<center>**Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks - Week #4**</center>

<center>*This is my entry for @dobartim's 'Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks', which you can read more about [here](https://steemitstage.com/steemitultimatechallenge/@dobartim/3f7e9a-steemit-ultimate-challenge-8-weeks-prize-fund-2000-sbd-week-4-registration-is-in-progress)!*

<center>![IMG_1715.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdRVDXpCdLKWxHfFJJErf2uNLtvbfhtoEaeTZcs6aQZEo/IMG_1715.jpg)</center>

<center>Since this post is going to be all about me and *my* SteemIt story, how it shaped me, how it helped me develop many new skills, meet many amazing people, and much more, I feel like an introduction in which I don't talk much about myself is very much needed. SteemIt is, as you all know, an amazing place for many different types of people - content creators, investors, curators, technical analizers, crypo lovers, and virtually everyone! If you go to Alexa.com and check out the world ranking of SteemIt.com, it is currently 981st, which is phenomenal considering the youthful stage SteemIt is still at! Not to bore you with things you all probably already know for any longer, I will not dive deep into my story.

<center>![Screen Shot 2018-02-25 at 10.57.11.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVbrv56rFsiSRuzX4QgLihoJvMUTucP9MMGt1uup8JeK/Screen%20Shot%202018-02-25%20at%2010.57.11.png)</center>

<center>**How I found out about SteemIt?**</center>

<center>It all started off with me stumbling upon a YouTube video of @avilsd back in June 2017 which had a thumbnail that read ['I MADE $10,000 ON STEEMIT!'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGY9Veer3uI). This had me interested, very interested, as for the the last month or so before that, I was diligently looking for ways to make money online, and at first sight, this seemed perfect. I clicked on the video and was hooked onto SteemIt immediatelly! I made an account and got verified very quickly. (This is different now due to the massive increase in users that are flooding the platform.) 

<center>**Initial thoughts**</center>

<center>I had no idea what to expect from SteemIt upon joining. I knew very little, close to nothing, about it, and was, you can say, a bit sceptical. I mean, making money, a lot of it, online for blogging!? Seems a bit too good to be true. After spending close to an hour or so on the platform getting to know the layout, familiarising myself with the UI, and absorbing the style of content that was being published and shared on here, I decided to make my first post.

<center>**What my plan was, what I was going to post, and how it went at first**</center>

To give some background information about myself; I have been writing poerty since 2014, and began writing daily in 2016. By the time I found out about SteemIt, I already had over 500 poems written and was excited to share them with the community on here. Before joining, I had an amateur website (which no longer exists) on which I posted my poems, was posting on many social media platforms and with people I knew. I developed a reputation of a 'poet' amongst my peers.

<center>![IMG_1719 (1).jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmeg93z3zw5KfTiVddW1piM8T6oRyNQ4PCmo1wE9rVpua2/IMG_1719%20(1).jpg)</center>

<center>**My first post**</center>

<center>I do not quite remember what my first post was, but it was one of my early poems, and as you can guess, it didn't do all that well. I managed to get around 4-5 views on it and earned $0.02. Despite all of that, I continued to post and since it was summertime and I had a lot of free time to spare, I decided to go all out and dedicate myself to posting and engaging with people on here. I remember opening up my wallet and seeing my account value being $0.82 and thinking that I was rich. I immediatelly texted my friend and showed him my 'earnings'. He laughed and told me to come back to him when I had earned $300, and sure enough I did, but that was further down the line.</center>

<center>**Getting to know the platform and grasping its vastness**</center>

<center>Without a doubt, for people who are new to cryptocurrencies, new to blockchain technology, and new to the idea of a decentralised social media platform, (like I was at the time) SteemIt can be quite overwhelming at the start. Taking the time to do the research, get to know the platform and its functionality is vital for making your first few days and even weeks enjoyable and worth while. The way I did this was by going to YouTube and simply typing in 'SteemIt' and watching every possible video I could find. I absorbed a wide range of facts and opinions from various people and used all of that, along with my observations, to make the most of my experience on here. </center>

<center>What impacted me the most and made me motivated to continue and be patient was the following advice: *You won't earn much on your first 50 to 100 posts, but if you stay consistent, keep posting daily and engage with at least 20 people, (and engage in an in-depth, useful and valuable way) you will get rewarded for your patience.* This stuck with me, and to this very day I still keep that in the back of my head.</center>

<center>**How I made $127 in my dream!**</center>

<center>The following is a short story that I love sharing with people, as it is different to many of the stories I heard, but it is what acted as a catalyst and accelerated my growth on here and convinced me that SteemIt is a revolutionary place online, especially for people like me, content creators.</center>

<center>It was 5 a.m. in the morning and I had just woken up all of a sudden from a dream that I had in which I earned $127 under one of my posts. This was out-of-this-world since my posts were earning anything from $0.01 to $0.09 at best at the time. Devastated that I had woken up from such a magnificent dream, I found my phone and decided to check my SteemIt profile to see how that was going, and lo and behold, I  had made $127 under my most recent post! I was over the moon! I had no idea how this happened, why it happeend, but I didn't really care much at the time, as exitement was all that there was room for in my mind.</center>

<center>My following posts' rewards went back down to a maximum of $0.09, but that one massive earning was a turning point which made me dedicated and devoted to posting more.</center>

<center>**Where did the $127 come from!?**</center>

<center>For many weeks, maybe even months, I didn't know how I earned so much on that one post, and as time progressed, I forgot about it, until I stumbled upon a video of @JerryBanfield in which he talked about @curie. This is a guild on streemian.com which allows people to look for good quality content created by minnows, and by simply providing them with links to these posts, they reward the people who find the best content. My post was one of these posts that was found, thought to be good, and submitted to Curie. You can learn more about this [here](www.streemian.com) under Guilds, or by watching this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcbJ3lGPIlI).

<center>**How SteemIt changed my life**</center>

<center>SteemIt has completely changed my life. Through this platform I managed to find my place online, share my art with many people who engage with my content and appreciate what I do, read others' posts and learn more about their journeys and stories, learn about cryptocurrencies and get into trading and investing, meet people with simliar interests and passions in my area through @steem-dublin, (more on that further down) and explore aspects of life which I never knew even existed. On a personal level, I have matured and developed a lot of skills as time passed and I dived deeper and deeper into SteemIt. On one hand, SteemIt opened up a door for a decentralized community to grow and prosper, whilst also allowing for individuals who might not have had the capability, the knowledge, or the resources to share and build a business or a personality online to become someone. For me, it was both. I am very thankful for everything SteemIt has brought to the table, and have never seen a community so accpeting, so loving, so caring, and so motivated and dedicated  elsewhere.</center>

<center>My dedication and devotion to the platform has also pushed me to treat my writing and art as a job and not just a hobby, although I still do not force myself to create anything if the inspiration simply isn't there. What I'm trying to portray is that it motivates ime subconsciously to do and not just talk abotu doing. Posting daily since the day I joined has made me realise the potential that exists in us all and in this platform. I am certain that if we all put our minds to it, we can convert the potential energy that we all carry into something magnificent and possibly even become huge! It is all there for the taking, and despite the fact that I am not what we call 'a whale', or a famous and succesful author, (yet!) I am thrilled with how far I have come in just a mere 8 months! 

<center>**The financial part of it all**</center>

<center>I have only ever invested $200 into SteemIt when the price fell from the $4 mark to around $2.50, and the rest has been earned. As an 18 year old school graduate, who decided not to go to college and who works full time, I think I am doing quite well, and I hope to only grow from here. There is no doubt that people get attracted to SteemIt for the money. But as someone who has been on here for a good while now, I can say with 100% certainty that this is not one of those 'getr rich quick' schemes. In a way, SteemIt is a business, and you have to treat it as one. From my experience, patience, consistency, and finding your niche are the most important things you need to become succesful on here. 

<center>**Steem-Dublin, meeting amazing people, and the first ever Crypto Café in Dublin!**</center>

<center>Recently I came across a Facebook ad for a new Crypto Cafeé that opened up here in Dublin, and was very interested. I decided to go and visit it and see what it was like. Long story short, I loved it! I met the owner and had a chat with him about SteemIt and many other cryptos, and even wrote a poem about the place which you can read [here](https://steemitstage.com/poetry/@lukakorba/hodl-4-lyf) if you wish.</center>

<center>![IMG_1677.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXwFfsDcDXCC7XsSZQEUADiR9cQJJ3vMzz4zsVGUxKeVt/IMG_1677.JPG)</center>

<center>I visited the place twice, and then found out about a SteemIt meetup that was taking place there and was immediatelly interested and wanted to come. The meetup held place last night, and without sounding too corny, it was simply amazing! I met a plethora of interesting people, had immensely insightful chats, and made a lot of new friends! 

<center>There is an account for Steem-Dublin: @steem-dublin, if you wish to follow us and see what is happening, perhaps you might even join us if you are ever in Dublin, or even go to check out @cryptocafedublin!

<center>Last night was a prime example of an amazing community coming together and supporting eachother, introducing SteemIt and crypto to newbies and sharing eachothers' experiences. We are all a family, and all of this is possible because of SteemIt. It is changing lives, changed mine, and is only growing and impacting more and more people is great ways.

<center>There is a place for everyone here on SteemIt!

<center>*With love,
Luka*