Beginners Guide to Steemit

After the success of writing a beginners guide for people who are new on Steemit, I found that it could be very useful to write a continuation for those people who need a bit of help to go one or even more steps up.

So you’ve been a while on SteemIt now and you’ve been diligently making a post on a regular basis. Either you’re a ‘natural’ blogger and just do it because you love writing, or you’re here to earn a bit of money on a blockchain or maybe you see a cool new social network here after the imminent collapse of Facebook. Whatever the reason, you’re still here, but you are thinking to yourself whether there’s more to this than what you’ve achieved until now.

Well, this is where the fun can really start, this is the turning point. Either you’re going to stagnate, get bored and things stay as they are, or this is where you’re really starting to get involved and get hooked to this fantastic new platform and get some RoI on your posts.

Join a community:

Wherever you live, whatever your hobby is, whatever you love doing, chances are that there’s a community for it here on SteemIT. Look for people who share the same interests and hook up on discord or Steemit.chat, start a forum yourself and get people engaged, this is the thing that I love most about the platform, if there is no community on discord, you can start one yourself. For runners there’s the runningproject channel that was started by a friend I met here Hive account@toofasteddie, for the Swiss and people living in Switzerland I started the Swiss Crypto Community and for Game of Thrones lovers my friend Hive account@branthebuilder starter Third Times the Charm.

Whatever your hobby or interest, there’s certainly a channed to suit you and to hook up with likeminded people. The invite links above are free to use, so if these communities interest you, feel free to hook up with likeminded people. You’ll have to bring your own coffee and cookies, but the conversations are free and fun.

If you can’t find a community that suits you or there isn’t one for your interests, it’s very easy to start one of your own. If you need any help, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help you get started.

What to do with my SBD’s/STEEM POWER

So over the period that you’re here you’ve gained some followers, starting to gain a bit of influence, you got involved in chats or discussion groups and you’ve even earned a bit of STEEM POWER and SBD’s, but what can you do with it?

You’ve probably been approached once or multiple times by helpful people who promise to re-steem your post to 32.000+ people or promised regular upvotes if you send them some money if you send them only 1 STEEM or 1 SBD. Many of you have come to me and asked me what to do with that and I’ve told them the same as what I’m going to tell you … ignore it. Here are a few of the examples you have sent me:

I am sure that these people will do their best to get you what they promised, but there is no guarantee, just stick to the honest and fair way and you will get rewarded.

Lately there’s been an influx of people’s accounts being hacked because they clicked on phising mails or losing money as they sent STEEM or SBD’s to accounts that didn’t deliver what they’d promised. I want to help you prevent such mistakes.

What do you do when you receive post from someone you don’t know the name or address of? You throw it away … I hope. The same goes here, if it looks fishy or sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Bidbots

One of the most common question I get asked is, what bidbot is the best. My answer is none, this is the truth and everyone who runs one and anyone who uses them will tell you this. In general bidbots only serve 1 person and that’s the one who runs them. If you want to earn something by sending money to a bidbot, make sure you read and understand steembottracker.com. Here you can see exactly how long until a bidbot will pay out, whether it’s profitable, the minimum bid you have to send (SBD or STEEM) and other necessary informations.

In a nutshell I would advice you to follow these steps:

1. Ensure that the bot doesn’t have much time left, the smaller the time, the closer it is to paying out. This will ensure that if the bot is still profitable, it will probably remain that way
2. Check the Max Suggested Bid, if there’s still an amount there, that will tell you how much you can still send until the bot becomes unprofitable. Combined with the previous step this should give you an indication whether your payout will be profitable or not
3. Due to internal politics I would not send any money to bots that allow you to send money to them if your post is older than 3,5 days. This you can check in the column Min / Max Age. If the Max Age is over 3,5, don’t use that bot
4. Check the min bid, does this fit your budget
5. Check the ROI Limit, this is a new function, but if I understand it correctly it will tell you whether that bot allows votes to continue coming in even if it’s not profitable anymore and until what limit

If you follow all these steps you should get a profitable return from the bot you’ve sent the money to.

Let's do a few exercises to get you familiar with Steembottracker.com. Make notes for yourself, I'll put the answers further down below, all the answers are based on the screenshot above at the beginning of this section:

1. Which bot is the first to pay out?
2. Which bot has the longest waiting time after publishing a post?
3. You have 2 SBD's to spend on a bidbot, which one would you choose and why in the hope that you get a profitable return?

Answers according to me:

1. You would think the answer is Hive account@boostbot, but as the countdown is at 0 you wouldn't send your money there anymore, especially if a the next vote would be in 6 hours, Hive account@oceanwhale is also too close to end, for your to send a bid there, so in my opinion and based on this analysis only the next safe bot would be Hive account@redlambo, if it meets all your criteria
2. Hive account@promobot, this bot will not send you an upvote earlier than 25 minutes after you publishing your post. If you want to understand why this is I suggest you to read this post of mine.
3. Again this is up to your own interpretation, but actually the right answer is not in the list. You could send your 2 SBD's to Hive account@edensgarden, but with 35 minutes left the chances are high that someone else will send a bid after you and make the bot unprofitable. Besides, the bot allows votes older than 3,5 days so there is also the chance to awake a grumpy cat. A safer bot and one that I've use a lot in the past is Hive account@buildawhale, your 2 SBD's will be safer here for the remainder of those 42 minutes as it still has room for 10.16 SBD's until the bot turns unprofitable, however Hive account@buildawhale will not allow bids lower than 5 SBD's, so you'll get your bid returned. Also with that knowledge it is highly likely even if you send 5 SBD's that the bot will turn unprofitable in the remainder of the duration

I hope this helps you and gives you an idea what to look out for before you want to use a bidbot.

Smartsteem/Smartmarket

If you want to get a guaranteed RoI, my advice is to sign up for Hive account@smartsteem, get whitelisted and use their Hive account@smartmarket service.

Ok, I am slightly biased as I work for them now, but I have been flying their flag longer than my employment and I would not sell something or even join a product that I would not stand 100% behind. This is a professional service that is run by a fantastic guy Hive account@therealwolf (ok, bit of a lame name 😉 ). The Hive account@smartmarket service will guarantee to give you an RoI and the better the quality of your content, the better the votes will be.

Off course for this service to be succesful they need people to delegate their VP and SP. I am doing both, they use my VP from 90% and I've delegated 400 SP to them. Once I reach the 1800 I will delegate another 200 and I will try to keep delegating at least a third of my SP to Hive account@smartsteem as I strongly believe in this and it truly ensures that we grow together! Join us now, just sign up by clicking on the banner at the bottom of my post or follow this referral link: https://smartsteem.com?r=wolfje, 4 people have already done so before you and are not regretting it.

Another great service and one I do not work for is Hive account@qurator. They also have a delegation system in place and also a channel where you can gain ideas if you're stuck for a subject to write about. It is run by another great guy called Hive account@scrooger and you benefit from their own trail of voters. They're a great bunch and really helpful, especially for newbies a great source of information ... besides me off course 😉 but I can also tell you that many qurators have also recently joined Hive account@smartsteem and requested to be whitelisted to use this service, so in my honest opinion and experience, there is no better and fairer way for everyone to benefit than Hive account@smartsteem and Hive account@smartmarket.

Witnesses

Something that many people don't know or take notice off is the witnesses here on the platform. These are the people who make the important decisions and ensure that the platform remains operable as they dedicate their own servers and nodes to keep this platform going. I know for example (as per one of his last posts) that Hive account@jesta has 8 servers of his own dedicated to this. All this costs money and time and off course they get rewarded accordingly.

What I want to inform you about is that it's very important that if you think one of the witnesses is doing a great job, vote for them. It's very easy and you can't really vote wrong as you have 30 votes available. If you want to vote for the ones you know, just follow this link. If you don't know who to vote for, here are my 10 votes until now and why I'm voting for them, sorted by their witness ranks:

• Hive account@jesta he's the guy behind apps like SteemDB, chainBB and Vessel
• Hive account@lukestokes.mhth (more human than human), a true ambassador and role model of our platform and a great guy allround
• Hive account@curie, these guys have a greatsystem in place to help new members, which is initially why I gave them my vote
• Hive account@drakos, this guy works way too hard to get everyone on board. If you had trouble signing up, you've probably dealt with him, despite him never responding to my shout to help them, he's getting my vote
• Hive account@yabapmatt, the guy behind www.steembottracker.com, the initial reason why I voted for him
• Hive account@blockbrothers I have to vote for them as they are the guys behind the first useful steemit app for iOs
• Hive account@reggaemuffin, this guy I'm going to let explain himself, but he's a really nice guy and extremely helpful. Enough reasons to vote for him
• Hive account@therealwolf as I mentioned before, I was a long fan and supporter. Someone you should all vote for!
• Hive account@themarkymark he keeps popping up with great advice for everyone, especially on another project I hugely believe in, Hive account@steemworld
• Hive account@steemitboard I actually don't remember why I vote for them, but I have 10 votes available, so I've kept it until now.

This still leaves me with 20 votes. Soon I will announce my bid to start a witness with some friends as well. I believe in this platform and in building a strong community together and I want to take the next step. Once we're ready I will inform you guys about this, but in the mean time make sure you vote ... but keep 1 vote for me!

Let me know if you need any more help or have any other topics you'd like me to cover. You can also reach me through DM on discord, just add me, my name is wolfje#6587

Thanks,

Doron