Have you heard that there are some rules on Steemit that you should follow? You should follow them in order to get the maximum rewards for what you do on steemit. Wait, what?
Are these rules set so that you as a user will be rewarded more for what you do or they are set to help steemit platform get the best of you as a user? It probably depends a lot on what you can here for, if it was for the money, and then maybe following the rules can help in some way, so by all means do try them and see for yourself. If you did not come for the money, but because of the idea steemit represents, then by all means... DO NOT FOLLOW THE RULES, BREAK THEM!
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." - Pablo Picasso
If you here to contribute with your knowledge and expertise and be a valuable part of the community, then these rules will not help you in any way, in fact they will only hinder you instead, so just break them!
4 Blog Posts per Day Means Higher Quality
You should post no more than 4 posts for a 24 hour period of time, otherwise you get penalized more and more for each additional post you make - less rewards for you.
This rule sounds nice, right, it is there to encourage people posting fewer and higher quality posts per day. Contributing better quality to the steemit platform and getting rewarded for doing so.
What happens in reality you generate good quality content and want to contribute with your knowledge to steemit. You start following this rule, post less and most of your Blog posts still earn from 0 to just a few cents (regardless of the content), so even if you get a penalty in the reward should you care - NO. What if by any chance one of your posts makes it to the Trending page, then you probably would NOT care if there is a penalty to the reward you get in the end either.
I have tried following this rule for a couple of days after finding out about it and instead of helping it is actually doing exactly the opposite thing. Here I am, waiting for a couple of hours just to post something I have already written, but since I already got 4 posts in the last 24 hours I should not risk posting it because of a potential penalty. F#CK that, I'm posting things as soon as I want and as much as I want, I’m done waiting. It is not about the rewards, I'm just not letting anyone limiting my creativity by telling me I should write less, and that the quality might be better because of that!
Vote for Posts Likely to Go Trending, But After 30 Minutes
You should not vote for newly published posts earlier than 30 minutes after they have been published in order to maximize your potential curation reward. If you do vote earlier you get a penalty and thus a lower potential curation reward the earlier you vote.
So now, instead of looking for good posts that deserve to get your vote because you like what you have read or you just want to encourage the author to continue with the good stuff or for whatever reason you decide you get to look at the watch all the time. Open up posts and wait for the right time to vote and if by any chance a whale votes before you, you still vote (pointless) or instead don't vote as now you consider it pointless.
In any case even with the right timing of your vote if you are a new user (oh, you are here for the rewards) you still manage to get from 0 to 0.001 STEEM POWER as a curation reward if you are lucky. You did your best to play by the rules, choose the best time, select the right post that will surely get trending and still you get nothing, because well, your voting power is just too small to make a difference.
In fact you got it all wrong, your voting power may not be much and your vote may not be worth much, but what you do with it actually matters. Don't go for the 30 minutes, don't go for the right time to vote before the 30 minutes calculating possible penalty, don't go for the articles that are most likely to be trending, don't go for all that S#IT!
Look for the posts that you are interested in, that you like and that you think deserve your vote, regardless how small your voting power and what fraction of a cent it accounts for. Go for the content that deserves it and in the end doing the right thing and not following the rules you might actually also get a reward that could be higher than 0.001 SP. Even if you don't, you will at least know you did the right thing and that your vote meant something for somebody that deserves it instead of counting towards nothing for the author of a trending post and not bringing you anything as a reward either - moral or other.
Don't Go Using Your Voting Power Too Much
You should not vote for too many posts each day, so that your voting power will not be diluted too much and you will have a higher chance of getting curation rewards.
That is true if you have a lot of voting power already, but if you are a new user that just started your vote's worth is so small that it probably does not matter much if you dilute it even further by making 10, 20, 50 or a 100 votes each day. Your vote is way below the minimum threshold of $0.01 that really makes some difference and probably way to low even if you vote for just 1 post per day to even get 0.001 SP curation reward (the minimum reward you can get).
So vote as much as you want for who you want, vote for posts you like, for comments when you are in a discussion with somebody. It is the vote that you give to people that deserve to get it that matters and not the value it holds! If it is at least $0.01 then the value may also count, but for that you should have a few hundreds of Steem Power. Since you probably don't have that much yet you need to make sure that your vote counts and that you are not saving it hoping that it will bring you rewards, because it will most likely not at this point.
Go out there on steemit and vote without holding your votes, just give a vote when you feel that you need to give it to a post, regardless if it will go trending or not... what matters is that the vote you give will matter to the person that receives it, the vote is more important that the value it receives. Don't go deciding it is not worth voting for something that deserves it just because your vote has no big value to add to the reward of a post.
In the end your Voting Power regenerates over time, so go spend it all if you wish, just don't waste it by voting on absolutely every post you see... this will be indeed a pointless thing to do.
DO NOT FOLLOW THE RULES, BREAK THEM!
In the end you might not get any rewards at all, but you will at least not regret it and will feel much better for actually doing the right thing… that is if you are not in only for the money.
If you have any questions or want to add something, then please feel free to do so in the comments below...
Did you like what you have just read? Check my other posts on steemit @cryptos