Roll up, roll up! Free tips for n00b Steemians
If you've ever used Steemit (which I'd be surprised if you havent given you're reading this but stranger things have happened), you will realise that this social media platform has a steep learning curve.
Get it? Steep? Steem?
Anyway I digress, I have been a Steem user for nearly two months and I wanted to share some of the things that I have found useful and also some of the mistakes I have made so you can avoid them. Let's jump in:
Use Gina bot
Steem currently does not have a notification system, while there is one in the Steem development pipeline, that doesn't help us right now. That's where Gina bot comes in. Gina stands for the "General Independent Notification Automaton" and will provide you with all of the important notifications you need. Instructions for signup are in the link below:
https://steemit.com/ginabot/@ginabot/ginabot-the-best-notifcation-service-in-the-steemiverse
Commenting is more profitable than blogging, at least at first
I noticed in the first month that the vast majority of my Steem earnings were generated from posting comments on other people's content, as opposed to the posts I would write that would be lucky to generate more than $0.05. I wrote about my experience trying to post 50 insightful comments in one day here:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@cryptocartograph/i-posted-52-comments-in-one-day-the-results
I am by no means alone in this and have seen many others post similar comparisons between commenting/posting. I believe it is far better to engage and build your own following through comments initially, than by focusing on your posts. This will also help you to become less discouraged with Steemit if your well written posts are going unnoticed.
Voting power is limited, but it does recharge
Every time you vote, the monetary power of your vote diminishes and it recharges over 5 days. Generally people will advise you to keep your voting power above 80% so that you are always able to make high power upvotes.
You can keep track of your voting power, reputation and other stats by checking yourself out on:
steemd.com/@YOURNAME
Don't ignore the Steemit apps
It's not all about Steemit, there are many apps built on the Steemit blockchain that are worth engaging with. Many of these (such as Dmania and DLive) have large steem power delegations from the founders of Steemit and hence can be very profitable to use. But please avoid posting any plagiarised content as there is already too much of this, and you are likely to get blacklisted/flagged for doing so.
Don't over-delegate
It's possible to delegate your Steem Power to other users/bots through SteemConnect, many will reward you for doing so, but make sure to keep some SP held back as otherwise your bandwidth will be limited and you won't be able to perform actions on Steemit. I made this mistake, heed this as a cautionary tale:
Do not power up your posts at this time
There are many articles available showing the maths on why you shouldn't select your author rewards as 100% SP. The payouts are currently borked and you will end up losing money, you are far better off with the 50:50 SBD/SP split.
Don't pick fights
There are many people fighting to clean up Steemit as the potential of real cash payments attracts a lot of plagarisers/spammers. As a level 25 account, you are very vulnerable to a large downvote which could wipe your reputation out and cause you to become a social pariah. Try to keep it constructive at all times to minimise this risk.
Be careful with upvote bots
Much has been written about the bot economy and you should be aware that there are users who seek to abuse them. There are several ways to do this, but I want to focus on one method whereby a user will use a bot to upvote their own content 6.5 days after posting and essentially get an immediate payout.
This allows them to upvote crappy, spammy content and milk a reward out of the Steemit blockchain. Now to mitigate this many upvote bots have a 3.5 day voting limit, this still allows Steemians to downvote highly rewarded content that is spam. However, some bots do not have these limits, and using them can result in you receiving a significant downvote from accounts who are currently opposing them. You won't get a warning shot, so take this as one. You can view stats on the major bot accounts using the following link:
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, so what are some of the mistakes you wished you had avoided? What are your top tips for new Steemians, please share in the comments below!
Nice post my friend
welcome to steemit, join the steemit school on discord https://discord.gg/pqWrzBn
Wrong tag used i thnk @steemcleaners
I’ve used this tag so that I can reach out to new joiners where this information will be of the most use.
@cryptocartograph, @apukb is right. That tag is intended to be used once for users to introduce themself.
It's good to be informative but tag misuse is is not setting the right example for people not to get flagged. I noticed you used the tag in another post. Please, refrain from using this tag in the future.
Understood, I wasn’t aware this was such an issue. This will be another lesson to anyone reading this.
After some research I see I am unable to change my primary tag, otherwise I would. I will not use this tag again going forward.
It was not my intention to profit off the use of this tag, in fact I fully expect to lose money vs the SBD I have invested in it, but I wanted to get some of these points out to a wide audience as I feel they are beneficial.
Before Being fine by steemcleaners Liset he tag by button edit youre a 49 would be alot of pain if you go back to rep 25
He cant he used it as his main tag. Its in the system already
Simple and to the point.
I am low on the learning curve, it appears. So I appreciate the points made. I noticed also that blogging gets me nothing, so I’ll do little of it for a while.
Try not to get discouraged, and take a break if you need to! Helps to come back fresh. You have a great writing style so I have no doubt you will be successful if you persevere.
First comment on Steemit! As a noob I think this is great information. I especially liked the tip about commenting initially to build up a following. I have a twitter series called Cryptosource (a bitsized news platform) that I am hoping to bring to Steemit. Check it out:
https://twitter.com/CryptoXSource
I also plan on adding other Series’ as well to do with exposing scams, ICOs, advice for noobs, tech digests and privacy in crypto.
Now here's a meme I made earlier:
Thanks for the info. My hubbie was fiddling with Steemit trying to learn the ins and outs for three weeks. Once he got a rough idea he showed me what he was doing using our farm name. Together we have increased our reputation with genuine content. We still have a lot to learn, but it's posts like this that give us a little more nudges in the right direction. :D
I just started using steemit a few weeks ago and I've just started understanding how all the bots work, thanks for the heads up that using some bots might draw downvotes, I hadn't realized that. Also I agree about the comments, I've had much more success that way so far.
I’ll tell you a funny story, I sent $2 to a bot once but accidentally mispelled it and sent it to the wrong account. I messaged the guy and he sent it back! Turns out the bot was one of the ones that attract downvotes, so it was a very lucky escape!
Haha wow, well that's lucky on both accounts! It feels like there are so many ways to slip up and lose money on here, it's good to hear there are honest users out there.
Wow! This is amazing! Followed and Re-steemed! I have held back making my own blogs till I reach more followers, though it is tough to resist the temptation to start writing my own blogs already . I'm still a little confused on how the bots work tbh not sure if you'd recommend reading up on them . I was also always under the impression that I should go for 100% steem power but you make a great point on that so thanks for saving me from making that mistake:P
Will absolutely be using this post as a guide further down the road though thanks again!
No problem, I recommend researching them because there are some mistakes you can make.
Always check how subscribed they are on Steembottracker to make sure people haven’t overbidded. Also try to time it so that the bot will upvote you within 10 mins of you posting, as that will mean 25% curation doesn’t go back to the bot and stays in your wallet.
Great advice. I wish I would have seen this before I got started but had to learn the hard way ;) Thanks for helping out the N00Bs!
No worries, thanks for the kind words! Level 54 so you must be doing something right ;-)
You got a 2.49% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @cryptocartograph!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!