My Uptrennd Story

I feel like I have been on Uptrennd forever! I have to admit that I am spending a good part of my day (or rather night) on this platform. However, forever is a very long time and deep down, I do live in reality and know that it couldn't be that long. I don't exactly remember on which date I did join Uptrennd, but this is what I did do figure it out.

As you can see, as of this morning, I posted 151 posts since I joined Uptrennd. I divided that by 3 and added some days to account for those times when I ran out of energy to post three times before the dreaded sound of the midnight bell.

My brilliant math skills (🤪 not) let me to think that I have been on Uptrennd for about two months.

The simple answer to how I got here is the @Pete Pierson invited me to check out this platform. And I did.

I know that I said that my Uptrennd story started about two months ago, but that is not the truth. It started much, much earlier when I found out about Steem. I was excited about the idea of being able to earn crypto and believed in the idea that blockchain technology and crypto were the great equalizer.

That turned out not to be true on Steem  (I don't want to go too deep into that sordid past) but to my delight, I found it to be true on Uptrennd. Here, the earning potential is completely up to the individual. True, higher levels earn more per vote received - but that has little to do with the giver of the vote - at least for now.

It is up to the Uptrenndian if they are going to invest their earned points to level up = higher earning potential or to cash it out. 

Another great use of those points is to give them away in a contest as our friend @Tiger Lily has shown us to be a very successful way to get known when brand-new to a platform. Tiger is playing a big part in my Uptrennd story, but more about that later.

When Pete invited me to check out Uptrennd, it was perfect timing for me. Several things were happening at that time. There was a lot of drama unfolding on Steem and I was rapidly losing trust in any of the parties involved - both on Steem and Hive. At the same time, Uptrennd had opened the platform to invite contend other than crypto-related articles.

If all of these events wouldn't have happened at the same time, I don't think I would be here today. I am not interested in endless crypto-related blogs, not in reading them nor writing them. At the same time, I wasn't interested in exploring yet another platform and wasting my time. I had done plenty of that already.

But @Pete Pierson was an old and trusted friend - we met in the early days of the Freewrite initiative I had started on Steem that is of today 930 days old. He kept encouraging me to check out Uptrennd. Then, he posted a link to an offer @Luke S had made to all Steemians. 

"Join Uptrennd and make a post on Steem about joining Uptrennd. Get 500 1Up as a reward."

I did just that - and sorry, Pete, I am not even sure if I used your referral link 😕  At that point, I didn't know of the many ways Uptrennd helps us succeed.

Jumping to level 5 right away was awesome and I started to explore the Uptrenndverse. Since I had been posting the Freewrite prompt for such a long time, I figured I give it a try here as well. It helped that Pete jumped on board and participated right from the beginning.

But before I knew it, I received downvotes on my daily prompt posts. I tried to figure out what was going on and read the rules again. One of them said that you are not allowed to post the same post over and over again. 

Hmm - even though I was writing tons of new material in each and every post, I was using the same graphics and the same text on how the freewrite works. It was modeled after what I was doing on Steem since the instruction kind of need to stay the same and are only geared to someone coming across the post for the first time. Without them, they wouldn't know what to do.

But I could see how someone could think that it was the same post over and over and over again.

That was an easy fix. I changed the graphics daily and condensed the instructions to an infographic with a link to the original post.

When I build the Freewrite community on Steem, I dropped a link to the new prompt in the comments of every freewriter's post to make sure they knew of the next prompt. But I wasn't sure if that was considered spam on Uptrennd. By this time, I was impressed with the Spam fighting activities of the guardians and didn't want to make more work for them 😛.

Speaking of guardians. Their responsiveness is truly amazing!

Let me give you an example. A while back, @Elena Demou published an article introducing Uptrennd swag. Of course, I had to open my big mouth in the comments and state that I couldn't/wouldn't buy any of it since there weren't any organic options.

Two days later!!! Yes, two days!! Again, two days later I had a DM from Elena that an organic option had been added!!!

That is amazing and super fast - and a great example of how the guardians listen to us and act!

There are many more examples like that but I will stop here or this post will never get done.

Back to me, happily posting freewrites and exploring the platform, when suddenly, @Tiger Lily pops up in my comments. Now, mind you, I hadn't met and didn't know any Tiger Lilies in all my life. But something was so strangely familiar about this particular tiger. She kept saying that I know her - but I didn't want to make any mistakes and was feeling my way very carefully around her posts to make sure that I was giving her the right answer. 

Never ever do I want to hurt a friend - or anyone for that matter.

The funny part of the story is that she had already sent me a DM on Discord and told me that she was on Uptrennd - I just hadn't checked in there for a while.

Tiger and I met on Steem (and that is how Steem keeps coming up in this Uptrennd story), then, we met in real life and had become good friends - we even traveled together for a week of long drives and meeting with lots of online friends in real life.

Tiger had left Steem a while ago because she felt that the platform had stopped serving all of us and was only benefitting a small elite. About the same time, I had also lost my enthusiasm for Steem but kept on posting the Freewrite prompt since I had done it for so long and a community was waiting for their daily prompt. (I know that because I get calls and texts if I am late publishing the prompt).

But the joy had left the building.

I missed my friend Tiger and the fun and games, the bantering back and forth in the comments, the plotting of new and sometimes crazy things to do.

Now, here she was.

And with both of us talking about Uptrennd with our friends and me including an invite in every Steem post I was making, before we knew it, a lot of our friends had made the switch as well.

I, and I think I can speak for most of everyone who has come from other crypto platforms out there, was impressed with the equal opportunity this platform was offering to everyone. There was no chasing those with more money in their wallets and as long as people are producing good content and comments, they can move on up.

The fun of being online had come back!!

At the same time, the Freewrite here on Uptrennd gained in popularity and the Uptrennd team, always with an ear to the pulse of the platform and with an eye on improving the user experience for everyone, decided to host a weekly Uptrennd Freewrite contest. So much fun!! 

In the short time here, I have already seen improvement in the quality of writing of those that freewrite regularly.

Helping people improve, teaching how to be successful on Uptrennd, and fighting spam has been part of what I have been doing here from the beginning. 

Enter Uptrennd University created by @Tiger Lily. Soon, we will be able to help many more new (and maybe current) Trenndians to be successful here and make the platform even better by contributing quality content - both in their posts and comments. Learning that it is more profitable to be a quality content creator than a spammer will be key to keep the value of 1Up high.

That brings me to the earning potential on Uptrennd. Living in California, the cost of living is so high that earning 1Up at the current value is not going to make a big difference in our financial wellbeing. That might - or should I say will change in the future. I see tremendous potential for this platform and for 1UP.

At the same time, I am so happy that applying themselves to Uptrennd is helping people in so many countries to create an income that can feed their families. For that, I am endlessly grateful.

In these troubled times, it is easy to feel helpless and that we as small individuals can do little to nothing to bring about change. Knowing that my upvote can help to feed someone makes me extremely happy.

In conclusion: Uptrennd rocks and I am so happy to be here.

Join me on Uptrennd using this link - we each will get 100 1UP https://www.uptrennd.com/signup/NjgxMzg