I wasn’t going to write this as a full post, but while typing it I realised that my experience may be able to help others.
For the past two years I’ve been working on a “secret” project: helping a friend devise a revolutionary new – let’s call it a “communications system” – with the sole aim of vastly improving global understanding and inter-person relationships. He’s a little eccentric and paranoid (“little” being a nice way of saying “extremely”). I was to help him run the entire enterprise, coordinating global teams and leading operations. We’ve done substantial groundwork, thanks in no small part to my (entirely voluntary and unpaid) contributions. Now, with funding finally secured and only weeks away from launching the first modules of our dream into reality, he suddenly turns paranoid against ME!
Bit Brain being Bit Brain, I bow to nobody and I DON’T take kindly to seemingly benevolent friends who turn out to be tyrants when the brown stuff hits the fan! It’s hard to tell what’s worse: that he couldn’t see why I was angry; that he tried to turn everything around on me; or that he obviously believes that his conduct, though demonstrably heinous, is beyond reproach!
Needless to say, today marked the end of my involvement with his project – I can’t work with a lunatic who doesn’t trust my capabilities and judgement. I can’t work with someone who takes exception to me fighting governments and spreading the truth (which I do everywhere), because it may make his company “look bad”. That doesn’t even make sense considering what he wants his company to ultimately do! It’s terribly sad, he completely lacks the skills and experience to work with a dynamic team, he stands zero chance of success without my help. The project is a good one (if rather ambitious), but it deserves a shot and I was willing to do my very best to give it that shot.
Now, all is lost, thanks solely to his suddenly inane behaviour.
It’s been a rather hard blow to take: I was keen on the challenge, I really wanted to help make the world a better place, I could sure have used a little cash flow too (though it was never about money) – this could have been revolutionary.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially in the wake of watching well-intentioned crypto projects get hit so hard by the crypto winter. But I guess that’s life, you don’t get to choose how it plays out. So I’ll be doing what I always do: get back up, dust myself off, learn lessons from the experience and just keep on trying my best to make a difference wherever I can. I accept that the scope my control is limited; I do what I can and what I think is right, the rest is in God’s hands.
People are struggling; just as I was about to fall asleep last night, I checked my phone and spotted one of those “help my, my life is too much for me and I’m overwhelmed!” posts on a friend’s Facebook wall – maybe you’ve seen a similar one yourself. I immediately reacted to it and offered her a listening ear, sometimes all people need is somebody to talk to. It’s not the first time something like has happened, and it surely won’t be the last.
Remember that everyone you meet is fighting some sort of battle, don’t be fooled by their positive Facebook statuses and happy looking photos on Instagram showing their perfect lives. Two years ago I reacted to another of those Facebook posts. I tried hard to help a friend of mine who was going through a bad patch. Not long after that he committed suicide. It’s a tragedy and a loss that I will never forget, but at least I can look myself in the mirror and know that I tried, that I made a concerted effort to prevent it. I keep a screenshot of his final message to me, it simply says “Thank you.” I still shed a few tears whenever I see it. You can see it up at the top of this post.
Just imagine how I would feel if I hadn’t tried!
Take care of yourselves ladies and gentlemen, and take care of each other too. It is often when we don’t consider one another and we act selfishly that conflict occurs. I always tell my wife that our marriage will remain rock solid as long as we both keep putting one another first.
Okay, let’s get my chin off the floor and see where life takes me from here. In the wise words of Cumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” (yes I’m THAT old!):
“I get knocked down, But I get up again, You are never gonna keep me down.”
Yours in friendship
Bit Brain
“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first”
~ Mark Twain
“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful”
I should be packing my bags, getting ready for a company retreat to France. I am nursing sinus pain instead.
Every year the company I work for has a get together where all of the employees go to a city and get to work together / hang out together. This is a good thing as many of the people work remotely and thus we have very little interaction with one another other than via video chats.
You can build a much stronger bond in person, additionally it is much easier to understand someone else’s pain points when you can communicate without boundaries.
This would have been my first retreat so I am a bit bummed at not being able to make it and meet many of the people whom I have dealt with in a strictly virtual manner.
The whole of last week I skipped writing any posts, so I am pretty bummed out in general.
I always try put at least one photo in my posts, more often than not a photo I have taken, so today you get a snail. It had rained and I saw this guy slipping along, with everything being wet I thought it had a nice contrast. Photo was taken with my phone, but came out alright I think.
I am DIYing to get back to some DIY so I have more interesting (to me) content to post. I am on the mend but not healthy enough yet to do any physical work 🙁
Hopefully I can come up with something less whiny to post tomorrow.
Thanks to ALL of you, Steemit is still alive, stabilizing and preparing for the next Bull Run !
We reached 12.2 mn visits in July 2019!
There is an important difference between total visitors to a site and unique ones. In this case the 12.2mn include the multiple times a person visited the website.
Therefore, as a good Steemian you probably connect everyday which will make you count for a total of 30 visits.
Therefore, how many “unique users” does Steemit has?
This is a very important question that I will try to answer later on. According to the Beta Analysis from the website I use to compile these datas, it is around 7mn (vs c.7.39mn in June) !
One quick word about the Methodology
Datas can come from multiple sources listed in the end of this post
These sources get their raw datas from companies working with them and sharing their datas in order to get access to competitor’s ones, browsers add-ons, in-app softwares which allow the Big Data to have a very large panel of users (north of 20mn) in order to statistically have the number of users/visits…
I use these raw datas to make excels tables, graphs…
I] Traffic
Daily Steemit Traffic
In January 2018, we experienced the best daily numbers at 1.5mn+; they decreased a little under 1.5mn in February. Unfortunately the daily traffic on Steemit slowed down to c.400 000 in December 2018. Let’s hope it is just a little setback
In April 2019, the average daily traffic was closer to 450k per day. In May it increased a little more.
Another, explanation could be that people spend more time on apps (Partiko, Steepshot, Dtube, Steemmonster, eSteem…) which are not accounted in this analysis.
Numbers are still low BUT it is stabilizing would be more accurate since January 2018 !
Steemit website is ranked 5,461 worldwide. In June, it was sitting at 5,316. Steemit kept on deteriorating its ranking as it ranked 1400+ last year.
Google Trends
Google Trend is an Indice based on 100, which means that 100 represents the week when most people searched for “Steemit” on Google.
Google Trends are still very low but there is hope as Bitcoin Google Trend is increasing slowly again, maybe more crypto users joining decentralized platforms?
Bitcoin Google Trend Graph
Steemit Traffic share by country
In the Top 5, the strongest traffic increase came from United-Kingdom with +5.07% visits!
Mobile Traffic is increasing compared to last month as it represents 50.1% of the total
This is increasing as it was only c.42% in January 2019
This is useful to know how people use the Steem platform. Initiatives like @partiko (mobile app), @esteemapp (mobile app), @busy.org , @appics (Instagram), @actifit , @steemhunt , @utopian-io … will probably help the community to grow on mobile phones.
Be Careful with the Number of Visits
Also, remember that if you connect from a different device (home/work computer, mobile phone, tablet) you will count as a “new visitor” on each of these devices.
So as an example, let’s say you connected at home, at work and in the subway. You would represent 3 visits out of these 1mn+ Daily Visits.
II] Marketing Mix
Organic Search is once again improving and represents 67,3% of the incoming Traffic.
Organic search is when people research on Google. As the number of quality bloggers on Steemit increase, our content has a higher probability of being listed in Google’s Top results.
Different Channels:
Direct: When you type in you Web browser www.steemit.com Mail: When you connect to steemit.com through an e-mail link Referrals: When you connect to steemit.com through a link found on another website (github…) Social: When you connect to Steemit through a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… page or link Organic Search: When you type a search term like “Crypto” on Google and you click on one of the following steemit link proposed to you
Traffic Share Evolution since inception of this analysis
The Organic Search Strategy which means the Content Strategy is working as people come across Steemit looking for Crypto, Blog, Travel, etc… related articles.
Referring Social Pages
Youtube represented 35% of all the social platform incoming traffic. Reddit is also a strong source of new visits on the Steemit Platform. Last month, Facebook was the first Social Media to bring traffic to Steemit.com with a 32.4% contribution.
5 most searched terms on Google that leads to Steemit.com
To be honest, I don’t really get how some of these requests lead you to Steem but… it does.
What are Steemians main interests?
Gender Demographics
Age Distribution
III] Steemit website metrics
You feel a bit confused about these 3 metrics? Let me explain.
Bounce Rate is the % of people that leave the Website after just navigating on a single Webpage. The lower, the Better
Daily Pageviews per Visitor is the average number of pages a visitor opens. The Higher, the Better
Daily Time on Site is the full time a visitor spend on the website before closing the internet Webpage. The Higher the Better
Metrics improved a lot compared to last month, especially the Bounce rate and pageviews per visitor. I dot not really know how to explain it but it is quite positive. It means we have a sticky Steemian userbase that just WILL not let go ! 😀
My assumptions for July 2019
Total visits to Steemit.com: 12,2mn
Assumption of Total unique visitors in July: 6.5-7mn
Total Daily visitors: 350-370k
Assumption of Total Daily Unique visitors: 220-250k
This is a collective achievement and I would like to congratulate all of us! We need to do better and get back to the January 2018’s type of numbers.
This monthly report makes me very optimistic about STEEM’s future !
As you probably all followed, we have a new communication strategy. We have Steemit Inc. delivering on numerous fronts (including HF21). The community is continuing to build. Just look at our dapps ecosystem and the latest @steemmonsters guild release (app coming sooooon :D) or @actifit @steem-engine token !
We have so many projects that have matured, such an amazing Community and with Crypto prices bouncing we might have a chance to attract new users very soon!
Bring your friends, engage with fellow Steemians and make little Tribes !
Next BigData Analysis coming on @steemmonsters @drugwars and other cool projects !
One of the fun decision dilemmas in life….
Time vs. Money
Here’s the thing, we all look at money with a sense of value. X amount of dollars get us X amount of services/goods in return. So when it comes to money, many of us want to save some of it by doing a few extra things ourselves.
This makes complete sense, get less services/goods spend less money.
Or does it?
The Value of Your Time
How come we do not think about how much our time is worth? Some of us do, but the majority of us don’t quantify this. However, that’s exactly what we
A personal finance tip for how to allocate income, the buckets I use and the percentages that go toward each.
It’s a video I did some time back, here is what I lay out:
Income Allocation
55% towards living expenses (mortgage, food, utilities, etc.)
20% toward long-term savings/rainy day fund (for emergencies or replacement of large ticket items)
10% for investing/passive income creation (investing in and acquiring income producing assets)
10% for fun time money (pure discretionary income to spend on anything you like!)
5% for learning and getting better (taking a class or a course, i.e, learning something new)
Investing mantras to live by. These are something I like to share now and again and since it’s been close to a year it’s time to chat about them again.
Investing Mantras I live by:
If something more than doubles in price in one day – SELL HALF
Buy the dips, sell the rips!
Remember, nothing HAS to happen
You cannot be grateful and angry at the same time
Let’s quickly dig into these one by one….
If somethings doubles in price in one day (or even a few) selling half always makes sense. Yeah, there are instances where something will triple or more, but there are
Finally, after many months of study, exam preparation, training at the office, I don’t know how many liters of coffee ingested, failing one exam three months ago and affecting all my private environment and family… today, I have passed the PMP certification exam…
And the results have been surprising for me since I get a result far above the target which is outstanding taking into account that after failing the exam on February, when I thought I was very well prepared, I did not have so much good expectations this time…
Honestly, if I would have failed this time I don’t think I would do it again…it has been a complete “odyssey ” for my already overloaded old brain… and the examination fees are a little bit so high.
The money has not been a problem despite it is not cheap nor the exam fees neither the training documentation…The worst has been the invested time. I have studied every time I could, on the planes and airports, at the hotels, at the waiting rooms or even at the bathrooms…
I had to reject many appointments and activities during the last weeks because I spent the remaining hours after working and almost the whole weekend studying at the Public Library because at home, with two children fighting, was totally impossible to get focussed… Poor kids… also my attention on them has been lowered these days…
Now I am a “Certified Project Manager” which, it does not tell you so much about but it is very appreciated in the field where I work since 20 years ago already, engineering, besides that… Project Management is almost a philosophy of life, an orderly way of planning and doing things which I like…
From today I can resume my daily routine, be more with the family, plan for more social events and increase my Running activities which I have reduced a lot.
Do not forget: Perseverance and Determination are the keys of success.
You can see it up at the top of this post.
