I joined Steemit on June 25 2017 and I am proud to say I just passed 2000 followers! In that time I have had my ups and downs here. Steemit is quite a complex ecosystem and though it can be used with a limited amount of knowledge, to really have success here and use the platform to the fullest it helps to understand some of the basics. After joining I probably did a full month worth of reading to really grasp the basics and since the Steemit search isn't the best right now I've decided to compile as much of my knowledge as I can into one post!
As some of you may know I am a moderator over on the PAL/Minnowsupport discord so I often hear the same questions over and over. I have a pile of posts saved to send newbies but I have yet to find one post that covers/compiles all these aspects, and is up to date, so here we go!
PASSWORD SAFETY
Keeping your password safe is arguably the most important thing you should understand, after all if you lose your password all the rest of this information will become useless because you won't be able to access your steemit account.
A few weeks ago after seeing numerous users with unsafe key practices I wrote this guide for the minnowsupport account: The Ultimate Guide To Key Safety
In this guide I cover what each password is for and what keys you should be using for optimal safety. This is a must read!
POST QUALITY / POST REWARDS
Now that your passwords are safe and you want to make a post, the first thing we will address is post quality. Obviously this is highly subjective and we all have different ideas of what makes a great post. Despite the objective nature of this there are a few things we can all agree on. Originality is important. I am going to state the obvious here, don't steal/plagiarize other people's content. Aside from being morally wrong this will most likely get you flagged by Steem Cleaners, and even if you get away with doing it a few times you most likely won't make great rewards. Steemit likes to reward original thought and content.
Many new users complain that they don't know what to blog about. Even if you have never blogged before I guarantee you that you have a skill, you just need to find your niche. If you write genuine blogs about your life/interests/hobbies or anything else that you are enthusiastic about you will get followers who share the same interests. Nobody wants to reward an image or a copy pasted post that they can find through google. Provide something personal that nobody else can and you will do well.
Although not necessary it also helps to make your blogs look nice, so learn how to spruce up your writing with some simple markup. @gmuxx has written a great guide: A Beginner's Guide to Markdown
50/50 or 100% powerup?
Now that you've finished your post all you need to do is choose your rewards. There are three options, 50/50 which is default, 100% powerup or decline rewards. It is important to understand what these mean.
100% power-up means your rewards will come in the form of 100% Steem Power. These rewards are not liquid and to access them you would need to power down.
50/50 means you will receive 50% Steem Power and 50% Steem Based Dollars (SBD)
Decline rewards means you will receive no compensation for your post.
When SBD is more than 1$ you should always choose the 50/50 option for maximum profitability!
Currently SBD is at roughly 4$. Until it drops below 1$ continue to choose the 50/50 option!
HOW TO USE THE INTERNAL MARKET
If you have been using the 50/50 option you will have some liquid SBD in your account. If you would like to convert that to Steem (recommended so you can power up) the simplest way is to use the internal market. Go to your wallet and look for STEEM DOLLARS. On the right hand side you should see a dropdown menu under your SBD balance that looks like this:
Click market and you will be in the internal market:
This may look a little daunting if you have never used an exchange but it is quite simple to use.
- You want to BUY STEEM with your SBD so you will be filling out the fields on the left hand side.
- First fill in the amount of SBD you would like to sell, if you want to sell all of it, click available and it will add all of your available SBD.
- The amount of STEEM you can buy will autofill using the lowest available sell price.
- Look at the sell orders, the lowest ones may not fill your quantity needs so you may need to adjust this price a wee bit higher.
- Once you are satisfied click the button BUY STEEM
- A window will pop up asking for a password. Enter your ACTIVE KEY to confirm
- A notification will pop up telling you that your order has submitted
- Check your wallet and the Steem should show up in your balance shortly.
- To power up this Steem, click the dropdown menu under STEEM and choose power up
COMMENTS
As a new user you are probably not making tons of cash on your posts. This is likely because you don't have a lot of followers yet and you haven't found your niche community. In the early stages commenting can be your key to finding these people and making meaningful connections.
These suggestions will probably sound like common sense but here are a few do's and don'ts for commenting
- Find people in your specific niche and leave thoughtful comments, if it seems like you have similar interests they will most likely look at your blog
- Make your comments genuine, don't leave kiss ass comments on peoples post only hoping for an upvote, people can smell that a mile away
- Don't ask people to follow or upvote you, i consider this outright disrespectful if the person leaves no indication they have read my post and just ask me for a vote
- Relating to the above don't link a post of yours in the comment section unless it is relevant to the topic at hand
- Stop leaving lazy comment like NICE POST, seriously nobody likes this and will just assume you are a spammer!
CURATION REWARDS
Lots of people seem confused about how curation rewards work. There is some complicated math that I don't understand to calculate how much you will make per post voted but I will try to explain this simply. *note that if there is a fork soon this information may change!
Currently if you vote as soon as a post comes out you get zero curation rewards, they go 100% to the author.
At the thirty minute mark you get 100% and none go to the author.
In between these two points it is on a scale so at 15 minutes you and the author share 50/50.
This seems pretty simple, with this model the best time to vote is around the thirty minute mark or after, but theres a catch.
The amount of curation you will receive depends on who votes after you and the final payout of the post. Ideally you want to vote closer to the thirty minute mark but also before any whales. Tricky!
As a minnow if you have very little Steem Power curation rewards will be very small, so I wouldn't worry too much about voting at the perfect time, I think you should just vote what you love! As long as you aren't voting on things the second they are posted you will make some curation, though if you really want to support an author voting early can help them out by allowing them to keep more of the curation rewards so this is a nice gesture!
COMMUNITIES/DISCORD
Aside from doing your best to write quality posts and comments another great way to enrich your Steemit experience is to join some of the various external communities. There are many Steemit related groups on both steemit.chat and discord. I am more familiar with discord so I will talk about that!
Since I'm a moderator on the PAL/Minnowsupport discord I am obviously a little biased in saying this is the first one you should join: https://discord.gg/Hvtguy7
We have various services for newcomers, and lots of smaller groups that form under our umbrella. We also have a Steemian run radio station that is interactive and tons of fun! I wrote some advice for joining the PAL discord here:
How to get more out of Minnowsupport and PALnet
Aside from PAL there are a million other communities to join depending on what you're into. If you are an artist check out @slothicorn, if you're a writer take a look into @thewritersblock! @torico has compiled a huge list of servers, have a browse and join in on the fun:
Torico's Magical List of Discord Servers
MISCELLANEOUS BITS AND BOBS
Other ways to earn Steem as a minnow An often overlooked way to earn a little Steem is through contests. Searching the contest tag here on Steemit and finding ones that suit your skills can be a great way to earn a little and also to meet an engage with other users. I run a weekly contest called Art Explosion and have found so many excellent accounts to follow and made tons of friends. If art isn't your thing there is a contest for just about everything. On the PAL discord we even have a room dedicated to contest posts so you can scroll through and look at them all in one place.
Bandwidth If you are a new user and confused about why you are having trouble posting and commenting read this post: What is Bandwidth? Why does it keep me from doing anything?
Reporting abuse If you have found an account that is abusing the rewards pool, plagiarizing etc. you can report it here: https://steemcleaners.org/abuse-report/
Useful sites for account info steemworld.org/@yourusername (replace your username in the url) is one of the best sites I have found that concisely has all your account info in one place. You can see your voting power, delegations, bandwidth availability, rewards and more!
There is also steemnow.com, steemreports.com, steemreports.com, steemdb.com etc. Explore these and find one you like, these can give you summaries and valuable info that Steemit can't!
Accounts you should follow
@minnowsupport aims to put out posts that are informative for minnows and resteems lots of useful posts and holds weekly contests
@inquiringtimes has become somewhat of an ambassador for Steemit and writes excellent and informative posts that are extremely useful for understanding the Steemit ecosystem
@minnowuniversity also aims to write and resteem posts that will enrich your understanding of the platform
Hopefully I've given new users enough links and resources to keep them busy for a while. If you feel I have missed something integral let me know in the comment section, if I can add it before the editing period closes, I will most definitely do so! I want as many people to succeed here as possible and for that to happen I believe knowledge is the key.
Happy Steeming!
Julia
This is very useful and thorough, but there's one thing that could use a little clarification:
I could see this being read as "voting after 30 minutes gives nothing to the author at all," especially considering there was no mention of how posts pay 25% to curators and 75% to authors.
Curation rewards are always 25% of post payout, so voting after 30 minutes simply means you get 100% of that 25%, where voting at 15 minutes would forfeit 50% of that 25% - or 12.5% of your total vote strength (not considering who you voted before or after) - to the author, giving them 87.5% overall. I'm gonna upvote this for visibility.
I have to admit that the entire topic of "Curation" is completely over my head!! :>O
d
Your right maybe I should amend that and tack on some clarification as it could be misread!
Congratulations Julia, much deserved milestone.
Thank you Muxxy, it actually rolled over yesterday and I blew right through, next target 3k!
With such detailed easy reading informative content I don’t doubt that in the least, I found this very helpful I was under the illusion 100% power is best to increase participation thank you.
Super well done, this post is conscise and super helpful for any of the new folks coming on board- congrats on 2k! I'm dangerously close to 1k so you must be twice as excited as i am! <3
Dayleeeeeeeeeooooooo I feel like I haven't spoken to you in ages :( My commenting game has been weak recently while we were releasing the film I got buried LOL, hopefully now I can go back to normal :) Congrats on the 1K <3
haha no worries! 2k means you've got to be doing something right! Stoked for you friend, I'm about 30 away yet- I try not to focus on numbers too much but it's a nice sign of growth and super appreciated!
Congratulations, you are one of my favorites! Thanks for all that you do and continue to do for the group, for steemit, and for the world! :) you are awesome!
Thank you Kubby, I was channeling you and Crim in this with all the awesome advice you guys give to newbies <3
It’s funny you should mention that. I felt the pink sparkle and the metalhead banhammer Love throughout your post .
Thanks for information @juliakponsford
Your welcome, I hope you find it useful!
Thanks, I'm gonna have to read a bunch of these posts you linked. Slow and steady, there's a lot of info to absorb on here lol I think the trick is using the site every day. Just by being here you start to get a better feel and find helpful articles. Congrats on the 2000 followers mark!
Thank you! Yeah there is sooo much to learn here, my hope is to at least relieve the need to use the search, many great posts are out of date or just straight up hard to find. It's true that just by using the site you can pick up lots :)
I have noticed when I search I often get old results. NOw time for some reading and learning - starting with bandwidth, for 2 days earlier this week I could barely use the site and was getting quite frustrated lol
매우 유익한 정보 잘 보고 갑니다.
초보로서 알아야 될 게 너무 많은데 자세하게 잘 설명해 주셨네요.
축하 합니다.
자세한 정보에 매우 고맙게 생각 합니다.
Thanks so much for this. I have been on Steemit a couple months, and have learned quite a bit by trial and error. It's nice to have a resource like this though to confirm what I am doing right, and teach me a few new things.
I have been posting occasionally through busy.org and steepshot, and have become a bit concerned about the information they ask for to login. Steepshot is probably OK, since they only ask for the private posting key, but busy asks for your password to login. It's not the master key, but still seems like something that shouldn't be used on another site. What do you think? Is busy trustworthy?
Busy needs your active key, i do think they are trustworthy because they use steem connect, but personally i would prefer if they had a login option for the posting key. Any site that doesn't use steem connect i would be weary about using anything other than your posting key.
Thanks for the quick response. I really appreciate your input.
Great post. I wish I would have had all this info when i first started. Updooted! Oh...and congrats on 2k :)
Thanks I am slowly getting some friends to join so I would like to have something to give them 😀
That's a good idea. I've been having trouble convincing people. a)it sounds too good to be true. b)crypto is confusing to most new people
Thank you for your explanation of the internal market, I really found that informative! And huge congrats on hitting 2k followers! :-)
Your welcome, I know a lot of people find that part scary, I am semi experienced with exchanges and I still always triple check before hitting submit to be sure I haven't made a mistake!
Congratulations on reaching your milestone-- that's pretty impressive for less than a year! Sometimes it's worth putting some perspective around-- I remind myself that it took several YEARS to get 2500 followers on Facebook, for example. Steemit is a pretty unique venue!
Thanks it flew by, I remember being so proud when I hit 100! At some point it just takes on a life of its own like a snowball :)
So much wisdom and knowledge distilled into one post! I wonder what new insights you'll have when you hit the 3k mark :)
Thanks I hope you or at least some people find it useful, I know steemit is a big place to navigate. I'm sure the basics will still be the same by then but who knows we may fork and it could all change!
Thank you for sharing your words of wisdom.
I am still trying to find my niche & my way around here, it can be so confusing.
Searching for my tribe :)
I just took a look at your last post you need to join @slothicorn it's all about compensation for crypto artists! Get on discord asap :)
"ambassador"? Oh my!
Thank you for the kind words, and congratulations on the milestone!
Many blessings for the new year!
Yep your the steemit ambassador :D Blessings to you too! ❤️
Congratulations, wow 2000!
This is a great post for a minnow like me. Even though I 'technically' joined June 2017, I didn't really even notice or attempt to use Steemit until December and only this past monty (with the turn of the year) did I finally come to see what a great place it is and why I wanted to make sure daily visits were part of my new years plans.
If I make it to 1000 I might do a giveaway of a print of my art or something, do you think that is cheesy? Is that the sort of thing that might be soon fun here or would it seem too 'other platform-like'?
I'm stull not 100% on curation rewards. And I just found out today from another poster about some sort of auto-voting that I didn't really understand. I thought votes were just from people reading looking and voting, but I guess not.
There is still so much to learn, but I'm not in a hurry. It'll come as it needs and right now I am just enjoying contests/ challenges and growing my circle of art /creative friends. I know you have been a bit of a beacon for me sometimes when I find myself lost in the Steemit sea! Thanks for that.
And again, congratulations!
I think it's a great idea to do a print giveaway, I actually won a print from @reinhard-schmid and I treasure it :D There are sites you can use to autovotes people like steemvoter, if there are people you consistently want to support. It can be used for good or laziness depends on the person.
Very useful tips, definitely many of the Steemit essentials that I've been learning over the past few weeks. I need to get a hang of the internal market though...
Once you do it for the first time it's a breeze I promise!
Congratulations @juliakponsford and thank you for your legacy on steemit.
Thank you Julia. It's people like you that have made me feel welcomed in this community. The whole platform seemed a little daunting in this first month but with advice from those before me like yourself and the sincerity of what you share I feel a little more at home.
I am still amazed at all that you bring to this community...very inspirational. I'll just keep chewing and I'm sure the rewards will just keep coming.
This post has been resteemed from MSP3K courtesy of @juliakponsford from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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Congrats Julia!!! much deserved Indeed... I think I found you the best outfit ever to celebrate, and since it gets cold up there, it makes sense in more ways than one.
Hahaha, yes I need nugs to keep me warm!!!!
Congratulations @juliakponsford
Many more to come :p =)
This is great info and not too dense to read like a lot of help posts can be. Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for the helpful advice, Julia! Will look for you on Discord - spending time there is always on my "to-do" list, so thanks for the reminder. I wasn't aware of the "30 minute rule" -- that was very instructive. For example, I thought the curation reward was higher if you found something good before anyone else, and there was a "race" to discover the best content before any of the big whales found it... oh, and congrats on the 2K!
Sort of..... I might clarify that part a little as it seems people are still a little confused, you want to vote as early as possible before whales, but too early and you get less curation rewards so finding the balance can be hard! That first 30 minutes is where all the math comes in and the earlier you vote in that 30 minute period the more curation you share with the author!
Great post and great article.. Good luck with the steemit blogging..
Congrats to my alien sister! This is an excellent post for new users!
This post has been resteemed from MSP3K courtesy of @isaria from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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I just joined recently and have been a little overwhelmed, so thanks for helping clarify how it all works!
Nice post @juliakponsford. Have you found any better way to bookmark a quality post like this (to refer back to later) other than commenting on it?
Nice post
I have been soooo confused over the whole wallet situation. Thank you so much for taking your time to clear this up! There's so much juicy info in this post! 😍
Also, congratulations!!! 💕💕💕
Yes the wallet and keys are tricky, I wish they included info within the wallet it is so essential!
Superb weldone
Congrats @juliakonsford
Keep doing the great work 😉😉😉😉😉
Followers=Goals
Congrats!!!
this is such a great post, thank you very much for your advice. I hope you can check out my blog and tell me what you think about it
This is so helpful. Thank you for this post.
Thank you for this @juliakponsford. I appreciate that you remind people of the fundamentals, not only the dynamics of the platform but also of the need for adaptation, innovation and quality. It does often seem that people forget the fact that everyone knows there is money involved and that most of us have our faculties and sensitivities in tact. The financial reality here seems to make the awareness of shoddy work and lazy comments all the more acute. Obviously the best way to scale that cliff is by showing up to work ready to go with a nice suit or dress on (so to speak). Keep up the good work for all of us that need your help. We appreciate you and Congratulations on building quite the massive following.
This was extremely helpful. I don’t think I’m a minnow yet, but maybe someday! I actually just downloaded discord and trying to get used to using it. I found out pretty fast that a lot of comments on my posts were people begging for upvotes/ follows but you see that kind of thing on every site. I have also been reading about steemit for the last week non stop. Every minute there’s a new thing that I had no idea about 😂 my brain is in oveload mode!
A big congratulations to you....greater exploits.....to you
Félicitation Julia! And also cool valuable post!
Thank you teamsteem, I'm tempting many friends to join so I will have something ready to give them :)
Thank you for this and all of the extra links, I'm the same, I am devouring all I can find on steem. One random question: I see the word minnow and I assumed it meant noobs, but then I read a post that said these guys were so small they werent considered minnows even. Im sure the dilineation will get even more specific as steemit grows (plankton, down to molecules 😂) but what exactlt does a minnow mean? Oh, the people who said that were decently bigger in my eyes (make money each post, 1000+ followers) so it double confused me
Minnow means you have less than 5k steem power, after 5k you are a dolphin then 50k? I think for a whale? Some people only have a few sp and joke they are a plankton, I'm not sure what the upper limit Is for that one!
Need to take some time to carefully read and note the points highlighted. Great guide for every newbie. Thank you so much for this.
Hi there! I followed all of the accounts that you suggested and will be looking out for the content they push out. Hopefully, I am able to get something from them as I feel like getting paid on Steem right now is like drinking out of a fire hose...lol Thanks again!
-armintrepic
Congrats. And thanks for the post.
Thank you @juliakponsford ! THAT was a very helpful post- I'm a Steemit Newbie and have dragged over 50 of my fellow #unfuckers to Steemit with me.... and we are all just a wee bit lost, lol :D
Resteeming for sure!
d
I'm still not sure what unfuckers are but I've seen a bunch on discord and I like the sound of it :)
Lol @juliakponsford #Unfuckers are a bunch of crazy people with the notion that it takes Unfuckers to fix a fucked up world :D
d
Me and my friends here on steem constantly discuss what are doos and don't. It is hard for minnow not to make mistake at first. The first mistake I did make here is follow for follow. That quicky clogged my feed.
And Importance of steem tools like SteemWorld, DTube, SteemitWorldMap, etc.
I love guides like these. Without them steemit would be impossible. How did the first new users to steemit manage to figure it all out?
it is great to comment here dear i am new and want your little support kindly be supportive for me please
I really find this insightful,its really gonna safe us from mistakes we never knew we make.
Thank you @juliakponsford