more - $10, $20, maybe even more than that per post. We want to get our first hundred, then our first thousand followers.

https://i.imgur.com/4uhnGGm.jpg?1
<sub>An original image from a few months back</sub>

After a while, you become established on this network. For me, I no longer worry much about followers. I know if I keep posting great content and participating in the community, it’ll work out. At this point, you can think bigger: **How can you help steem to reach its true potential?**

It’s important to focus on the metrics that matter. A lot of people are focused on **steem price.** They think, “if the price of steem goes up, we all make money. Steem to the moon!”

This is a bad way to measure steem progress. There is a better measurement that you can use. It’s much more tangible and helps you to orient your mind in the right direction.

<h3>The Ultimate Steem KPI: Active Users Per Month</h3>

<sub>KPI = Key Performance Indicator, aka the metric that shows us if we are succeeding or not</sub>

https://youtu.be/bYf43D4nUPk
<sub>If you want some context on KPIs and why they are useful - this video is AWESOME, the guy on the right (Ed Baker) is insightful as fuck.</sub>

The more activity we have on the steem network, the more value we are bringing to the cryptocurrency world.

It’s much better to focus on active users than on the steem price. That’s because **the price fluctuates up and down** for many reasons beyond our control. The current bitcoin fork drama, for example, is pushing all altcoins down in value.

https://i.imgur.com/1utn092.jpg
<sub>Source: Wu Wei Tactic</sub>

Active users is a more controllable metric, and harder to game. A whale can create artificial pumps and dumps that fuck with our currency value - but the number of genuine humans who are participating on steemit, busy.org, and beyond… that is hard to fake.

You can make that number go up. It starts with your own activity: You can contribute by posting high quality content at least a few times per week. The next step beyond that, and where the fun really starts, is that **you can recruit new users.**

Recruitment starts slow. You get one person to join after many frustrating failed attempts. Then you learn, you get better at [pitching the steem idea](https://steemit.com/smt/@heymattsokol/how-to-explain-steem-and-smts-to-other-people-a-few-thoughts-on-selling-the-smt-idea).

Eventually, you may be able to move to bigger picture ideas. You may start a [recruitment project](https://steemit.com/bluewaves/@bluewaves/re-imagine-steem-introducing-the-blue-waves-project), [an incubator](sndbox.co), or a [physical steem-powered project](https://steemit.com/steemit/@heymattsokol/success-i-m-teaming-up-with-five-local-music-influencers-to-launch-a-steem-powered-venue-in-raleigh) in your city. The possibilities are endless - and as you go from recruiting individuals to dozens to thousands of people, your contribution grows exponentially.

<h3>What are you doing to help build the steem ecosystem?</h3>

Share your current projects in the comments. Let's see what we're up to and look for opportunities to collaborate. 

Also, if you have questions about how to contribute to steem, please ask them in the comments. I would absolutely love to help you unlock some new ideas.

P.S. - the best way to grow your own steem blog and earn more money, is to focus on giving. Be generous and it comes back around in a huge way.

With love,

<center>https://i.imgur.com/hgkeIwR.jpg?3</center>