Your first question is probably: WHAT THE HELL IS STEEMIT?
Answer: Steemit is the first social media platform that PAYS you for your content. I may be off a little, but Facebook has a good $500 billion market cap and 2 billion users, making each user worth $239. Yes, you're worth $239 in economic activity, but you aren't getting a dime. And for some of you who have asstons of friends and share a lot of good original content, again, you aren't getting a SINGLE dime. Facebook is doing well though... We know that much!
To the contrary, Steemit has about 100,000 users, is growing, and has a $250 million market cap. That means that every user is worth $2,500! What's more is that users who contribute good, original content to the platform, they get PAID for it!
There are people posting pictures of their garden and are making $200 for posting some fcking garden pictures, bruhhh. It's fcking unreal!!!
And since this platform is just getting started, you have an awesome opportunity to take over a niche of your choosing and quit your bullsh*t job in a matter of a couple months, faster even if you do what I tell you to do below.
But let's quick answer your second question-
How do people get paid?
People get paid in Steem, a cryptocurrency that is openly traded on various cryptocurrency exchanges. As your reputation grows and as you start making legit money for your content, you can cash out for Steem coins. You then take these coins to an exchange and trade them for coins like Bitcoin, Etherium, etc. You can then sell these coins at Coinbase.
You can also go right to Changelly and trade them right away.
People are cashing f*cking $8,000 checks in a week who are on top of their Steemit game. In fact, there are people making at least $20/day writing fucking comments alone!
Now don't get me wrong, there will be a small learning curve. However, it's not fcking rocket science, and all you need to do is put in all but 30 minutes a day, possibly an hour, or hell, some of you will be smart and put at least 4 hours into dis btch a day! Sheeeittt... some of you might put in 8 hours a day. The fact is that this platform is growing and it's paying people for content.
By getting in now, you will be a BOSS once this platform has tens of millions of users. FACTS
Your third question-
Kyle, this all sounds great. How do I get started and what do I need to do?
1.) Set up a Steemit account and choose your username. Link: https://steemit.com/
2.) Follow me. My username is kylewilliam or @kylewilliam. Link to my profile: https://steemit.com/@kylewilliam
3.) Give me some upvote love. Click on my posts under my profile and at the bottom of any post, you click the little blue circle to give me an upvote. [Picture below]
4.) Since you'll be following my account, anytime I post content, upvote me and if you can, write a nice, relevant comment. I will return the favor to you and any friends you sign up.
5.) Follow other people with similar interests
6.) Start posting content on whatever the f*ck you want. Like seriously, anything you want. Just start posting. That is all.
7.) Start learning more about Steemit and how it all works on YouTube. You can learn everything you need to know in an hour or two at the most.
LASTLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: Let your friends know about Steemit. If each of you joins and can get at least 5 friends to join and do all the things above, we will DOMINATE this platform. I will make a list of everyone we have in our network and I will make sure everyone gets followed and gets upvotes.
It may sound that easy, but if I check back on you in a month I'm sure your ideas will have changed (at least a little).
Optimism is awesome, Please remember Steemit doesn't like posts that are plagiarized or simply copy & paste (so saying just post whatever isn't really correct).
It is also not easy to get an audience or large rewards, most only get under $1.00 (but that is still $1.00 more than FB, they just just give us ads).
Also While you can take out the rewards, in fact it's better to leave your rewards in Steemit by Powerig up (or at least some portion of your rewards to benefit in the long term).
I would encourage users to at least keep some of the rewards in Steemit even though you can take them all out.
I see you are new here, so welcome, and good luck to you.
I took out some over time (Powered down) and invested in some BTC and other cybercurrencies too, and have still got some in steemit mostly Powered up
So you can cash out your rewards and send them to like Poloniex, for example, and trade for Bitcoin, etc? I woudl liek to keep Steem Power. I'll do like you did and do half and half.
Quick question: Suppose I invested 120 dollars in SBD and then sent it here to boost my Steem Power. Will that boost my reputation score and cause my upvote to go up and my content to be seen by more people? Thanks
And one more question. When I go around and upvote people, am I losing any of my Steem doing that? How does that work?
If you want to power up, you can invest in STEEM then power it up. If you invest in SBD it must first be changed into STEEM to power up.
You could set your rewards when you post to 50/50 that way you will get STEEM Power and SBD or you could set it for 100% STEEM Power in which case every reward you get will be powered up and increase your share of the vote pool, I'm not sure if it will increase your reputation too, I think that is only by posting and commenting.
If you want to take out rewards from Steemit, an easy way is blocktrades.us there's no need to sign up. Before you do that though, set up a wallet for the token you want to trade into (I use Exodus, it's easy to understand and has a few tokens, BTC, ETH, LTC, EOS, etc).
You also have the option of exchanges such as Bittrex etc if you want to use them, there have been problems with some of those though but if you want to trade then they are your only option, I just buy using blocktrades.us and hold in my exodus wallet. It's been scary lately.
I haven't tried to take real fiat money, that seems a lot more difficult and besides I want my mix of cyber currencies to grow over time so I'm HODL what I get.
I see you are talking about investing $ so I guess you have that part figured out.
Good luck to you.