Greetings,
My esteemed Steemians,

Today, I would be exactly 24 days on steemit platform. Still officially a minnow.

How do I know how many days I've been on steemit.com? Beside using the calendar?

I have been using a steemit tools.

The tool that I have used to get the above information is

www.steemd.com/@yourusername

When you click the link above, it will take you directly to your account information. In this case, it will be mine. Another good thing about steemit.com, everything are transparent. So, I have no problem people looking at it. I, myself keep looking at others account as well. Who doesn't?

The information displayed are:-

Vests ( Please don't ask me yet what this is, I need to ask someone more senior);
STEEM;
Steem Blockchain Dollar (SBD);
Voting Weight, which is your Steem Power (SP);
Voting Power;
Bandwidth Remaining;
Reputation (with one decimal);
Your account age;
Your account activities and
The witness that you have voted.

When I opened that link, I would normally look at info #4 - #8. Sometimes #9. However, the MOST important information in this link is #6. BANDWIDTH REMAINING

Image source

Your bandwidth will reduce when you are posting your articles, comments, reply, resteem or follow. Here is the link that explain what is it in a simple way.

After you have read the post by @mohsan0073, which was written 6 months ago, you should now know not to exhaust your bandwidth limit.

Another tool that an average newbie, like @papanog would normally used is

www.steemnow.com/@yourusername.

Credits to @penguinpablo for developing this tool.

If you click the link above, it will bring you to my account. Change my @papanog to your own @username. Or you can change the username at the setting box. Top left box if you are using laptop, 3rd box if you are using smartphone and click save.

I used this tool to measure how much is my upvote worth.

In this case, I will be using my account. In the 1st box, they are sliding scale that you can slide from 0% to 100%.

Let's take a look at my account.
With my current SP and current Voting Power,

SP 73.427 and
VP 86.80%

My upvote value ( shows up to 2 decimal places)

61% to 100% is # 0.02

21% to 60% is # 0.01

0% to 20% is # 0.00 (it may have value if it shows up to 3 decimal places)

You can use a special calculator which found in the small box as a small icon. Especially if you have thick finger who use smartphone. This will make your life easier than using the sliding scale.

Image source Just fill in the correct info.

When you understand this concept, you should know when to upvote or not. Here is the link that I found simple to read and understand written by @beverlyjoe, our fellow newbie/minnow.

Beside this tool, I was introduced to @ginabot as well. This unique notification bot is very helpful. I must thank @danieldoughty, @viverridae and @kokuryo for showing me how to setup the bot. You need a discord in order to enjoy this bot.

There are few other tools that may help minnows to weather the challenging ocean ahead. There are

www.steemworld.com, which were developed by @steemchiller and introduced to me by @bitrocker2020 and www.steemreports. com which was shared by @lifenbeauty in @bitrocker2020's blog.

These tools are great tools and you may explore it and use it to your advantage.

Last but not least,
As I have always been advised, in order to be successful in this platform, you need to increase you SP to at least 500.
Why? Please go to www.steemworld.com and play with the SP simulator. You will know.

I understand of the temptation to cash out the SBD for cash, especially NOW, since the price is good. But let us take the opportunity of the low STEEM price against SBD, to power up our STEEM POWER.

p/s: If you think that this post are helpful for fellow minnows, please share.

Thank you very much for reading