There are plenty of ways one can get his hands on some precious Steem tokens. Being a good author is probably the most effective and easy way, curation rewards account for about 25% of the rewards pool, running a witness node can also be profitable, you can also participate in various Steem related projects, giveaways, games, challenges etc., but I still come across so many misleading posts, especially by new steemians, explaining how to increase the value or your content in all the wrong ways. I want to highlight all the time-consuming, unproductive things you can do how not to make some extra Steem. Let's kick it off.
Faucets.
Yes, the spammy sites you waste your time solving captchas while infecting your computer with malware, viruses and, yes, dick pics. You do get some free satoshi but it's an insignificant amount. You would need to spend a day or two just to cover the transaction fees. Wasting your time isn't the best way to add value, in fact, it's the worst scenario. Your time on this planet is limited, don't waste it solving captchas for next to nothing.
Upvote trending posts with almost no Steem Power.
When you start out, you have a fairly small amount of Steem Power in your wallet. This means you don't really affect the rewards pool that much. Sure, curating is profitable, not as much as writing a post but still, it's something. If you just upvote on the trending posts you may get a small amount of Steem but just upvoting will hardly get you anywhere. Once you have more Steem Power, (at least 500) the curation rewards start to become worth your vote. Save your upvotes for your favorite authors, they will appreciate you more. When you upvote a trending post you do a favor to the author, but he most certainly will not return the favor. Remember a minnow has about 10 valuable posts a day, use them wisely!
Ask for upvotes.
This is probably the worst scenario. There is an increasing army of new steemians who flood the blockchain with meaningless comments like: good post, follow me and give an upvote. Be very wary when asking for votes, it's really annoying and you can get flagged, especially if you put the same comment on multiple posts. If you flood my posts you will get flagged. Don't need to thank me.
Spam, upvote yourself, drain the rewards pool.
I see almost every third new steemian adopting this strategy. Some new authors like to paste their absolutely void of thoughtful comments on multiple posts, saying something like 'nice post', they upvote their selfs and the put it on 200 posts each day to try to drain the rewards pool. First of all, it's a dumb strategy because most of them have almost no Steem Power and secondly they get flagged so bad when a dolphin or a whale finds out about them. Here's an example.
Pay for votes.
There is a good reason why the powerful accounts don't use these services. They are actually very harmful to the Steemit economy. Why would you want to give money to the rich? For me, it looks like a desperate move, from both sides, the whales who offer their votes for money and the minnows who pay for them. It's corrupting the system and I don't see how one can make a considerable profit from this or add any value to the platform besides selfishly stacking their wallets in the expense of other steeminas. Remember, when someone pays for a vote, the vote takes the money from the rewards pool, that was supposed to be distributed among the best authors, not the ones who pay for them. I don't upvote posts that pay for votes, why should I waste my voting power, after all?
Mine the cloud.
Say no to could mining, it's simply not profitable. The sooner you realize it the better. The Steem token will be worth much more than what you will put in a mining service right now. Investing your money in Steem Power is way more profitable, but don't take my word for it, invest some money to mine some, wait a year and see it yourself. If you want to contribute to the network you can run a witness node.
Be someone else.
You can be as fake as you like, pretend you have millions of followers on Youtube, say you are a celebrity, as soon as you get caught all you payouts and reputation will be killed.
Memorize account names by heart when sending them money.
Don't write account names by hand when sending them Steem. Sometimes a little typo mistake can go a long way. If you misspell the address when sending any cryptocoin it's lost forever or worse it will go in the hands of someone else. Always copy-paste addresses and triple check if all the data you put is correct before you hit Send.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ways how not make steem, please share your experiences If you think of some.
