Everything you Need to Get Started Fast with Steemit, Social Media that Pays

Get Paid to Create Content

When you post to social media — such as Facebook, Reddit, Google+ and Twitter — when you upvote, like and favorite, you do not get paid. But that’s about to change.

Steemit is a blogging-centric social network where you DO get paid for creating and upvoting content. You can build a following, find patrons and grow your wealth, all while doing the thing you love: creating valuable content.

Take note: Steemit is not some fly-by-night Ponzi scheme. Steemit is about building a community of high-quality people and financing the production of the highest quality content.

Steemit requires no initial investment in order to participate. It’s free to use and you’re not spending your own money when you upvote content you like.

Steemit is just the first minimum viable product on Steem, a blockchain-based social economy. The Steem developers have bootstrapped an entire economy, complete with its own crypto-currencies. Steem is peer-to-peer, decentralized, uncensorable and therefore unstoppable.

So it’s a good idea for you get started with Steemit — and Steem — now.

Steemit is good for redditors, Facebook users, bloggers, videographers, teachers, YouTubers, artists, film-makers — anyone who is creating content and would like to be paid (more) for it. The Steemit community is supportive, helpful and constructive.

Do you want to work with intelligent, positive people who are building something meaningful for the future? Yes? Then Steemit is for you.

If you’re seeking a short-term payoff with low-quality content that you slap together with little effort, Steemit is not for you. You will be downvoted, ignored and frustrated. Your reputation will not grow and will likely decline. You will not earn any significant amount of money. You’ll be wasting your time.

You can earn a short-term payoff with quality content. Many people have already done this. But Steemit offers greater rewards to those with a long-term perspective.

There are also opportunities for developers to build apps rapidly on the Steem blockchain.

By the end of this post, you will know enough about Steemit to get started earning cryptocurrency — currency, like Bitcoin, that you can convert into US dollars, and other fiat currency, and spend on groceries, rent, travel and more.

The Steem system has a lot of moving parts, so keep reading to get a head start. It’s taken me several weeks to research this, get familiar with the community and to put it all into this easy-to-read guide you can master in less than an hour.

The Steem system is evolving to better meet the needs of its users and the goals of its developers. You can get infrequent email updates from the author (George Donnelly) by entering your primary email address here. There’s zero spam and an instant unsubscribe link is in every email.

Why Steemit Matters

Why is Steemit important? What can Steemit do for me? Great question!

Steemit is like Reddit or Medium, but you can earn equity and cash, and hold debt (thus earning interest), through your interactions with the system.

Steemit enables you to earn cryptocurrency by creating content, curating it, mining, trading and even just by holding two of its three currencies.

Steemit has the potential to handle many times the traffic of Reddit, a popular site for unbridled discussion that has, in recent years, seen significant censorship.

Steemit is resistant to nation-state and corporate censorship because it’s built on distributed ledger technology (DLT, or a blockchain). Like Bitcoin, it will be very hard to shut down or disrupt for any significant amount of time.

Steemit is meritocratic. The more you invest — either by investing your earnings or by bringing in outside investment — the more powerful your upvote is, and the more you can earn from upvoting and creating content. No investment is required, however, in order to use, or even succeed with, Steemit.

The more quality content you post, either as blog posts or comments on blog posts, the more followers you will gain, the higher your reputation score will go and the more rewards you will earn.

You might make hundreds of dollars from your introduction post alone. And I can help you do it.

Steem is also a solution to the micropayments problem because there are no transaction fees on the Steem network.

Start today (August 2016) and get about USD$5 worth of Steem cryptocurrency free. Unlike with other cryptocurrencies, you don’t have to spend your own money to get started.

But don’t wait. This could change.

What Steemit is

Steemit markets itself as a blockchain-based social media network and it’s built on top of Steem, a complete, decentralized social crypto-economy.

Steemit is built on the Steem blockchain— this is similar to the Bitcoin blockchain, but is separate from it. Another name for blockchains is distributed ledger technology (DLT). This means that it’s a distributed database — lots of people hold copies of it that talk to each other in order to stay up to date. Records are added to the blockchain in sequential order. These records, or blocks, once added to the database, or chain, can not be changed. They are immutable — read-only.

Steem is peer-to-peer. There is no central control. The developers, however, maintain huge influence over Steem’s course.

Steem is like Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, but is actually a lot more.

Whereas Bitcoin miners earn block rewards by solving difficult math problems — called objective proof of work — Steem rewards users for subjective proof of work: the creation and curation (upvoting and flagging) of content.

This is unique. And it opens up a lot of possibilities for you to earn cryptocurrency, most notably through content creation and curation.

Three Steem Currencies

Before you can earn Steem currency, you need to know how Steem’s three cryptocurrencies work: STEEM, Steem Power and Steam Dollars.

STEEM

STEEM is the fundamental currency of the system. It’s volatile, subject to inflationary losses (its supply increases 100% per year) but also easily exchangeable for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at BlockTrades, Bittrex and OpenLedger.

STEEM is an ownership token but is only votable when vested as the second currency — Steem Power — in a process called powering up (see below).

STEEM can also be converted (see the section on converting currencies below) into Steem Dollars (see below).

Steem Power

Steem Power (SP) is STEEM that has been invested into the network as equity (a process called powering up). It can be converted back to STEEM (a process called powering down) in 104 equal installments disbursed once per week.

This rate-limiting of SP withdrawals incentivizes you to develop a long-term perspective for your participation in the Steem network. It also serves as protection against hackers.

One-STEEM (vested as SP) is essentially one-vote. Those who contribute the most get to decide which content is to be valued more highly.

The upvotes (and flags) (see content curation below) of users with a lot of SP are worth more than those of users with relatively little SP, so this is not a democratic system but a meritocratic one. In fact, those with zero SP can not vote at all.

This creates an incentive to use your upvote in a way that “maximizes the long term value of” your STEEM, according to the Steem white paper (PDF).

Ninety percent of new STEEM created (via inflation) is distributed on a constant basis pro-rata to holders of SP. This is a powerful incentive to convert your Steem Dollar earnings to STEEM and power them up to Steem Power — if you believe in the long-term viability of the Steem network.

Thus, users with a long-term vision are rewarded more than those with a short-term perspective.

The other roughly 10% of STEEM that is created via inflation is distributed as rewards and thus changes the ownership distribution of the network — albeit very slowly.

SP holdings are thus not subject to inflation, for the most part, because SP is constantly earning interest in the form of that 90% of newly created STEEM.

Steem Dollars

Steem Dollars (abbreviated as SMD, SD or SBD) are conceived of as short-term debt instruments that are pegged 1:1 with the US Dollar.

By holding SMD you are “effectively lending the community the value of a dollar,” which enhances growth, according to the white paper. So SMD pays 10% annual interest when the value of 1 SMD is under $1 USD. Check the current market price at SteemDollar.com.

For every SMD created, $19 USD worth of STEEM is created as Steem Power, so the maximum debt-to-ownership ratio of the Steem network is about 5%. This could increase if the value of STEEM falls in the marketplace but should not be a major concern.

How Steem Works

Steem is a complex system with a lot of moving parts. I’ll give you an overview of the most important ones for new users and cover more advanced topics in a second article.

Your first window into the Steem system is going to be Steemit.com, a website reminiscent of Medium.com but named after Reddit.com.

Steemit is just one interface for transacting with the Steem blockchain. There are others and might even be better ones in the future. There will be more applications built on the Steem blockchain in the future, too, including a Twitter-like app that’s currently in alpha.

So stay agile and stay in touch so I can keep you apprised. Subscribe to my exclusive mailing list for Steem news. Click here to sign up.

Create your Account

Visit Steemit.com and click “Sign Up” at top right to register an account. At this time, you’ll need to either have a Facebook account or a Reddit account with positive karma. If you have neither, you can sign up to be notified when SMS verifications will be enabled.

You’ll need to authenticate with Facebook or Reddit, depending on which one you chose.

Then it will redirect you to the Sign Up screen.

Pick an account name (username) you’ll be happy with indefinitely because you can’t change it.