This post is a guide for all the newcomers who are just as confused as I was two weeks ago. It is by no means complete and there are other posts on Steemit going into much more depth than I do here. It might contain some mistakes. I would appreciate if you would point that out to me in the comments to edit it later.
You know nothing, Jon Snow
Welcome to Steemit. Whether you have just arrived or you are part of the recent upstream of new accounts in the past weeks - you are a freshling on this platform (so am I, so we are in the same boat).
You have not seen what happened behind the scenes over the past year. You don't know about the struggles of the Beta software, that went through 19 hard forks to improve itself (see below for explanation). The Steemit you see here is not the same as it was. Before there was less money and lower payments. There was a small and tight community.
Steemit has gotten some steam, the gold rush seems to have started and new members come streaming (Steeming?) onto the platform. And we all need to learn a lot.
I consider myself a power user and I have researched a lot in the past two weeks to understand how Steemit works. This post is meant to give you a good head start about everything concerning the platform.
Terminology
Let us begin with the internal language of Steemit. There are three terms you will quickly learn: Minnow, Dolphin and Whale. This basically means accounts with little, medium or high amount of Steem Power. I explain Steem Power below. The difference is fundamentally important for everyone on Steemit because on Whale can probably pay your entire months rent with one click (not if you live in London or San Francisco). In fact you will read the word Whale everywhere because they have the power to make you rise and fall on Steemit. And therefore there are thousands of articles featuring this topic every day.
Channels are the categories in which you can post your articles. You have five channels per post. Make good use of them. And don't post more than one or two times in the introduceyourself channel. People like to post unrelated posts there because payouts are particularly high there to welcome newcomers who put effort into their first post. It will not help your unrelated post to be there, I promise.
There is more but I explain the remaining terminology in their own sections of this post.
How do I earn money?
Let's admit it, at least 90% of all people coming here want some quick money. And depending on what your expectations are, you will earn some quick money. On my first ten days I collected 12 Steem and 19 Steem Backed Dollars (SBD). That is about 52 US Dollars according to the current exchange rate. Not much but I am celebrating it like a child on Christmas day. And the numbers go up fast.
Keep in mind that each post or comment will be payed out after seven days. Not earlier, not later. Everything older than that is kind of dead. This is one of the very few things I believe should be changed. Content should be timeless and generate income forever. But that is for another post to discuss.
Please keep in mind that all prices you see under each post are not US Dollar but usually 50% Steem Power and 50% SBD. So the value is actually much higer than the numbers you see there.
Posting
The best thing you can do as a newbie is to post and comment. You can literally post about anything: writing funny or intellectual articles (short or long), post your travel experiences or photos from your garden flowers. Very popular are topics about cryptocurrencies in general and Steem/Steemit specifially. You can even post about porn. There is a powerful niche for that.
When you finished your post and published it to the platform, it will find just a few people at first. They will see your post among all the others in the few groups that are offered at the moment on the top left of this website:
- home: Here you will find your own home wall with posts from all your followers, the latest on the top.
- new: ALL new posts from ALL categories.
- hot: All relatively new posts that got many upvotes.
- trending: All posts of the last seven days that have been upvoted many times. You can see very high earnings.
- promoted: You can promote your posts by paying SBD. They will appear here.
Commenting
All your comments can and will generate money, even if it is very little to begin with. My advice: Never write stupid comments like "nice post". That doesn't bring value to the platform and you will not get much for that. Maybe 0.001 Steem Power or something like that. Instead take a minute and write a few sentences reflecting on the article. Maybe ask a question?
If your comment was valuable, interesting or funny it will get upvoted most likely. That can be just a cent if the vote comes from a newcomer with no Steem Power. Or it can be easily $100+ when someone with a big Steem Power account likes it. I have earned $15 for a funny GIF because it was on point for the conversation. That was more than all my previous posts combined until then and it took me one minute to find and post it.
Also: If you comment early you have a much higher chance to catch the attention of others, in particular Dolphins and Whales.
Curating
The third way to earn money is by upvoting posts and comments. You will get a part of the money of the post when you do that. There is about 25% going to the curators, which includes yourself when you upvote your own post. Read more about that here. That basically means that when you get $100 for a post after one hour of publishing it, this money WILL GO DOWN during the following days, because of all the upvoters. Except of course you get more high paid upvotes among the many that bring little to none.
There is a whole philosophy behind curating and there are strategies to maximize your earnings. I haven't really figured it out myself yet. I heard of the 20 minute rule, which says you should wait for 20-30 minutes after the post was published. That way your curator reward will be higher compared to all other curators. I am not sure if tht is correct, please research that yourself.
And finally you can upvote yourself. Yes, you can generate money directly for yourself by upvoting your posts and comments. In fact, this function is activated by default under all your posts, to upvote the post automatically when you publish the post. There are some that argue you should deactivate that and upvote yourself after 20-30 minutes to increase the curating amount, according to what I wrote in the paragraph above. You will get a percentage out of the 25% of your post reserved to curators and commenters. That is good for you and bad for the others. At the moment pretty much everyone does that and so should you in the beginning. When you grow stronger on Steemit you should probably consider to not do that and leave the 25% rewards to your followers.
Inside Tip 1: SteemGigs and SteemShop
You can earn money outside of the normal Steem system itself by offering your services or goods. This is in my opinion a secret killer feature of Steemit and still in its infancy. The organizers behind both projects (actually I only know about SteemGigs, I haven't talked to the SteemShop guys yet) work hard to spread the word and improve this sub-section of Steemit. All you have to do is write a post and put it in the category SteemGigs (for services) or SteemShop (for goods). You can also follow @Steemgigs and @Steemshop for staying up to date on new offers.
This is basically replacing Fiverr and other websites like that. You are already starting to make money with the post itself instead of paying for a service or advertising. How cool is that?
Inside Tip 2: Crowd Funding
Ok this is really crazy: You can crowdfund your projects on Steemit. There are several examples where people have collected thousands of Dollars by creating a good post which describes their project. Make sure to inform yourself how this works in detail and where you have to post it. Make sure to get all the information and connectiosn first before you do it. I learned there is a three step process of connecting with the right people before you launch. You can do it right away, but it will probably not get much attention.
What are the three currencies in my wallet?
Check out your wallet to follow me with the next passage. It is a matter that creates a lot of confusion. You see the three following major parts of Steemit there:
Steem
Steem is the cryptocurrency on which the whole platform was build. It uses blockchain technology, similar to BitCoin. But that your probably already know. You can always exchange your Steem into SBD or Steem Power. And you can of course trade it to another currency.
Steem Power
This is basically the same as Steem but it is vested which means you cannot access it immediately and exchange to BitCoin and co. When you activate the power down function, you will receive 1/13th of the money each week. After 13 weeks you received the total sum you powered down. This is a good function which will stabilize market fluctuations and prevents the whales to hurt the platform all at once by powering down their big accounts.
The benefit of Steem Power is huge:
First of all you get 10% interest on your money each year. I think no bank is giving you that. You probably have to pay for your bank account instead.
Second of all you get more influence on Steemit. Your votes will generate more money, which is awesome and the core of how Steemit works. If you have 100k US Dollars in Steempower, your upvotes can generate a 3 digit sum (that depends on the price of Steem). A hundred Dollars for a comment, anyone?
Third of all you help the platform to grow, because the more Steem Power sits on the total of all accounts, the healthier is Steemit.
SBD
The Steem Backed Dollar is the third currency used on Steemit. It is a bit confusing but the idea of it is that it is pegged to the US Dollar. If Steem plummets, you would stil get a guaranteed value of one US Dollar for it.
As of the moment I am writing this post, the SBD is worth more actually because the currency is strong. So you get about 1.6 US Dollars for one SBD and that is awesome. You can always convert SBD to Steem, buy or sell it on the internal market or - and that is in my opinion the best choice - trade it on the market into Steem Power. This way you help the platform, you get a higher influence and you get actually more for each SBD than by convertzing it directly. Please keep that in mind or your are wasting a lot of your hard earned money (or easy if you are into flower pictures, I tried it, it is not for me).
What is Voting Power?
One of the most confusing things on Steemit for me was the voting power. It took me a lot of research to figure it out. I already mentioned that Steem Power gives you more influence. Besides the value of your Steem Power you have voting power. The voting power starts at 100%. YOu have ten free upvotes each day. After that you are starting to deplete your voting power. This is a security measure to protect the platform from bots and power users to upvote everything.
Printing Money
Here comes to cake: Your voting power regenerates by 20% every day. After five days you are all mighty again and your upvotes will generate more money. That means you don't pay others out of your own reserve of Steem Power. I am no financial expert but in my opinion: Your are PRINTING MONEY. Just like a central bank you generate money because you give value to a post and you basically tell the world that this article was helpful, interesting, funny, sexy or whatever. This is backed by the Steem blockchain because that is scarce and therefor valuable. It comes form the daily mining activites from the blockchain miners around the world. (If you have more info about this, I am glad about a link or two).
Use that power. Upvote at least ten posts each day and you help to grow the Steemit community. Make sure not to upvote to many posts or you deplete the value of your votes for some time. I voted on everything I found in the first days and went down to zero in no time. Don't be like me.
One more thing: As soon as you have 500 Steempower on your account you will get a slider whenever you click on upvote. That slider allows you to use less than 100% voting power on that post. This way you can vot more often each day and also manage whether you want to give a funny comment a Dollar or one hundred Dollars. I have never seen this slider myself yet but I am getting there quickly.
Image Source: @twinner
Delegates
There is a feature that is pretty awesome and that is the delegating program. Let us assume you buy Steem Power with your Fiat money to invest into your account and the platform. Now you have tons of Steem Power but you cannot curate because you have little time to read other posts. Or you do have the time but would like to spread the power onto a larger area of users like @twinner does with his slide switch program in the German sub-community on Steemit. He delegated about 500 Steem Power to over 100 active German Steemit users, including myself. He hopes that this will spread the money generated to more posts and I am sure it will.
The cool thing about that is, that @twinner doesn't even know me. But he doesn't have to be afraid that I will run away with his money because he still owns that Steem Power but just loaned its power to me. If you are rich (and to me a rich person starts at several thousands of Dollars, I know people with millions who still say they aren't) then you might want to consider this. It will help the platform a lot by satisfying more people at once with smaller amounts of earnings, instead of few with high amounts.
Etiquette
This is a very important topic. Steemit is the most friendliest community I have ever seen online. The reason for this is the fact that everything is transparent (except who the actual person is behind the user account). That means we can track EVERYTHING you do. This includes how much money you have in your account, how much you invested into Steem Power, whether you are currently powering down, when and where you commented what, where and how much you upvoted and so on. Because everything is stored in the blockchain third party apps can be devolped to analyze stuff you don't even see on Steemit itself. In fact, Steemit itself might one day be replaced by far better programmed websites, using the same system, thanks to the open source code.
That means you should behave or you turn the community against you. Here are a few things that newbies like to do but are actually not really well received by others (I did most of them myself, we are all learning):
- Be nice: This rule applies literally everwhere and is a normal thing to do (except on YouTube, I think even in the terms it says you have to be rude ;) ). The biggest reason for this on Steemit is that you never know who you are dealing with. Maybe it is a whale in disguise and testing you. Or maybe the person has powerful whale friends. Don't mess it up for yourself.
- Spamming comments: I mentioned it above. A comment should be good. A meaningless comment is a waste of time for everyone, including yourself.
- Asking for followers, upvotes and resteems (like sharing on Facebook): This is really bad. I asked everyone in my first days to follow me.
- Use huge attention gainers: I used my animated coin puppet to gain attention. It is cute and funny but huge and kind of annoying. I am sorry for that. You can use images in your comments, just make sure they are not meaningless or gigantic.
- Writing a tiny post: Don't just write two sentences or just post a YouTube video and then hope you get some cash. You probaly will but it will not help you to get a good fellowship on Steemit.
- Don't create text jungles: Nobody wants to read through something unstructured and unformatted. You don't have to be a designer to make a decently formatted posts. We have three different editors on Steemit, one even supports html for more complex designs. Use them. I will post links to great tutorials in my collection below.
- Don't follow for follow: Another thing you might be attracted to do in the beginning is following somebody just because they follow you. You will just clutter your home wall with stuff you are not interested in. I did that and I am sorry now. I had to clean up my following and start anew.
- Make friends and socialize: The best thing about Steemit is that you are meeting people you would probably have never met otherwise. You can use the comments for that or even better the different chat rooms on Discord, Slack and SteemChat. (Check out the links below)
- Don't steal posts: I was wondering if I write an entire section about this but I will keep it brief. Don't steal posts from other Steemit users. Don't steal posts from outside of Steemit and post them here. If you don any of these two things you will get cought by the @Cheetah bot. This bot is programmed to find identical content online and will then automatically create a comment under your post, warning you and everyone else. Sometimes that might be just because you quoted something and that is ok. But don't copy entire texts from someone else.
- Don't steal images: This is a big issue on Steemit. People just Google a picture and then link to that. That is actually double bad. You steal the intellectual property (IP) of another person and you use their bandwith by linking to their image on their server. Bad, bad, bad. Don't get me wrong: I believe IP is a terrible thing and does reduce the creativity of the hive mind. But it is the law and you should not risk getting sued by someone for stealing their images. Instead use public domain images which nowadays offer gorgoes photos about anything. See my links below for good sources.
Recognize Bots and use them appropriately
There are many bots on Steemit. These are user accounts handled by a program to fulfill a certain role. The bad bots just upvote stuff and try to increase the earnings of the owner. These are bad for the value of the platform.
The good bots are created to help newcomers and guide them with information, warnings or even valauble upvotes like @Cheetah. I know very few so far, remember I am just as much Jon Snow as you are. ;)
And then there are these bots that you can argue whether they are beneficial or not. They are in the grey zone. My favourite is @randowhale which basically allows you to gamble for 2 SBD to get an upvote from that powerful bot between 1% and 5% voting power.
Community Projects to Support Minnows
You might not believe it but behind the curtain there is muuuuuuch happening that you don't see. The Steemit Whales and Dolphins know that the platform can only survive and thrive when we newcomers are happy and continue to provide content. So they do a lot of cool things to help us. I already mentioned the delegate programs.
Some others are #whalepower, which is a category to curate good and valuable content (I amacutally not sure if it is a bot because they always say in the comments the content was curated manually) and #minnowsupport which is a community with its own bot to upvote one of your posts every 12 hours and to socialize. It is not much but can help a minnow like us to get at least a tiny bit instead of a tiny tiny bit. It is also a thriving community with a great Discord chat (see below)
Sideinfo: using the hashtag puts this post automatically in that category. I could also just put it under tags instead). When I use it my post will appear in that category and volunteers will come and curate it. You will get a little nice upvote of a few Dollars and you get more reach because people check out that category to support YOU. Don't use it for every post though, just for your best ones.
Hard Forks
On the 20th of June 2017 was hard fork 19. That was a reprogramming of the previous Steem blockchain code and changed some features. In this case it made each upvote use 2% voting power instead of 0.5% by default. After that all votes became much more worth. So when you are disappointed that your vote on your fresh account only generates 2 cents, imagine how it was before: 0 cents (well it wasn't zero but it looked like it). Much cooler like this.
Steemit is still a huge Beta phase. Every now and then new things will be implemented. You are coming at a glorious time on Steemit. There are many new users and a price ten times higher than early this year (which directly reflects how much you can earn on Steemit).
Post Layout
There are other posts focusing on this topic. But to give you some ideas:
- Use paragraphs
- Use headlines
- Use bold to highlight words
- Use Italic to seperate a sentence from your other content, like I did on top of this post
- Use blockquotes for highlighting sentences
- USE IMAGES, at least one because that will automatically become your post thumbnail (the perfect width is 840px but larger images will be resized automatically; but don't make them too large or they will load very slow).
- Animated GIFs are also very popular but beware, they are much larger in size and will make your post slow if you have too many of them
- Use devider lines like <hr> in the html editor or use an image devider (see links below) to seperate your content
- Use a footer and tell your readers more about yourself or link to other content of yours (see my own footer below for inspiration). Save your footer in a textfile to quickly access it for all your posts.
- Leave your content room to breath is a classic rule in design. That basically means to use plenty of spaces, for example above and below images, videos or devider lines.
Use the right Post Topics
I have already talked about the channels aka categories aka topics aka tags aka hastags. You can use five different tags per post. Make sure to pick the right ones. You can research them under https://steemit.com/tags and see how many posts, comments and how much payout each topic generates. That doesn't mean you have to post in the top categories. It can be much more lucrative to post is a small topic and reach your peer group instead of disappearing in the clutter of frequently used tags. Maybe a mix of both is good. I haven't figured it out for myself, yet. But make sure not to abuse any tag because that will not make you friends.
You can see the topics I used for this post on the bottom of this post next to the upvote button, which you will hopefully use for this post. (I know I said under etiquette above not do ask for upvotes but this is my post and not someone elses and - as you can see - I am providing a ton of value with this post which did cost me a ton of my time).
Use third party apps
There are soooo many good tools out there that help you to get more out of Steemit. Here is my entire collection so far:
- SteemDB: Shows you your current voting power, history, activity, social interactions and much more
- ChainBB: This is a forum on top of Steemit, which helps to get a better overview of current posts (beta link, if dead just Google it)
- SteemitBoard: Awards for your activity on Steemit. You can use them in your Post footer for example.
- SteeMVP: Shows you your most valuable followers and how much money they made you (thanks @fulltimegeek)
- Dead Followers: Shows you followers with more or less inactive accounts
- SteemTagSearch: You can search for all posts of one user in a specific tag
- SteemNow: All about how much money you made with different activities
- SteemConnect: Secures your private Steemit keys when you log into third party apps
- SteemStats: Shows you the distribution of all the posts and comment rewards you where involved
- Steemd: It shows stats that you don't find somewhere else. Here I found out who secretly delegated Steem Power to me (thanks again @twinner)
- SteemWhales: Rankings and Trends for Steemit. Here you can find out where you stand among the entire Steemit community and research all the Whales and Dolphins (by the way, don't stalk the whales like so many others)
Chats
The best way to socialize is using chatrooms, because on Steemit it is a bit iffy when reduced to comments under posts. Check out my collection and if you have more I didn't include here, drop the name or link in the comments below.
- SteemitChat: Kind of the official Steemit Chat
- Discord Chat - SteemSpeak: A very big voice and text chat on Discord
- Discord Chat - PAL: Another great Discord Chat, including the @minnowsupport bot
- Discord Chat - Whaleshares: Yet another great chat for the Whaleshares project
- Discord Chat - SteemGigs: The list goes on: Here you find the @SteemGigs community
Useful Tutorials
Steemit is full of amazing tutorials. Here is my list of very useful ones for beginners
- How to Display Your Steemit Feed on a Wordpress Site
- How to Automatically Post Steemit Links on Facebook with Zapier
- Best Search Engine Optimization for Steemit (SEO works really well on Steemit)
- Design Guide 1: Some ideas how to visually improve your posts
- Design Guide 2: Formatting and Editing
- Design Guide 3: Text Devider Collection
- Design Guide 4: Variety Hacks
More Useful Links
- Pixabay - Free Public Domain Images
- Free Image Hosting with Resizing (never upload huge originals)
- Adobe Sparks - Free Image Editing for Amazing Covers (no skills required)
How to Memorize Names
SteemGig and SteemShop
Get Your Own Animated Puppets For Steemit
850 Major System Training Images To Memorize Numbers
Thank you so much for this comprehensive guide. I am bookmarking this and will follow your advice! I have one question: In the SBD section, you say "You can always convert SBD to Steem, buy or sell it on the internal market or - and that is in my opinion the best choice - trade it on the market into Steem Power. This way you help the platform, you get a higher influence and you get actually more for each SBD than by converting it directly." To clarify, are you saying that in your opinion the best choice is do sell the SBD on an external market ( like Bittrex for example), then buy Steem and convert it to Steem Power? Thanks again!
No, I don't mean an external market. I am talking about the internal market: https://steemit.com/market
Here you will get more for each SBD than when you just click "convert". I don't quite understand why. It seems that for converting a different exchange rate is being used. Maybe someone who is reading this and has a clue can answer that better. But I am pretty sure that this is the case. Try it yourself to compare.
Thanks for clarifying!
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
GOOD I did not get that (been trying to sell.... waited waited ... canceled.. put another bid.. waited... waited... ) just wanted a quicky and there you have it, thank You
Wow. I can't keep myself from posting my second comment. The first one was to express my happiness that this post was written and would help a lot of newbies like me. Now I've read the whole text. I'm so impressed that wow is literally all I could say looking at your final photo with THE END written on the sand. I've learnt a lot and I will come back on this page again and again for links and useful information. I finally understood about upvoting system. I can't even imagine how many time it took you to collect all this information and to organise it in that simple way. Great work really. After your post I'm certainly going to start using animations, yours look great. You know, I started following you thanks to your puppet in your comment, I just couldn't resist, so that works!! 😄 Well, my comment turned into a letter✍️ All I wanted to say is just wow&thanks.
Haha, that's great that like my post so much and even better that you were among those I put my banner on, particular because I don't do that anymore. So good stuff, keep on Steeming.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Haha, look at you: Your post was so good that even @Gentlebot came by and upvoted you. That only happens once an hour on the entire platform for the best reply. And since it is using a deep learning algorithm it probably knows what it is doing. Congratulations!
This is me after reading your message😄
Even if I didn't mean to do something commercial writing my comment, it's a pleasant surprise. Thank you @flawy & thank you @gentlebot!
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Thanks so much for this post, I really needed it. I've only been here a few days and while I have really been enjoying it I've also found a few things a little confusing. Your article cleared a lot of things up for me. Again Thanks!
Perfect, that makes me happy.
Wow, this is the best Steemit Tutorial I have ever read! I guess that was a lot of work. I wish I had that 3 weeks ago when I joined. I had to research that for myself. But I still found new information. Thanks a lot!
Yea, right? That was the reason why I wrote it because I wish I would have had that in my first days.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
This is a very useful and well thought out post! I applaud you for bringing this to the community. I feel every new user should give this post a read (or atleast something like it.) You brought some invaluable information to the table!
Thank you, that was my intention. I am very happy that it is being recognized as such.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Thanks for that. It's great. I've bookmarked it as well. There is a question that I'm sure everyone new wonders about and which wasn't answered: What is the number besides each ones' name? I mean the 25 next to my name and the 51 next to yours.
Oh yeah, good question. That is the reputation. It goes up with upvotes and down with downvotes. When it drops below 0 posts previews will not show its content like all adult posts. But I am not sure about that.
I have also a question about the apps that you mention. They require your password when you open them. How do I know my password won't end up in the app's creator hands since these apps are third party, outside of steemit? Also, I can't seem to be able to sign in with chat. I got to the point where they ask me to verify the email they sent me but I received no emails.
So far I have never used my key for anything and all apps work for me. I have seen that you can use your posting key to post directly on ChainBB. But with that they cannot empty your account. Also, one of my links is an incription service for your keys, so you can prevent any third party app to steal it. But I haven't tested it yet.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Never mind my question about chat: I managed to get in using another email. Thank you.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Never mind my question. I just found the answer in the starter guide in the menu. I'm so new here!
@flauwy You, my friend are a life saver! This is hands down the most useful post I have seen thus far in through my first week in Steemit, and one I will most DEFINITELY use to explain Steemit to new users and help them achieve their goals as well. What you're doing here is great for the community of minnows and I'm thrilled to see someone break down the ropes of Steemit in a manner so clear, and concise that we can use this as a reference to always come back to. Sharing your experiences and knowledge with others throughout Steemit helps the whole community grow nonetheless.
I appreciate you taking the time to break it down for us once again, so that's a reseteem from me ✊️.
~FD
Awesome, I really appreciate your kind words. When I thought about writing this post I had on mind to bring the greatest value to the platform I could. And even though I am a memory coach and write great memory tutorials, I though that I would have needed such a post in the beginning. It would have saved me so much time. So I am glad to give that to the community because I know how hard it is when you just arrive and everything is learning by doing.
From one FD to another!
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Awesome guide! I will be sending people to see this regularly.
Thanks man. Especially for your proof reading!
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Lots of great info here. The paradox I'm running into after a little over a week on here is that I feel like I should stop posting anything until I have more followers to actually see what I post, but in order to get more followers, I need to keep posting new content.
Anyone have any advice when it seems like I'm "wasting" good content because no one is even seeing it since I'm so new?
Would re-posting my own content down the road once I have a larger following be frowned upon?
Very good question! I had the same concerns. I posted some of my best memory articles in the first days. Check out my latest Major System post with the 85 cover image. It is more effort than this post here. Much text and even entirely self-made images. I guess what you could do is to work towards your best articles. Post every day one or more articles that are valuable but don't give away everything. And then you bring out your best stuff in a month from now for example. By then you surely have gathered many hundreds more followers. And then concentrate on commenting for the rest of the time. Make a mix of greeting newcomers and search for all your hobbies and interests. Make sure you sort by date to find still running posts where you can earn. (Although I made my point clear about the timeless content, but it is what it is for now).
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
This is an incredible post, I'm gonna be learning from this for days, thank you!
Excellent. May you produce wonderful content for the community.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Awesome post @flauwy. I joined in May but pretty much just lurked trying to figure out how it all works. Your post has cleared up a lot of questions.
One about the cheetah bot though - if I republish my own content here from my blog site, does that count against me and should I rather just publish new stuff here? The reverse also applies - will I get penalized if I publish on Steem first and then republish on the website?
Thanks again for the great post!
Great that you liked the article.
You can post your old content here. But it might not be a good idea because duplicated content will be penalized by Google. Also I think Steemit should get unique content. Remember, you are saving on a blockchain forever. In hundreds of years people will still be able to read you stuff. Make it count.
But Steemit will not create a problem for you. No mater whether the Cheetah bot appears or not.
Thanks for the advice. New content it is!
Thank you that was and AWSOME write up. I also agree Posts should get paid for ever if someone likes their content later down the line.
Yes, writing a timeless article will still interest people in ten years. When someone buys a book after ten years you are also still getting paid. But I don't know how that could work technically.
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This is one of the best written pieces of work I have seen for beginners, I have saved it in my bookmarks. Well done really well done for this.
Excellent! I am very happy you found it useful.
really good tutorial. already checking the links, thanks a lot.
let me know something, how's @randowhale different than all the other bots that just upvote comment but don't generate value in terms of organic growth and comments, etc ? isn't it just another bot?
Wow, that is a tough question. I think it doesn't really give any value. But it is allowed for now and you can increase your earnings with a bit of luck. It is a gamble, a game. It certainly is misleading you about the success of your posts. I can barely see what works and what doesn't because I always have the bot upvote mingled in. Ultimately I think all upvoting bots should be banned. But that is very difficult and will probably not happen.
Definitely get how it can mislead you about the reach of posts and all. Funny thing is that usually the outcome is positive. Right? I mean. It seems like @randowhale will always give you an upvote that's worth more than 2SBD. am i right or i just got lucky these 2 first times i tried?
You just got lucky. An upvote of 1% is certainly not worth it. And besides: You will have to share 25% of your post so you better get this extra on top or it wasn't worth it.
ooh. so let's say @randowhale gave me an upvote that's worth 3 dollars. I'll only keep 75% of that? 2,25usd? so it's more like betting than a right investment? hum.... good to know
It is betting. Right now randowhale1 has 74% voting power. If you get the average 3% vote that will be worth $2.91.
i see. thought it was more. but at least receiving these upvotes help your articles to get seen by more people in the website. or this is not true??
Wowy, thank you so very much for pointing me to your great in-depth guide, answers many questions, will certainly be referring to this, a huge help! Thank you again, much appreciated :)
I always wanted to write another, more updated version. But it is sooo much work. :)
That is quite the comprehensive and nicely laid out guide (nicer than mine). Good job.
About the 30 minute rule of curation: There is no point in waiting to upvote your own posts (let the default setting do the vote for you automatically) because the 30 minute rule diverts curation earnings to the author (which is YOU). In effect, what you lose for curation goes right back to you as author reward. NO LOSS!
The 30 minute rule takes 100% of the curation reward at the exact second the post is made and then there is a linear rate that by the time 30 minutes is up, takes NIL off the curation reward. If you vote at exactly 15 minutes after the post was made, you would lose 50% of the curation reward to the author.
Because the curation reward also takes into consideration the number and vote power of curators, it is often worth losing a few % points and voting after 20 minutes rather than waiting the full half hour. Everything is a calculated gamble.
Hope that helps.
Well explained and yet I am still confused. :D
Confused about the whole thing or a specific potion? I'm willing to try again to help you understand it.
So you are basically saying that it doesn't matter and the author should just use the auto-upvote function?
How about curating other posts? Do you still get something after day or so?
Correct, as the author, you get it all anyway. Use the auto-vote.
Curating other posts after a day or so would likely not get much IF there were lots of votes in front of you. However, if there were few votes and you then resteemed the article and it got lots of votes AFTER yours, you would do quite well. Of course if the article continues to get few votes (and small votes) then the award pool will also be small and your share even smaller.
Thank you, very interesting. So far curating didn't work for my at all from the financial aspect, likely because of my low Steem Power. I think I made like 0.02 Steem last week. But that is ok, my other gains were great and I am happy to keep on curating to help the community grow.
Unfortunately, as a minnow, curating is not very beneficial unless you manage to beat the bots and whales at a game they know far more about than you do; and obviously more than I do, because my curation rewards are tiny as well. However, I don't curate to make money, but rather to support content I appreciate.
I find I'm actually bringing in a lot more from responding to posts. It's usually not a lot, but its not that difficult to reply to a good number of posts in one day. It can be surprising what a few 35 cent rewards can add up to in a single day.
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This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
This post received a 4.0% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @flauwy! For more information, click here!
Thank you for this guide.....with any new platform, a learning curve can be huge, especially with something like Steemit....This guide will shorten that learning curve for anyone....
Thankyou, that was exactly my intention! I will write the 2.0 version soon.
This was very helpful! Thank you for the guide.
Ahhh, the much needed article. Detailed article and I like it! Helped me clear a lot of confusion :) Thanks @ragequit for letting me know about this article!
Great that you liked it. :)
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Thanks for the useful information. I am saving this for my own reference. I have been on Steemit for 3wks and I am still learning. This is a very generous community.
It really is. I am very happy to be here.
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How are you saving the post, @bluethread? I can't figure out how to save any of the articles I like.
Excellent guide, hyper complet. Bravo ma belle souris (I know that you are scared of French, Haha)
Cheers my friend!
Thank @troilo. I put a LOT of effort into this.
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Wow, this is a reading for my whole evening! So much value collected in a single place. Thanks for mentioning my post!
Thank you. I was told to break it into several bits to gain more curation reward but I didn't want to that. I thought it would be best to have everything together in one big collection. Just like I would want it for myself.
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by flauwy from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Very Well Put Together Ultimate Guide @flauwy
You have been PROMOTED FREE for using the "tutorial" TAG (hashtag)
https://steemit.com/promoted/tutorial
Resteem...
Amazing! Thank you so much.
Thank you @flauwy for believing in the Steemit Platform!
Your work and efforts will NOT go unnoticed!!!
Keep STEEM N ON,
Frank
Thank you, Frank. Steemit is the best thing I have seen on the internet so far. It is becoming my liberation and freedom after a period of struggling to support my family.
You're welcome!
Best of luck to you and your family @flauwy
I recommend dividing your investment into thirds.
1/3rd 33% .333
thirds rule strategy [GOOGLE SEARCH]
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This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Great resource @flauwy! That is some serious work. 50% upvote.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
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Fantastic, thanks a lot:-) I feel that need to come back to this article whenever I run into something I don't understand on Steemit!
I will try to keep it up to date and add more ressources when I find them.
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This is an amazing article, so glad to have you part of our new group! Keep up the good work. Hoping soon I can start to incorporate these. Although I have 3 business's and there for many jobs, it almost makes me want to just become a professional steamer lol! And big thanks to @organiccacao for the introduction!
Thank you, I am very happy when it helps you.
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Thank you so much!! Resteem it for my followers and to keep it on my page, for me. Great great great post!🎉👍🤗
Thank you for the resteem @anikanam. You are awesome!
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This is a very useful and well written post every new users on Steemit should read. What can I say? Thanks for posting this!
I am incredibly humbled by all the postive feedback.
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Definitely a must read for every new user. The rules are simple, yet, they're important to be successful.
It was also a very good breakdown of the different things in your wallet and way to navigate through the menus. Good job.
Thank you so much. :)
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Wow, thank you very much for this thoughtful and informative post. I have been looking for a good "getting started" guide on here for Steemit, and this is Perfect! I will be referencing this post often and checking back in for your future content :)
Cool, I am excited that you think that way. Swing by for more good stuff to come.
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Holy fuck!! That was sweet, great work! Thank you. Is there any way to save posts like this for easy access?
Bookmark it in your browser. I don't think there is a build in option in Steemit. Maybe a 3rd party app I haven't heard about yet. Might be good idea for some crowd funding.
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Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
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Enjoy the resteem to 2700 people
YES! Thank you @aggoed. So you did get my message then? Glad you think it is worthy!
Yeah. it was great. Hope it helps.
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That's one hell of a post :o
Isn't it? I am kind of proud right now and incredibly happy that you all think it is helpful and good.
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congRats!
think I will book mark this!
that was full of good content. and I will defnitely resteem!
namaste!
I am listening to the crwod cheering on me (do you say it like this in English? Or is it cheering at? Or cheering for? I am confused!)
I would say ,cheering you on,or cheering for you.
it is for continued success!
hope you have a great day!
Thanks for cheering on me. lol
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This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
good post
l like ...
Good comment, I can see you took my advice above to heart. ;)
This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
This is definitely going to be a post that I keep coming back to. I'm so glad that you found me @flauwy. Your posts have been super helpful to a brand new minnow like myself! Thanks again!
Hey, hey, hey. My friend with so many similar hobbies. Good to see you are enjoying my post. May it help you to find your path on Steemit.
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This is definitely one of the most comprehensive 'howto' post. i am on this platform for only couple of months and am still learning. Thanks for sharing.
You are welcome.
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This post has been ranked within the top 80 most undervalued posts in the second half of Jun 30. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $27.94 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jun 30 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Cool, I made it into some rankings.
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This is exactally what I needed. thank you for taking the time to write this out. I am really excited about this platform, and see a huge potential contributing here. I was still a bit confused with how the steem and such worked. but you laid it all out in an easy to understand and digestible way. Really appreciate this. Thanks you.
I am glad you found value in it. Steem on.
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One of the best explanations I've seem in my short time here on Steemit. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.
I bow my head in front of you.
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Thank you for bringing this up, a wonderful and comprehensive guide for newbies like me. I hope this makes it to the best and most helpful post in this community.
Check out the comment somewhere hidden here: I made it in the top 80 undervalued posts of June. LOL
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Well done! <3
Indeed is a very effective guide for newbies. Think a lot of newbies are lost and do not know the way around here. Great guide for them.
Thank you for appreciating it.
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Thanks man, this really answered some questions I had and it also put me on the right track to figure out answer to others.
Great work! This is my very first resteem :)
I am honored to be the first. :)
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And awesome name by the way.
lol, thanks.
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i woke up by 4am W.A GMT this morning,and among all the long posts i have read this morning, yours was the longest and without mixing words,it was the most interesting.
thanks @flauwy this is really helpful.
i checked out your blog and noticed all other good contents,its good of you crating animation #personalbranding.
i would like one for my self but has not made up to 25SD yet.
if i can get one and pay later,i will most appreciate.
@arizonawise
What are you looking for exactly?
an animation icon, just like your muse but mine should be something like....
maybe, an animation of Gandhi..or Einstein.
Sounds cool. Check out my SteemGig where I offer animations like that. Write me again there, read my conditions and if you like them we can get started.
https://steemit.com/steemgig/@flauwy/animated-puppets-for-your-steemit-posts-finally-get-the-attention-you-deserve-german-deutsch
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This comment has received a 0.04 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @flauwy.
Thanks for sharing, awesome
Welcome!
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