Make money trading SBD/STEEM! Part 1: the Basics

Five days ago I had 2.249 SBD in my wallet. Now I have the equivalent of about 3.12 SBD, an increase of nearly 40% in just five days! I'm not able to retire just yet, but for five days that's a very good return on investment. In this series I will show you how to trade SBD for STEEM and make a profit.

In this part of the series I will show you how to go on the market place to buy or sell STEEM.

Claiming Author and Curation Rewards

If you've written some good posts and have done your work as a curator, you'll be rewarded after 7 days. The rewards will be ready to be claimed in your wallet. To claim your rewards go to your account and click on the 'Wallet' tab, then click 'Claim rewards'. You will now have some SP added onto your account as well as some SBD.

What to do with the SBD?

There's a few things you can do with SBD:

You can buy more or sell your SBD for BTC using Blocktrades

You can transfer your SBD to other people or to your 'Savings'

Or you can go to the market and sell it for STEEM

To buy STEEM (sell SBD) click the little arrow icon next to your SBD amount and choose 'Market'. This will bring you to the marketplace. The market might be a little intimidating as its user interface isn't as user friendly as the rest of Steemit is. On the top of the screen you'll find some data:

Last Price: this is the latest SBD/STEEM price. A price of $0.80 indicates 0.80 SBD for every 1 STEEM, or 1.25 STEEM for every 1 SBD (1 / 0.80). Note that the dollar sign does not indicate USD!

24h volume: this is simply the amount of SBD that has changed hands

Bid: the amount of SBD per 1 STEEM someone is willing to buy STEEM for

Ask: the amount of SBD per 1 STEEM someone is willing to sell STEEM for

Spread: the difference is bid and ask as a percentage

How to read the order book?

On the bottom of the screen you'll find an overview of all Buy and Sell orders. They are sorted such that the best offers are shown at the top. If you want to buy or sell STEEM fast, you only have to beat the best order by a tiny bit. The most important data shown here are:

Price: this is the same price as mentioned before

Total SBD ($): this is the cumulative SBD amount of the orders. This shows you how big the orders are. If there's a huge buy order and your price is a little lower, chances are you'll have to wait a while before you order gets filled. If the buy order is extremely small, there's no reason to put in a better order. You can just offer a slightly lower price. The small order will probably be filled quickly and then your order will be on top.

How to place an order?

To place an order you have to fill out 2 out of 3 things:

Price: this is the SBD/STEEM ratio I mentioned earlier

Amount: the amount of STEEM you want to buy or sell

Total: this is 'price' multiplied by 'amount'

Be careful when filling this in and double check the price in the pop-up after you've clicked buy or sell! For small trades, there can be a difference between the price you've filled in and the price calculated by the market application. Example: I want to buy 0.037 STEEM at a price of 0.878387 which will cost me 0.033 SBD. The market application then calculates 0.033 / 0.037 = 0.891891892. This is more than 1.5% higher than the price that was entered.

Part two will be coming soon! In this part I'll show you how to make money by using the market to your advantage!