The ULTIMATE Newbie Guide To Steemit! [ IFC S2R17 ]

So you signed up for your Steemit account, posted a couple of articles, made a few comments, and got some few upvotes. Cool. But where's the money? Why is your wallet still empty? Isn't this an earning platform?

This is pretty much the common reaction people have when they enter the Steem blockchain without educating themselves about what it is and how it works.

In this blog post, I'm gonna be telling you all the basics that you need to know, and what to and what not to expect when entering the Steem platform, and how to generate traffic on your blog through organic methods.

For simplicity, let's divide it into 2 sections with their own subsections + some bonus personal advice:

Technical Details
1.1. What is cryptocurrency
1.2. What is blockchain
1.3. What are Steem tokens
1.4. What are Vests
1.5. What is Voting Power, Vote Weight, and Vote Value
1.6. What are Resource Credits and Reputation
1.7. Security and Keys
Community Engagement and Promotions
2.1. Early development
2.2. Social Engagement
2.3. Content Creation and Curation
2.4. How to promote your posts
2.5. How To Build Audience
Personal Advice

Technical Details

Before doing anything, the first thing that you wanna do is gain knowledge about what Steem exactly is and the different tokens it uses to operate the way it does. But to do that, we must first know what is cryptocurrency.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is essentially a digital form of currency that has no physical existence and that is built purely on mathematical code. It is completely decentralized, meaning it does not have any central government or authority controlling it.

What this means is that it eliminates the middleman and all the transactions that are made through crypto, are transparent and are publicly visible to everyone through a technology called Blockchain.

What is Blockchain?

A blockchain is the technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. In simple words, a blockchain is where all your cryptocurrency transactions are made and recorded.

A blockchain uses certain tokens that are the actual currencies through which the transactions are made.

What Tokens Does Steem Use?

The Steem blockchain uses 3 tokens:

STEEM

STEEM is basically the cash alternative for the Steem blockchain. It's the most liquid token of all the three and is easily transferable, convertible, and is usually preferred for transactions. However, it is not stable and its prices fluctuate constantly.
Steem Dollars (SBD)

Steem Dollars or SBD is the currency that tries to gain stability with the US Dollar. It is more stable, but it is not as liquid as STEEM and cannot be directly used to power up your account and gain Steem Power.
Steem Power (SP)

Steem Power or SP is the STEEM that is stored in your account and used to give value to your vote. The higher your SP, the more valuable your vote becomes. At its core, however, SP is the amount of STEEM it would take to purchase the amount of Vests you have right now.

What Are Vests?

Vests are the equities of the Steem blockchain. Just like how a company's shares give us an idea about the worth of the company, vests are what determine your status on the Steem blockchain i.e. plankton, minnow, dolphin, orca, or whale.

You can check out your own vests HERE.

What is Voting Power, Vote Weight, and Vote Value?

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Voting Power, together with Vote Weight, are what determine the payout value of an individual vote. Every time you vote on someone's content, your Voting Power is reduced and is generated back again over time.

Vote Weight is the percentage of your vote that you want to cast on someone's content. For example, if your vote is worth $1 when your Voting Power is full, and you cast a vote with 100% Voting Weight, you will cast a full vote of $1. But use those votes wisely because you only have 10 full votes per day.

Even if you have loads and loads of SP and you cast all your votes with 100% Voting Weight, but if your Voting Power is all drained out (0%), your vote will be worth nothing. It's important to know that you can also give and receive delegations of Steem Power that will again influence the value of your vote accordingly.

The Vote Weight percentage is controlled by a voting slider that is available after becoming a minnow i.e. gaining 500 SP.

What are Resource Credits and Reputation?

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In a nutshell, Resource Credits is the "fuel" through which you undertake activities and make transactions on the Steem blockchain. Everything you do on Steem, costs Resource Credits and it is based on the amount of Steem Power you have. It is generated overtime but you usually won't need to worry about it anyway.

But do keep in mind that they are indeed exhaustible. Since your SP is very low in the beginning, so will be your Resource Credits and if you make tons and tons of interactions, they can empty out pretty quickly which means you won't be able to carry out activities for a while. To avoid this, make sure you make only meaningful interactions.

Reputation is a score that tells you how appreciated or well-known someone is on the blockchain. When first starting out on Steem, you have 25 Rep score. You'll find that spam and scam accounts have reputation way lower than that, and
that's because they are downvoted by users who have a stronger influence on the blockchain.

Your reputation is influenced not necessarily by the amount of votes you received, but more so by who made the vote and their own rep. It's important to note that a user with a higher reputation isn't always someone who earns more money on the platform.

You can check these stats HERE.

Security and Keys

There are mainly 3 keys that you need to know about.

Posting Key - Used for the most basic purposes like posting, commenting, and voting. It cannot perform any monetary functions. You can also use this key to sign in to other Steem-powered dapps like eSteem, Partiko, Busy, etc.
Active Key - Used for undertaking all the monetary functions. You cannot use it to sign in to your Steem blog, but only your wallet. Since this key has the power to transfer tokens from one account to the other, it is advised to be extra careful with it to avoid it being stolen.
Owner Key - Used for recovering your account and to reset other keys. It's the most powerful key of all three and it is strongly advised to write it somewhere offline along with having a backup in your cloud in case some technical difficulties restrict you from finding it.

Community Engagement and Promotions

Early Development

Here's some harsh truth for you: When first starting out, your stats will suck. The reason is pretty simple. People don't even know that you exist. For them to know that you do, you will need to interact with them by reading and commenting on their posts.

I highly recommend not writing too many posts yourself at least for now. You are currently in the learning stage of your journey and you don't need to start writing content right away, especially when your posts are most likely not going to receive much attention.

Also, your votes aren't worth anything right now so they won't matter as much. At best, you can use them as a kind gesture showing the other person that you liked their content.

However, you do have the option to resteem someone's post which is a strong indicator that you liked their content as that post will be visible on your blog after you resteem it.

Social Engagement

As you start commenting on other people's posts, you will notice how some of them eventually visit your blog and check out your content as well and maybe even leave a few upvotes. This is a sign that your comments were of quality.

The best way to make people visit your blog, not just for newbies but for everyone, is to leave a positive feedback on their content. Don't comment just for the sake of it though. It may make people wanting to ignore you.

Content Creation and Curation

Once you've gained at least a decent following, now's the time you start writing your best content. This is the phase where people are beginning to know about you and they will want to see if you are really worth their time or not by reading your posts.

For that, you will need to have a couple of really good posts ready on your blog. Keep in mind that some of these people who visit your blog could become your new followers, so make sure you reply to all the comments that you receive.

But creating content isn't the only way to create influence. Finding great content is just as important as writing it. Along with your posts, your resteems too will act as a display of your likes and preferences so make sure you resteem only quality content.

How To Promote Your Posts

This next step is one of the most important ones. Now that you have started creating quality content on a consistent basis, it is time to advertise them. You heard right.

Just posting them won't get you much attention since your posts will only reach your existing followers. What we're aiming for here is new followers. To do that, you need to find places that offer promotional services.

Discord is usually a go-to for promotion because almost all the big communities on Steem have promotion channels in their servers which you can use to spread out your posts to more people.

Steem.chat is another great way to do the same.

How To Build Audience

Building audience on Steem isn't the hardest job in the world, but it's definitely not the easiest either. Writing quality niche-based posts is surely a great start, but it may or may not gather you new audience.

What I personally recommend is participating in the different contests that are organised by other groups or individuals. Not only will you gather new audience as all the other participants will want to read their competitor's entry, but you might also win some of the contests and receive cool rewards.

If that doesn't work for you, you can try writing about stuff that people need info on. This could be about some recent news, popular events, or simply about the state of cryptocurrencies and their fluctuating prices.

Personal Advice

Look, I'm going to be totally honest and straight-to-the-point for you here. Most people who enter this platform, try it out for a couple of months and just give up when they don't see any money in their account.

It's not entirely their fault for doing so either. Steemit is quite a challenging place for newbies, just like how it was (and still kinda is) for me. It takes a lot of patience, planning, passion, and perseverance.

Related: Thoughts On People Leaving Steem

The reason why I advice not to write too many posts in the very beginning is because it can discourage you when you see those big 0's even if your content was incredible and you wrote it with your heart.

Let things fall into place first. Your initial goal isn't growth, it's survival. If you manage to stick with this platform long enough, you'll eventually see the growth. There are tons of groups like @curie and @ocd that help underrated individuals gain the reward and the recognition they deserve.

The only condition is, you need to make genuine efforts. There are also tons of initiatives popping up here and there that aim to help redfishes in achieving the minnow status which you can participate in and boost your growth.

Steemit, at its core, is a great opportunity but it comes for a price. That price, is time and effort. If you can give it that, it will reward you in return.

If you liked this little guide, please consider resteeming it since it will help out more people in understanding what Steem is and how it works. Thanks! :)

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