More than three years in, the Steem blockchain has really begun to evolve into a vastly diverse ecosystem. Within this chaos there are plenty of tools and resources that have developed but they are not very well connected or publicized. If we are ever going to on-board new users to this platform we need to start thinking about ways to educate the broader community about the kinds of applications that are available.

I'm going to focus on the main three websites that I believe are extremely useful and the most important to my Steem experience. Without these tools I would not be able to do what I do here on the blockchain, without spending exponentially more time and attention.

These sites are SteemPeak, SteemAuto and SteemWorld

STEEMPEAK

I am actually using SteemPeak to publish this article to Steem right now, rather than using the Steemit.com front end. This is because I really enjoy the formatting of the site and the markdown tools are all built into the page. Additionally it gives more information about your posts as you are creating them, such as word count and read time. You can add "beneficiaries" to your posts as well so you can give a percentage of your rewards to content creators who may have contributed, or to whoever you'd like. There are advanced features that allow you to specify the author of a post, post as hidden, delay a post with a timer, customize the preview description and more. My favorite part is that you can add up to FIVE more hashtags for a total of ten, rather than the five max that Steemit.com allows.

There are plenty of other cool features on SteemPeak, but I will leave that for you all to find out on your own ;-)

STEEMAUTO

SteemAuto is site that I have actually done a post on before (See Here) but I think I should cover again. First of all you can automate a lot of the processes that would normally take quite a bit of time out of your daily routine. These include automating voting on certain accounts through their "fan base" as well as their "curation trail" features. You can auto claim rewards, schedule posts and even auto up-vote comments. One of the best features of SteemAuto is you can set a "mana limit" on your Voting Power so you don't drain your account too quickly. Your voting will be paused when you hit this threshold and resume once your power is back above.

By automating a lot of your daily processes you can reward content creators you know are producing quality content, even when you aren't around and miss their posts. You won't have to constantly check for reward payouts either because these will be claimed automatically for you and compound your STEEM Power effortlessly. The coolest part is you can fine tune your vote wait times for max curation rewards!

I set my votes to the 12 minute mark wait time to ensure that I am getting a decent cut of the payouts and so far it seems to be working out nicely. Votes with 5% VP and below have been earning me curation whereas normally these would be considered dust votes and not be worth anything in return.

STEEMWORLD

If you are the kinda person that likes stats then SteemWorld is for you! This site has everything you need from a general dashboard with account information, balances for your Steem wallet as well as Steem-engine tokens, delegation controls, follower info, account operations (every transaction), post overviews with in-depth details, "coming rewards" section and a tools section. There are so many features on this site that I seem to discover something new about it daily. You can even create new Steem accounts for free if you have enough STEEM Power using this site.

My favorite part of SteemWorld is the Voting Power gauge where you can simulate your STEEM Power and VP. This allows you to estimate what size votes you should be giving out, allows you to monitor if you are burning through your VP too quickly or not enough, shows you how much more STEEM Power you'll need to reach certain rewards, etc. Every day you recover about 20% of your total VP so make sure to use it effectively.

By using all three of these sites together I am in total control of my Steem accounts. I can observe and make changes as needed so I can maximize my Steem experience overall. I hope that this has helped and some of you can benefit from using these sites too :)