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Hey there! My name is Beau Beach. I work, and go to school from home so that I can be here to take care of my son William. I also have three kids from a previous marriage, Fiona, Oberon and Xander, who I would love to make room for by expanding my income horizons.
Steemit is a great platform for writing about your passions and sharing your original content with the world. Steemit is not about getting rich quick, success here comes with steady work and quality content.

First things First

You’ve found Steemit, your account has been approved, now what?
Chances are you heard somewhere that Steemit is a place to blog and get paid.
You’ve heard right, but there are some things you will have to know to get started and become a successful Steemian.

Welcome to the Sea of Steem!
In this great big ocean you are a little fish, most likely you are a “Minnow”
Minnows have less than 10 mVEST in Steemit
A VEST is your investment in Steemit, and it’s related to how much Steem Power you have, it is not a 1:1 relationship though. Calculating VEST is a little more complicated than we need to get into now.

In case you missed the large red print

The very first thing you want to do is backup your Steemit Keys and Password!
You can find all your keys under Wallet>Permissions
There is a button next to your posting key and active key that allow you to “Show Private Key” you should make a backup of all your public and private keys, as well as your password.
A good place to store your keys is on a flash drive in a program called KeePass.
While we’re here, change the way you log in to Steemit. ONLY USE YOUR PRIVATE POSTING KEY TO LOG INTO STEEMIT.
Your posting key allows you to post, upvote, and flag, but you will need your “Active” key to make any financial transaction. NEVER PUT YOUR ACTIVE KEY OR PASSWORDS IN A MEMO. MEMOs are public and clear text, someone could steal your account if you put your key in this field.
Don’t bother writing mine down, I changed them all twice before posting this video so that they cannot be recovered.

Setting things up

Now that your passwords are secured and you’re using the right login credentials, let’s get your settings configured. We’ll do that by clicking on this circle and then on the settings tab.
In here you will choose some things;
Your profile picture. This should be a square image no larger than 100X100 pixels, but can be any image. Steemit will shrink the image to fit in this circle.
Your cover image. This will be your banner on all of your profile pages.

What you want people to call you is your display name. Most people just refer to you by your user name, but you can put anything you like here.
The “About” section is a short blurb about you that will appear under your display name in your profile.
Your location (optional) is where you’re from, or where you want to say you’re from.
The “Website” section is a convenient link to your personal page, if you have one.

NSFW is the category where you will find porn, nudity, or gore. If you’re not into that kind of content, or if you browse in the same room as your kids, you can set options to hide, show, or warn about this content. Steemit warns by default.

Muted users, you probably don’t have anything here yet. This section is where you will find usernames you have muted because they constantly post things you are not interested in.

Who are you?

If you haven’t already, a good place to start on Steemit is introducing yourself. You should do this using the #introduceyourself tag.

Your introduction should say a little about you and a little about what you will bring to the Steemit community. Are you a photographer? Foodie? News and Politics blogger? Gamer …?
If you are already a celebrity (you have thousands of followers on other social media) then you will want to give some evidence that you are who you say you are. This can be done by either putting a Steemit link on your other social media profile, or taking a nice picture of yourself with the Steemit logo on a piece of paper.

Add some pictures … How do I do that?

There are two ways to add pictures on Steemit;
1 Link to pictures you own somewhere on the web using HTML
Or do it the easy way…
2 Drag the picture from its file folder into the text box

Tags and topics

Before clicking that blue submit button you will need to choose some tags that describe your post. You can use anything you want for your tags as long as it describes your content.
Some popular tags are;
travel
food
photography
steemit
life
Notice that the tags are in lowercase and do not include a # symbol. Tags may only use lowercase letters and numbers, must start with a letter, and cannot contain symbols. The # can be used in a post to point Steemians at a specific tag like #introduceyourself.

Minding your p’s and q’s

Etiquette is important if you want to earn money. While Steemit is an uncensored platform, there are some courtesies that should be observed if you expect to earn money.
1 NEVER POST CONTENT THAT YOU DO NOT OWN
This is the most important rule on Steemit. The community has no tolerance for plagiarism. If you want to write about an article you read online, or share a picture you found on the internet, you should write something original about it.
2 PICTURES BELONG TO PHOTOGRAPHERS OR MODELS
“I found this on the internet” is not permission to use an image. If the image is CC0 from a site like Pixabay.com, you may use it without credit, otherwise you have to have the written permission of the creator to use any image you didn’t create.
3 Resteem, don’t repost
The little square arrow is the resteem button. This is how you should share other Steemians work. When you repost you are taking rewards away from the author.

There is a lot more to Steemit than what I have included here, but this primer should get you started in the community. Remember be involved, practice good etiquette, write what you love, Steem on!

As always, I Steem for my kids…

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