I must admit that very few people have asked me this most important question over the last seven years and I don't think I am very good at answering it!
That's probably because the creation of money (or anything of "value") is fundamentally a bizarre concept, based only on the fact that a group of people agree that a piece of paper (or a work of art, or a piece of metal) has a certain value...
Essentially, I tripped you up with my question! (I'm serious - but then I'm not. It's like Gödel's incompleteness theorem.)
Delegate means 'loan' some hive to a person who clearly takes the time to vote on decent content. By doing this you will earn hive based on their voting actions while the person you have delegated to will have the ability to give bigger votes/rewards and also earn bigger rewards themselves.
That sounds like an advanced activity on hive?
Do I get this right - the first steps would be (for a beginner like me):
a) Commenting, voting, posting. Which result in spending my RC.
b) Receiving upvotes, which would earn me RC.
c) RC are converted to Hive Power, which can (optionally) be converted to real dollars, but as long as they stay on the platform, it increases my "value" (reputation, but also the ability to comment, vote, post).
d) The more RC I have, the shorter my wait time for posting/commenting/upvoting.
A few dollars to boost my RC would be amazing, thank you for your offer!
And yes, whenever you have time, I'd appreciate some useful advice about posting. I guess that is going to be my next step.