Steemit: Survival tool for Africa? (Original Analysis & Thoughts)

$1.2 per day - Many Africans earn less than this! Steemit to Rescue!!

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(Image credit: Image 1, Image 2 and my analysis graph blended in a collage by me)

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An article by @stellabelle prompted me to take a look at earning levels of Africans. Though I am fairly familiar with the socio-economic conditions in many African countries, what I learned, shocked me.

As per a report by World Bank, this is what the average earning situation looks like in Africa:

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There are areas in Africa (and also some other parts of the world) with 10-50% of citizens making less than $1.2 per day! This is less than what we spend on a single fast food type meal! It is true that cost of living is not very high in most of these areas but the earning potential seems to be truly appalling. Perhaps it is a vicious cycle that involves lack of most infrastructure that can drive growth and such lack of growth, in turn, driving lack of investment for infrastructure. There is only one saving grace, in the form of internet connectivity.

Fortunately, the connectivity of internet appears to be satisfactory in critical areas of Africa (relevant for this analysis) as seen from an image in this article shown below:

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Other areas, which do have connectivity problems may slowly get connected (perhaps through initiatives taken by able Steemians) as time passes.

Therefore, to raise the average earning capability and living standard in such areas, we can hypothesize an internet based solution like Steemit where any African can blog regularly to earn extra. This hypothesis has already been proposed by Senior Steemians. As I have observed, efforts are on to promote Steemit following in many countries in Africa. I too, am a proud member in the AfricaUnited community being supported by @donkeypong, @gavvet, @dragonslayer109, @jrcornel and others.

However, I also note that there are a lot of nay-sayers and doubting Thomas' out there, who question the ability of Steemians to earn consistently on Steemit platform.

Therefore, I believe that following questions need to be answered, with reference to CURRENT conditions, before the hypothesis can be considered as a practical solution.

• How much is the earning potential for Steemians as of today?
• How much time would it take for a Steemian to reach a certain level of earning per day?

None of us has a crystal ball to answer these questions for the future. However, we do have substantial data on the blockchain, which we can analyse to try and predict some trends.

With these thoughts and inspiration gained from the following articles, I decided to use SteemSQL database created by @arcange​:

• https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcange/steemsql-com-how-to-create-a-steem-analytic-report-with-microsoft-excel
• https://steemit.com/steem/@ervin-lemark/how-to-get-the-list-of-your-steemit-articles-with-steemsql

I was a total novice to SQL but aided by the excellent articles mentioned above and a bit of internet based learning, I was able to query the SteemSQL database appropriately, to find following interesting results.

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I analyzed pending post payout data for ALL the posts in 5 days (from August 3, 2017 to August 8, 2017) to find out the average payouts expected per post at various reputation levels. Initially, I extracted data to an Excel table as shown below.

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I used the logic in this article by @digitalnotvir to calculate the simpler approximate reputation score so that it is easier for newcomers to understand.

Then I produced a pivot chart shown below to show Reputation level vs. average payout per post shown below:

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As we can see from the chart - the payout increases exponentially as reputation rises on Steemit. I even plotted exponential trend lines (which can be seen in faint brown curving lines on the chart) and found them to be fitting surprisingly well. The whole chart surprisingly looks like a 'Tree of life' that gives more rewards as we climb higher. Don't you think so?

So what does this chart tell us?

• Earning reputation on Steemit is a must. As we all know, engagement through producing quality posts (earning upvotes) and interaction with other authors through comments earn us reputation. The chart proves the fact that majority of Steemians are able to see their effort pay off (literally!!) as they engage more and more - Proving that this wonderful platform is indeed functioning as envisaged by the founding members @ned & @dan and others.

• A dedicated Steemian can hope to start making $ 0.1-5 per post and progress up to $60-80 per post. Therefore, compared to the current earning potential of $1.2 per day, just one good post and engagement per day can help to earn up to 60 times more after a while !!

• The chart only shows average earnings per post across more than 16000 posts per day by thousands of Steemians. There are high reputation Steemians who earn less than the average per post sometimes and there are lower reputation Steemians who earn even $1000 sometimes on a single post. Exceptional quality of content, just some plain luck in catching some whale love or pure sympathy sometimes, from Senior Steemians make exceptions possible. The exceptions always prove the rule.

  Note: The chart shows payouts per post normalized to a Steem price of USD 1.3234/Steem. As the price of Steem increases in future, the average earnings will go up more.

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For an African who is struggling to survive, any solution that is presented should have a fair time line quoted along with it. For someone who has to worry about having food on the table tomorrow, a plan that has a promise of their uplift in 5-10 years may not be worth attempting. Therefore, I attempted to analyze data on SteemSQL for all Steemians (more than 2 million of them at the moment) to find out the following data on average time taken by Steemians to reach certain reputation levels:

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As can be seen, it takes a certain average time to reach a level 40 (about 4 months on an average) and then the time starts increasing. This is not surprising since the reputation calculations are based on a Log10 scale. However, we can see that a lot of Steemians have achieved 70+ levels in a year. We need to bear in mind that Steemit is a beta level platform barely over a year old and has undergone many hard forks as well as some algorithm changes for reputation calculation. Therefore, there is no guarantee that this is how things are. However, judging by my own progress, I do believe that Steemit platform is working as intended and such timelines as displayed in the analytical chart above may hold good for majority of Steemians.

So, in conclusion - Per my analysis, (1) Steemit does perform as envisaged, (2) Steemit can help Africans (and citizens of other developing nations) earn up to $60-80 per day with honest efforts of one good quality post and dedicated engagement with other Steemians every day and (3) As things stand now, Steemians can expect to reach that level of average payout per post in about 12-14 months provided they put in dedicated effort

I would love to hear views and get guidance from all Steemians about my analysis and views.

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