It's been a month since I signed up to Steemit with very little awareness of blockchain or STEEM, but with strong confidence in my knowledge and writing skills. I haven't got rich and powerful (not even close) since, and 99,9% of you won't either, but at least you can learn from my dashes, stumbles and strikes to make the most of it! You don't like it, read another post.
Steemit is a platform like none other one – confirmed by recent Bloomberg article if you want an outsider's take on it – and although its swashbuckling days are mostly in the rear view – or not, depends on the perspective – it still has ways to go with many hard forks to come!
But if you've been onboard for just a couple of days, you know well how overwhelming or even intimidating it can be... especially that you understand very little about blockchain, steem, steem power, upvote, payout, tokens, cryptos, blocks, bots and whatnot.
Don't be afraid though! You just need time to get a grip on it, and it definitely won't happen in a few days! And don't get discouraged if you won't make a fortune magically as there's very little chance to make it happen without a proper investment... just get over it!
For starters it's better to pare down your expectations, and stop comparing yourself to steemians, who've been here for a year or even a couple of months, have 55-70 rep and 223,000 SP.
The truth is, that these folks bought their way in when steem was $0.11 (currently it's around $3,45) hoping to get their ROI when steem soars, which has been definitely happening since December 2017, when Steemit started growing exponentially as well.
So here we are greasing elbows in a blockchain revolution, that ATM is still reserved mostly for geeks, nerds, hackers, crypto-anarchists, libertarians and freaks, but the social media dam may be broken any day now! It's not really an „if” question anymore, but „when”!
Some forecasts tossed around by crypto-crowd here claim, that the price of STEEM will hit $6 in just a few months, and my intuition tells me they're right! And if that happens, any payout you're getting now will double, and maybe triple or quadruple in the next few years. So whatever you're thinking, cheer up, cause you came here when thing have really started looking up!
But you're probably asking yourself all these questions, that I've been asking myself too, so I'll gladly answer them for you, cause I wish someone had done it for me.
First concept, that you need to understand on Steemit is Steem Power, which is delegated to every new account, and ATM is set at 15. To check your SP go to steemd/@username, where you can find it in the upper left corner. It's the number just below Voting Weight, which corresponds directly to your SP.
Unfortunately, most of this SP is not yours! It's delegated – think of it as a loan – to you, so you can perform two very important tasks on steem blockchain: upvoting and downvoting. However, both of these activities drain your Voting Power, which eventually drops to 0%, and you SHOULD NEVER LET IT HAPPEN!
In fact, for a noob it's best to keep it at 80% minimum, cause if it goes down lower you upvote power reaches 0, which means it doesn't carry any financial weight anymore. And when it's drained it also bounces back much more slowly!
Another important thing for you to remember is your personal BANDWIDTH, which you can find again by going to steemd/@username. This gets used up pretty quickly if your SP is low, cause it's related to almost everything that you do on blockchain: resteeming content, editing content, sending memos, making transfers, claiming your rewards, commenting, upvoting and downvoting.
And the only way to expand it is to power up, which means earning SP on your posts and comments or exchanging steem, which it's pegged to 1:1.
Here we really touch upon what it's really all about: MONEY! Without SPD or STEEM you won't be able to power up, and unless you want to invest some fiat as a lot of people do, your only option is to keep blogging and commenting to get some sweet tokens!
Remember, that on Steemit you mine cryptos through proof-of-brain – I really recommend reading Steem White and Blue Paper if you want to understand what the philosophy/technology behind Steemit is – and the only way your brain is proved is via appreciation of fellow steemians.
In layman's terms, you write stuff, comment on stuff, and you get rewarded for it, which is also how you raise through the ranks by growing your rep (the number in the brackets next to your Steemit name), which together with powering up ASAP should be your main short-term priority!
And the only way to do it if you only have you time and talent to invest is to write QUALITY CONTENT and COMMENT CLEVERLY on other steemians' posts! In fact, right from the start you should go gun blazing! You ought to post things things you genuinely love, things you're really good at, things that are your area of expertise!
Otherwise, there's not much point in sticking around... even if you decide to use bots, which means you're gonna have to invest in some STEEM first. But if nobody upvotes your posts, you're just gonna keep losing money on bot bids every week! And once you establish yourself as a bot-abusing steemian, nobody'll upvote your stuff anymore or at least very few will do.
BTW, to keep track of what you earn and how you earn it, you should start using steem supply, which you'll find by going to steem.supply/@username. This tool breaks down where your payouts come from, how long you have to wait for them, what your growth potential is and how much your account is worth.
And last but not least, the thing I REALLY recommend hooking up is @ginabot, which will help you to stay on top of things literally!
Ginabot will have to validate your account for a refundable amount of 0.001 SPD, but after that you can choose real-time updates on any activity involving your account, and also set up a keyword tracking service, which gives you a total knowledge of designated content, that's being posted on Steemit.
Photo credits: These are mostly from the movies, so directors and cinematographers should be credited, but Yoda is from here, FF is from TFFFB wiki, and Hayek I don't remember
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