Despite being a very smart service, SmartSteem has been under the radar so far I feel. I noticed it for the first time when I saw it listed in content promotion services on the Steem bot tracker website a few weeks ago. I have been using MinnowBooster to use some of the services that SmartSteem offers so I was not interested in knowing how to use SmartSteem. However, since I have covered how to use 7 services offered by MinnowBooster, there have been some queries regarding an alternative.

I do not wish to mislead anyone by declaring SmartSteem as an alternative to MinnowBooster. They both are different services with some similarities. They are not interchangeable. Each service has its own unique points and both are effective parts of the Steemit ecosystem. This post is yet another effort to make the Steemit ecosystem known and understandable for everyone. The opportunities for growth and investment presented by Steemit based services enhance the benevolence of Steem blockchain and that is why I cover them in detail.

Image designed via Canva.com and background image is free to use from the inbuilt gallery. SmartSteem logo is used with permission.

What is SmartSteem?

SmartSteem is primarily a vote-selling service but with some unique features. The fact that people sell votes via SmartSteem also means that those votes can be bought buy SmartSteem users. It makes it a vote buying service for content promotion as well. There is a bid bot too called @smartsteem which is powered by SP delegations from other Steemit users and shares its profits with its delegators. Hence, delegating SP to bot is another thing you can do using SmartSteem. There is much more detail and everything is explained in this post.

The Team

SmartSteem is founded by @therealwolf and @artbunny whereas @therealwolf is the developer behind the service. He is also a witness and, in my unbiased opinion, deserves our witness vote. I have done it just now. He's currently at # 49. I have had some interaction with the developer to clarify some of the confusions I had regarding the service because I do not wish to pass on wrong information to my readers. He has been very helpful. Also, there is an incident superb customer service by him that I am going to refer to later.

I did not have any prior interaction with any other team member so I do not have anything to say about them. You can find out yourself in their discord server.

How to Use SmartSteem?

Using SmartSteem depends on what you wish to do. Every individual service within the SmartSteem economy has its own procedure of use. Explained below is the step by step procedure of how to use SmartSteem services. Read through and decide which service attracts you more.

1. Register With SmartSteem

To use SmartSteem properly and to sell your votes, you will have to sign up with their website. Go to SmartSteem.com and click login. Please note that the link contains my referral link. If you sign up using my referral link, you lose nothing and I gain a small percentage of SmartSteem's profits (not yours). I always value transparency so I disclosed the information right away.

By clicking Login, you will be taken to SteemConnet authorization page. Click continue.

You need to enter your posting key because the app just needs your permission to vote. I am already a member with this account so I used @steempkrex to document the process.

Click sign in and you will be taken to the SmartSteem website as a logged in user.

2. Get Whitelisted

Immediately after being signed in, you will see a blue button saying Get Whitelisted. Click it.

You will be taken to the whitelisting application form asking you why you wish to join and what category suits you best. You have to write a convincing reason of why you wish to join SmartSteem or else you will not be whitelisted. It's important.

After you have applied, you will be added to the list of pending users, and obviously at the very end of it. You will stay on this list until manually whitelisted by the team.

Once you have been whitelisted, your profile will reflect it.

Let's see how whitelisting is done and why it is important.

How Does Whitelisting Work and Why Is It Important?

Whitelisting and consequential SmartScore assigned to the whitelisted users is the most outstanding feature of SmartSteem. It is important because it prevents abuse of Steem rewards from happening in the first place. It also makes use of the content promotion bot (@smartmarket) abuse resistant; giving it a massive edge over all other services.

Whitelisting is done to evaluate content produced by applicants. After the review, users are given any of the three SmartScore ratings.

1. Excellent: If your content is rated excellent, you get three stars.

2. Good: If your content is of good quality, you get two stars. This is where I am right now.

3. Average: If your content is just okay, you get one star.

If your content is found to be of not good enough quality, you will not be whitelisted. If you are found to be a spammer and plagiarizer, you may even be blacklisted. Blacklisted users cannot get votes from the SmartSteem service. The site maintains a public whitelist.

That is why I love SmartSteem as a service. I am very much against bad content. Getting upvotes from voting bots on bad content is just criminal. SmartSteem is very smart at handling this potential abuse.

3. Sell Votes to SmartMarket

Selling votes on via SmartSteem service becomes a great activity considering it allows us to vote for only the content that is worth voting. I have used MinnowBooster to sell votes for some months now and it has been a wonderful experience in economic terms. I still use it. However, the presence of SmartScore ratings is what makes me prefer SmartSteem for selling my vote.

Here are some reasons you may be interested in selling votes through SmartSteem.

• Selling votes on a market, which gives you 85 % of whatever your vote earns, is better than self-voting comments and posts excessively to earn rewards; which is not a good practice.

• You can choose the quality of content your votes are used on. This is like upvoting good quality but with the added advantage of earning a fair amount of SBD.

• By voting good content through the service, you also earn curation rewards.

To enable vote selling, click Features under your profile. It will take you to vote selling settings page.

• Enable vote selling.

• Configure when you wish to be paid out. Whatever you earn in this period will be sent to your wallet.

• Set the least VP below which the service won't be able to use your vote. Keep the limit higher than 80 % to always have good VP at your disposal. I need to change the settings.

• Choose the content quality on which you wish your vote to be used. I choose good quality. If you choose anyone, you cannot ensure if the content you voted on if of the required quality. I recommend voting only to whitelisted users (at least average quality) to prevent abuse.

Here's what the form looks like.

But to enable SmartSteem to use your vote, you need to authorize it first. You can do it on the above form. Mine is already authorized.

That's it. Your vote will now be sold whenever the conditions you set are satisfied. You will earn 85 % of whatever the amount of SBD your vote was used against. Here's a screenshot of my balance from two days ago. I since have received withdrawal worth 7.288 SBD and a current balance of 2.816 SBD. I started selling vote on 8th Feb and today is 12 Feb. You can guess why I recommend doing it!

Note:- You need to have enough SP (always based on Steem's current price) to be able to sell your vote. You can use MinnowBooster's SP lease market to get some SP on a lease. That's the reason I do not consider MinnowBooster and SmartSteem interchangeable. Both are beautiful parts of the Steemit ecosystem.

4. Buy Votes from SmartMarket

I have used the term @smartmarket for a few times now in this post. It's a part of SmartSteem service but different from @smartsteem. The difference between both needs to be clarified, and it will be clear once you read about both in this post. For now, keep in mind that you buy user votes for content promotion through @smartmarket. The vote you sell in step three above is used by the @smartmarket to give paid votes and share 85 % of the profit with sellers.

Here's how to do it.

Buying Votes on Website

To buy votes directly from the website interface, you can click buy votes and fill the following form. You will be able to see the maximum available votes for whitelisted or not listed members. You will also see the vote worth your sent SBD or Steem will bring on your post.

Clicking send will take you to the SteemConnect authorization page. Click continue and sign in to allow the transaction.

You will instant votes. It is important to be a member of the website to see the votes that you got on your post. I got 15 votes worth $2.532 for 1 SBD. That is perfectly in line with the 2x-2.6x promised in the vote-buying form.

An added advantage of getting upvotes from @smartmarket is that you get a considerable number of votes, which looks good. Also, there is no spammy comment confirmation. You can view your buying history on the website. Available votes can always be viewed. Numbers are dynamic and depend on the availability of required voting power set by users to sell votes.

Buying Votes from Steemit Wallet

To get @smartmarket vote directly from your blog, just transfer SBD or Steem with post URL as memo to get an instant vote with a fixed return. You do not need to be a member of the website to get votes but won't get votes from people, like me, who authorize their vote only on whitelisted users' posts.

I would recommend registering as a user and see the number of votes your transfer bought and their value.

5. Buy Votes from @SmartSteem Bid Bot

If you are not a fan of instant votes with predictable returns and wish to play the bidding game, you can use @smartsteem bid bot. Simply send SBD or Steem to @smartsteem (not @smartmarket) to get a vote from the bot. Its vote value depends on each bidding round and can profitable and loss for you depending on how many bids were received in that window and how much ROI each user got.

The best way, but not reliable towards the end of bidding time, to track bid bots ROI is to see Steem Bot Tracker website. Find smartsteem among bid bots and click details to view the current status of bidding. Bid towards the very end when the bot is about to vote and bid only if the ROI is favorable.

I hope you now clearly understand the difference between @smartmarket and @smartsteem. I once sent 20 SBD to @smartsteem when I actually wanted to use @smartmarket votes. I contacted @therealwolf via the official discord server of SmartSteem (click to join) and he returned me 8 SBD. I was very impressed, naturally. I do have more than one reasons to vote him for witness. Please do that too!

6. Delegate SP to SmartSteem & Earn Profits

The bid bot is powered by community delegations and that is an investment opportunity for everyone. You can delegate SP to the bot and get a % from all the profits the bot earns. SmartSteem shares 95 % of its profits among delegators. Let me show you the exact math.

At the time I took this screenshot, a total of 149,592.049 SP was delegated to SmartSteem.

One of the users, @reddust, has delegated 5000 SP, which is 3.34 % of the total delegation. So, her profit share is 3.34 % of all the profits given away by the service. Here's the screenshot.

Received profits depend on when you delegated. Do as you please. I have shared the information. You can decide what to do with it. To delegate, click the blue delegate button on this page.

7. Invite Friends to Join SmartSteem & Earn Profit

Just a few days ago, @therealwolf told me that he is going to introduce a referral system. I have been seeking advice and clarity from him a lot lately in connection with this guide (I really do a lot of groundwork before presenting anything to you, my readers).

I was reluctant to use referral link but I did because bringing people to this amazing service is itself a service to Steemit ecosystem and I would like to be a promoter of what SmartSteem stands for. The referral system is here and you can use it too.

If you wish to use my referral to join SmartSteem or to invite other people to it, you can do it by using this link. I thank you for your support anyway. Link: https://smartsteem.com?r=ilyastarar

Conclusion

I have personally benefited from the SmartSteem projects but it stands for bigger things than profit. It smartly reduces the chances of reward pool abuse. SmartSteem is still a newer project but it deserves huge appreciation for what it brings to the Steemit ecosystem. It offers opportunities ranging from content promotion to investment opportunities of various types. I wanted to share this opportunity with Steemians in general and my followers in particular so that everyone can reap the benefits of Steem blockchain powered sub-economy created by SmartSteem.

If you have any question, do share it in the comments. It would be kind of you to support this post through your valuable upvotes and resteems. Helping this post with upvotes will not only benefit the community at large but also will encourage me to put more effort into educating Steemians to create a better ecosystem on Steemit.

Steem on!

Note: List of all my previous guides is available here. You can go through the post and apply for translation of any guide into your language. I am doing this to spread Steemit education all across the globe regardless of the language barriers.