This is how I joined the half-million-BLURT club with 10 years of fulltime content-creation!
My crypto journey began back in 2011 when I learned about Bitcoin from my friend and fellow silver bullion advocate Davincij15. By 2013 I was recommending my followers learn about cryptocurrency and blockchain, and predicting the Bitcoin price would continue to rise toward $1 million. I don't invest/trade, but decided in 2016 to begin accepting Bitcoin tips for the crypto content I had been pumping out for years.
The 2017 bull market made Davinci famous, and he now travels the world blogging about crypto and making horrible price calls. My flawless Bitcoin price predictions were noticed by my subscribers, although my channel had become increasingly shadowbanned by YouTube, so that I could not find new viewers. I accumulated 0.2 BTC in tips for my content.
In 2016 my wife and I were given 2 months to find a new rental suite in the hot Vancouver market, and failed, ending up surfing couches with our stuff in storage. I wasn't able to join Steem when I first heard about it. I watched as friends and complete strangers made thousands of dollars per post, easily and with limited content. With my hard work and abilities, I knew I could succeed if I could just get a proper living situation. Finally in 2017, I began to stabilize my health and finances after finding an apartment, and began posting on Steemit full time.
In early 2018, I decided to put my money where my mouth was. I bought STEEM with my 0.2 BTC, bringing five years of earnings on YouTube onto the blogchain. I powered it up (about 600 tokens) and added it to my earnings.
That began a pattern of me making 3 to 10 posts per week, which has continued nonstop to this day. I also spend hours daily reading, curating, and commenting on other people's content. I never power down, and always power up all my earnings. In all these years, across all three chains, I've never spent a single cent, except for one purchase of a box of Ivermectin last year. Everything I make goes right back into the blockchain, powering up my future, and earning me compound interest 24/7/365. I made the blogchain my hobby AND my job, putting everything I had into it.
When Hive came along, I converted my STEEM into HIVE, and continued my content-creation. Now I was posting my content on two chains, but only curating, commenting, and investing on one. I don't earn anything there, but I see Steem as a backup of my content, and indeed, it was useful when Blurt had some unexpected downtime this summer.
I don't have any way to connect my crypto world to the default financial system, because I'm unbanked and unsmart. I can't/won't bank or use smart devices, severely limiting my options in the crypto sphere. This means I can't sell my crypto for cash, nor can I buy crypto with dollars. The only way I can get crypto is by earning it within the blogchain world. And once I earn it, I can't sell it, only spend it here in crypto-land. Only very recently have I found a way to slowly turn crypto into food, using gift card vendors that accept Bitcoin. But for all intents and purposes, my crypto and fiat lives are totally separate.
The bear market was brutal. At one point my holdings were worth only a few thousand dollars, but I never stopped grinding (earning and powering up). I was earning cents per post, but the same amount of tokens, so I just kept on trying. At some point, new bloggers came on the scene, tossing in some spare change from under the couch cushions... and would instantly be bigger than me, without making a single contribution to the blockchain. And on Hive, your wallet size matters... you can get censored and hidden robbed of your income, if richer people don't like you or your content for any reason. So it really hurt having years of accumulated effort reduced to such a tiny dollar value that anyone or their dog could come along with a couple grand and match it with the click of a button. And because I have no fiat-crypto connection, I can't just buy more. I can earn more, which is what I've been doing nonstop, but I can't buy more. That means a lower price does me no good.
So when HIVE finally started to rise in 2021, I was very excited. I had accumulated about 20,000 of them, and had finally ground my way to decent regular payouts. After years of nonstop effort without anything to show for it, I was potentially able to earn a (small) living doing what I loved, which was creating content and sharing my message! HIVE spiked to 3.4 USD very suddenly before I could figure out a way to cash out, so I began powering down around the end of the year, hoping I would be able to catch the next spike. As I powered down in early 2022, I continued to create important content, which pulled in tens of dollars per post. Victory was almost within reach.
Suddenly, the Hive downvote cabal struck. They saw me powering down, and pulling curation from "their" reward pool, and gaining in rep score (becoming harder to censor or mess with). MarkyMark and a few of his degenerate associates, Hive whale insiders protecting their golden goose, claimed I had broken some unwritten rule about self-voting, and began downvoting all my content to zero. Suddenly, I was unable to make another cent on Hive, and my reputation was being hammered downward (if it goes low enough you get grayed out and hidden etc).
I heard about Blurt from some other people who were also being bullied and censored on Hive. What a great idea! I jumped in, and started to convert my HIVE into BLURT. It looked about to explode, with Hive seemingly self-destructing. Each time there was a dip, I bought again. It took weeks, but I converted more than half my crypto holdings into BLURT at somewhere around 0.025 USD each. I poured myself into Blurt, making it my internet home base, linking all my other projects to it, bringing in subscribers from various platforms. I stopped commenting and curating on Hive, just posting a copy of my important posts there (with payout declined). The cabal watched my every move, telling me "just shut up and stop complaining or it will get worse". Blurt's lack of downvoting felt like heaven compared to that abuse.
But just then, the Blurt "foundation" began upsetting the investors, who promptly pulled out their funds, crashing the price. The value of my holdings immediately lost 70%. There was nowhere for me to go. All I could do was try to avoid feeling hopeless, and keep producing content while hoping for a miracle in the future. My wife, who I have neglected for years on the promise that my work would amount to something, continues to stick by my side.
So far, the price recovery has not come. In fact, we recently saw a lower low, putting me at about a 90% loss since joining Blurt. Today, we're up to 0.0048 USD, so I'm only down about 80% on my investment here.
And so, I keep earning BLURT. I get zero payouts on Hive, and maybe a dollar per year on Steem, so Blurt is 99.99% of my income. As always, I power it all up, don't spend it, don't convert it to other cryptos. In recent months, I've sold off all my hive-engine tokens, and almost all my remaining HIVE, and put it all into BLURT at these lower prices.
I finally passed the 500,000 BP level!
A decade of full-time content-creation, savings, and even interest has amounted to 500,000 BLURT tokens. At today's price of 0.0048, my net crypto worth is... 2400 USD.
That's $240 per year.
What I've come to realize, as a simple content-creator who doesn't do trading, is that you have to be a trader if you want to make profits on the blogchain. There just isn't anything in it for the content-creators who simply save/reinvest their earnings, like me. Established creators with quality content, who instantly cash out their earnings, could make about $50 per month on BLURT at current prices. That's not nothing, but it's also not going to pay the bills.
Yes, there are people around here that are doing well, but it's not the content-creators. It's the insiders and/or the traders. Those who have the money are the ones who can make money. The rest of us are grinding our lives away for pennies, or in most cases, for nothing at all.
Last week, I pulled out $300 in grocery store gift cards, for my Crypto Lunch project. But that $300 represents about 10% of my entire crypto net worth, which means it took me ONE YEAR of full-time work, risk, and investment to earn that cart of groceries! My entire crypto net worth wouldn't even pay a single month's rent, if I could cash it out.
I like the idea of earning a living as a content-creator, but after 10 years of giving it my absolute best, it appears I don't have whatever it takes.
Okay, so, what can I do from here?
I can't move back to HIVE because I'm censored there and can't earn tokens.
I could get myself a few more carts of groceries and walk away.
I could stop posting and just save my 500k.
I could convert to Bitcoin. I would get 0.13 BTC (not even the 0.20 BTC I invested 5 years ago).
I could... well, let me know in the comment section if you have any ideas.
What I'm probably going to do, at least for now, is the same thing I've been doing all along. Grind with content, comments, and curation... accumulating more tokens in the hopes that some day they'll be worth something.
I noticed that my buddies WTP (Dan) and Outofthematrix (Tom) have a very similar number of tokens. WTP purposely stalled at this level a while ago, while Outofthematrix is buying BLURT and powering up his witness earnings. I've been dumping hundreds of votes onto both of them for several months now. It's nice to see Tom finally have some stake so he can return the favour! Perhaps the 3 of us will continue to support each other, and move as a unit up through the ranks?
If BLURT goes up, and I've posted about how it could even go x100, then my 10 years of work will have been worthwhile. That's basically my best-case scenario - to eventually get a downpayment for a house or something. It always seems like it's just around the corner, but month after month and year after year, success eludes me. I have seen friends get rich in just a few weeks of trading in cryptos. I helped dozens of people get rich by investing in Bitcoin early on. But myself, for no apparent good reason, I can't catch a lucky break no matter what I do or don't do.
This simple content-creator will keep on producing for Blurt, but my health is fading rapidly at the moment, so I don't know if I have another 10 years (or even 1) to see if this is going to play out. Besides, the world is going into financial collapse, prices for everything (except crypto!) are going through the roof. And there are major supply chain problems, such that I can't find pasta, or baby formula, or basic children's medications, or somewhere to rent, no matter how much money I have. This isn't a good time to be working on a long term plan. Taking a position and sitting on it for several years is fine... when the world's not falling apart, when nukes aren't about to fly, when food prices aren't inflating by 5% per month. This is when projects and investments need to be paying out, not requiring all my available free time without paying me anything in return.
For whatever reason - let's call it a series of unfortunate events - I have failed to turn 10 years of daily effort into either savings or income. I have nothing to show for it, and nothing coming in. I'm not even reaching people with my message - 10 years ago I had 9000 subscribers on YouTube, now I've got 108 on Blurt.
But hey, I'm sitting on a goldmine of BP, right?
Now, we've just got to convince the world that BLURT tokens are rare and useful, then the 200 of us here today will all be very happy. I can't wait! No, literally, I can't.
I think I'm going to move up North (where there is still a few places to rent), and grow a garden in Canada's tundra.
Seriously. I'll be a bit less active over the next couple months as we pack, move, and settle. If I'm still alive in the spring, and have internet for my desktop, I'll start a new Blurt series about growing food in the Arctic. If I can create thousands of articles and videos people enjoy and benefit from, with nothing to show for it, I can grow tomatoes in a snowbank. You'll see.
DRutter
I have a very similar story. I started blogging in 2017. Started with nothing. Zero. Just blogging on Steemit in June 2017. I Did not make very much the 1st year. One day I had a nice upvote from @blocktrades … and then another nice upvote from @roelandp … then I started to learn that people made most of their Steem from Curation… so I started powering up all my Steem and then used Steemvoter to upvote the best posts at the 5 minute mark. Before you know it I had accumulated 12,000 Steem. Then The Hive Hardfork happened and I suddenly had 12,000 Hive. I did the same there. Earning almost all my crypto from Curation. I earn practically nothing at all on my Steemit and Hive posts. Who cares. Curation is the key.
Then the Blurt Fork and suddenly I had 12,000 Blurt.
So I powered that up and started earning from Curation here on Blurt. I just let my Blurt Power build and earned more from Curation. The key is Curation.
However, it is good to convert a little Blurt, Steem and Hive to Bitcoin on Ionomy.com and buy some Silver Maple leafs with your Bitcoin on https://SilverGoldBull.ca
DIVERSIFICATION is the key ….
Hold Blurt, Steem, Hive, HBd, Dtube, SRY, APX, Dogecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum.
Never sell everything to buy one coin. Collect all cryptos. Be Crypto agnostic.
Ignore the haters.
As far as growing Tomatoes… I would recommend you plant 10 Empire Apple Trees. Grow them organic, no chemicals, pesticides and you can sell them for $55 per bushel (120 apples) to any nearby dairy cow farmers. Hunters will also pay $20 per bushel or you could trade for venison, caribou,.. Some dairy farmers will also trade Empire apples for organic milk, butter, cheese.
"used Steemvoter to upvote the best posts at the 5 minute mark. Before you know it I had accumulated 12,000 Steem"
This is bad curation, though. I choose not to act that way. I'm too much a team player that way, I think I got it from my grandmother.
"DIVERSIFICATION is the key …."
This is trading 101, and I could teach the course. But I am not a trader, so once again your advice is pointless. You have a habit of suggesting things that could never possibly work for the person. That's unhelpful at best. You're smart, you know this.
As for "empire" apples, I did not realize they were so popular and highly sought after. If I plant apple trees, I'll check out empires for sure.
By the way, you started blogging a year earlier than I did, and that 1 year made all the difference. When I started, people were no longer making those big gains like they had been, and years later I was still near zero worth. It wasn't until 2021 that I finally built up enough momentum to grind out decent regular payouts.
Sorry to hear you too were homeless in 2017. Housing/rental market to blame, I assume? I documented some of my experiences:
To this day, we've got planeloads of people flying in from North Africa and the middle East, all given paperwork and money and guaranteed safe rental situations. But Canadian citizens (including those on disability) are left literally to the streets. I don't want handouts, but some equality would be nice...
Yessss diversification! :) Thanks for the suggestion about Empire apple trees. Luckily we're finally in a place to put down roots if we so choose. We had three years at the yard here, but most of it was under heavy, toxic construction, and the yard is small and very uneven and nasty from the previous owner's dog and laziness. We have a big yard at our new place, so I think we'll plant some trees and berry bushes at the new place, and we'll put some garlic in this fall and in the spring we'll get a green house.
Empire apples are an awesome cash crop here in Eastern Ontario…. They say money doesn’t grow on tree …. But they are wrong. You can make a good living with 10 Empire apple trees…. Money and trade for food.
Also, on Blurt, Hive, Steemit and everywhere else on the Web you need to absolutely ignore the haters and Downvoters. You don’t need to mute them, just ignore and avoid them. If you get attacked on Hive with downvotes it’s easier to just create a new anonymous blog with Ecency.com and post anonymously from there. Don’t get involved with downvote or flag wars. Avoid the haters and start over. You can have 100 blogs with 100 emails if you need. Try different things, but definitely earn all the free Crypto you can and convert to Bitcoin and Silver and Gold. You can earn a small fortune with hashtags on Hive …. #pob #vyb #cent #waivio #hive-engine and many more. I’m trying to help my fellow Canadians here. 🇨🇦 … we need to all help each other here. Even if I took the stupid vaccine.
Absolutely. Diversification and always having several income streams has allowed me to live free and travel the world for almost two decades now.
Nice! I'm curious, almost two decades ago, what were your several income streams, and where were you traveling?
Philippines, Bali, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos....basically South East Asia for the most part.
I sold my Private English Teaching business in Seoul South Korea and made good money to buy a house at age 22 in Orlando Florida.
So I had rental income, trading stocks, selling options, collecting dividends, online English teaching, and online surveys. Meanwhile I kept my living expenses down in these parts of the world as low at 500 bucks a month some times.
Yeah… my free crypto (all from blogging on Steemit) will put my kids through University. And that ain’t cheap here in Canada.
That's impressive. I'm sure there is a lot of time to be inside blogging during those long Canadian Winters. Best thing is that I can see that you enjoy it. I do as well. I also like the independence it gives you. You get what you put into it, and there is nobody to answer to other than yourself.
Exactly correct. We get 8 months of snowed Inn blogging here in Canada … then another 4 months of Mosquitoes to stay indoors and blog … we get a few brief weeks in August to go camping and kayaking out side …. Lol
Sounds very much like where I'm from, but maybe worse! haha I'm from, Up-State NY. My favorite part was setting the clocks back and suddenly it was getting dark at 4:30...bit different from here in Thailand.
Upper New York is beautiful… we try to make it down to the Finger Lakes area every summer… Corning, Ithaca etc etc …
That is awesome. My dad had a summer house up near the Addirondaks for a number of years. Now he is west coast Florida year round.
Hey buddy, thanks for the mention. Yeah, having been a trader for over a decade before being a blogger I've frankly made out like a bandit. I bought hive at 10 cents, posted twice a day and then sold when the cabal came for me mostly above two dollars. I bought lots of gold and a motorbike beside all this blurt with that.
In 2017 I was also able to rise up the ranks real fast when I joined steemit in May, by the time the bull market maxed out at 20k bitcoin and like 7 dollar steem. I think I made like almost 20 thousand dollars in one month alone. I sold and sold from that peak. I still am sitting on physical gold and silver from then, while having lived entirely off my blog earnings for the past five years. No wonder the cabal hated me so much at the end there...hahaha
Sorry you have learned the hard way but absolutely, you can't just blindly reinvest in something that goes up and down like a yo-yo like crypto's in general. You see a 20x move, like in hive 2021 and steemit 2018, you have to say thank you very much and at least treat your wife to a steak dinner! Vegan steak dinner that is! ;)
I remember begging people like @gringalicious with a 250,000 steem at 4 dollars to sell atleast half and buy a house in full. This is like a 23 year old girl at the time; she could have been set up very nicely to start her life. But ofcourse she did not listen to me, she thought steemit was going to be the next facebook and, she ended up selling when the cabal came for her too, and that was around a dollar. Still like down 80% from that 2018 high.
Right now you and I are set up well here on Blurt, nobody wants to sell at below these levels. If you are still writing things of a similar nature with bitcoin back at 40k, then I'd be surprised. But that may be a good while before we see bitcoin back at those prices.
Also, You are right I'm happy having around half a million invested in Blurt powered up. I like to take adividend type collection from all my investments. It's a strategy that has helped keep me afloat all these years.
I have money in different investments in various countries around over the world paying me monthly. It's a good thing to have.
However with Blurt down I have not sold. Nor am I desperate to take my holdings from 90% blurt power to 100%. Now to think about it I did buy about 25,000 at 15-17 satoshi's just sitting on the exchange.
I may power up my liquid Blurt or not. But personally I never judge anyone here for what they do with their holdings, you just don't know their personal financial situation or goals they've set for themselves.
I'm actually down worse than you having bought over 3 cents. But I've positioned myself well here with a good ability to earn and help steer the ship in the right direction. I know that you earn pretty well here too as an author....well in number of Blurt. Nobody is really earning well here at the moment.
Anyway that was quite a piece. I'm biking 400 kilometers to this island over the next couple days. Once I get settled there, I'm looking forward to focusing some more of my time onto some Blurt promo projects I have in mind. Wishing you the best as always!
You have a very special wife. Also your content about growing in the tundra may be widely received. Family vlogging can still get some views. At least you will have something to eat. Around here short videos (less than 30 seconds) are now getting the views... but in the end it is you that makes the content great.
haha He was being a little facetious...it's not really the tundra. It's just Northern B.C. We're mourning our life here because we invested so much in this town and community, and navigated the pandemic...we've finally memorised the town and the shopping situation and made friends for our kids, etc. We'll just have to get some greenhouses :)
Beautiful place. My brother is out there at this moment wandering around in a trailer. He will be in the lower 48 by November. Digital Nomads is where this generation seems to be headed.
Sounds good. I'd love to have a nice hot tub in the middle of the green house.
On a side note... Drutter can trade on ionomy to Binance bucks or Hive bucks. Trading is not over just because you ain't got no stinkin badges.
A very long and winding journey. I really appreciate your optimism. Like a wheel that is turning, then rest assured, that there are times when we are in the top position, then there are times when we are at the bottom. Things will keep changing.
If we are currently at the bottom, rest assured that there will be a time when we will rise to the top.
Blurt is headed in a good direction and this is the place where we stay buddy! 👍
I will support you all the way bro! 🙏🍀
Back at you mate, sorry I missed this comment the other day, but got you now : D
#letsgrowblurt
Yes thats not ideal but you have to trade in a dynamic world. Not just trade but to adjust your holdings to your needs. You are a very good content creator so 500k blurts sounds like a good fit for your needs and ambitions and I wish you a lot of success!
Yes it is very hard to see things positively within this bear market and world wide events. On the other hand the upside potential for blurt is huge and much more than other coins. Also you are doing a great job of earning your posts are getting more votes than mine and I also provide solid content and been around about a year longer than you. So you have positioned yourself well socially here where as I have probably pissed off your top voter with some of my stances on the FUD and the large delegation I have from one of the founders.
So there is some positive sides to your story also. Keep at it and only the future will tell. I hope you are as correct with blurt as your other cypto calls.
I certainly have pissed off his largest supporter too. It's very divisive to heavily and publicly support someone's content for months, only to learn that it was never your content they liked; it was your political stance on the platform. Funny thing is this perceived change in my political stance, was just that, perceived. They thought I was going to go into being a witness wearing their war hat or something.
I have my own goals, ambitions, and ways of getting things done; but it costed me top earning/trending author. Oh well.....I'm not complaining. My witness spot earns well and I'm grateful for it. But your comment about pissing off his top voters is spot on. It's a form form of control, but that's all part of the game. I can I live with it. You and I still have plenty of support. But the recent abrupt ditching of me is a sort of a fresh wound; I'm sure @khrom will have a better go, they have the Polish connection, which I think is great.
By holding on to what you feel and following your conscience, you'll find support anyway. The worst thing is to sell yourself for votes. In my case, my profile and my views have been accepted for a long time by mk, and I see most things in the same way. I also saw that the blurt was going wrong and I thought that my move would give hope to the Polish community that something could be changed and that Blurt was worth attention. I was also aware that if I turn on a witness nod, I will probably gain the support of people with whom I agree on many issues anyway from the very beginning of the DPOS game. So I used this atmosphere.
I see it as an opportunity to learn a lot about the technologies used here and test my skills. I am also going to try to finally implement a few ideas on how to improve this type of blockchain, which have been on my mind since I wrote on Steem. If one day mk or other supporters say that I have to go down, I will say it ok and I will do my own thing. And in my opinion you should do the same. It's best to talk a little and do your own thing;)
This whole thing with a dispute is just the most ordinary thing in the buisness world. Here comes a lot of money and the one who has it, however, usually is also a tough negotiator and fights to the end. such people are not easily persuaded because when such money is at stake you do not take for granted any argument that seems cool. It takes time and a lot of arguments, and the biggest dirt is brought out on top.
Personally, I also trust the judgment of mk and ctime more because I was put off by the action of freezing accounts and consultations with hivewathers, but I believe that megadrive and his team make such and no other decisions also guided by Blurt's good and not driven by the desire to make a scam. Nevertheless, I am just glad that someone who has an interest in this matter and time, looks at their hands even if they sow FUD because it is better to drag out all the dirt than sweeping them under the rug where sooner or later cockroaches will multiply.
I agree whole heatedly with @leifasaur's comment. Thank you for taking the time....
So far I have been very impressed with your introduction and stance no matter what camp we sit in. You are an independent thinker and looking to do what is best for the chain and you have no interest in damaging it even if you do not agree. We need more like this. Thanks for your work I look forward to seeing your projects.
Yes what you say is very true. Trust me I have lost no sleep over not having those votes I think I have only ever had one anyway. This goes back to the first whale war as he was very much against delegation and the vote trading service also but I was critical of how he was voting almost every plagiarism post. He now has even voted a post to the trending with only a picture, the definition of a shit post. Is this really how the community can be made better?
Anyway I am glad you are finding your place that allows you to enjoy the rewards and also do what you feel is right in your heart. More power brother.
You definitely don’t need upvotes from Ctime, mmmkkk or Blurtbooster to make a fortune here on Blurt. I do much better with a few delegations to @upvu.
…. http://blurt.upvu.org/
This is very huge!!! Congratulations to you. I started content writing a year ago. I know I will be a whale on blurt someday
It does suck that you're not able to live off of your income just yet. I'm in the same boat as well. I've been diversifying as much as possible. I'm active on Steem (with no luck, but at least I earn interest), Hive (it works but not enough to live off of, but DeFi pools are ok), and Blurt (I earn the most on Blurt).
Other than these social networks, I run a few Rumble Channels which gives me probably a penny or two a month (due to low views). Yet, that's about it.
I've entered the DeFi market on SmartBCH, and soon I'll be dipping my feet into DogeChain and Binance pools. I'm trying everything I can to make a little more money. Things are getting pretty crazy economically.
@drutter, just incase I've followed you on Steem! I suppose any little bit can help.
Well done buddy congratulations :)
Does the BP in 500,000 stand for bitch points? hahahaha you shouldn't post so late at night I get silly.
He posted! This is an overly optimistic post. I've been told to say this by the curation police.
I understand you started quite early. I started when bitcoin was around 300 dollars, I had good results in crypto, but my biggest problem was to cash out instead of holding. In the 2017 upswing, I sold some of it and bought the car I drive now. I don't sell anymore, I keep what I earn. With a new upswing, I expect my portfolio to min. x10 with a new rise.
Congratulations on this milestone @drutter! 💪🦾
Thank you Wil, nice work passing 700k yourself!
#letsgrowblurt
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