I got flagged for spamming. Don't do what I did.

Well they say you have to learn something new everyday. Here's 2.

I got the Spam flag, my post reduced to the netherworld of steemit and I was left wondering why?

My first thought was WTF! I mean, what was Spam about it.
I wanted to document my foray into a cryptocurrency platform and felt that people would want to know about it. I thought I had created a funny opening post for it but was greeted with the following reply from steemcleaners.
"While it may not be a scam in your opinion, it could be considered spam."
WTFx2!
It COULD be? You deleted my manuscript because it COULD be?
Hulk angry. That's a lie...it didn't faze me much actually. I just said that to get you to keep reading so don't quit now OK?
What it did do was make me realize that I had to find out what the rules really are. If we are helping to build a new social media platform we should actually follow the community's rules. Unfortunately I had just glazed over when I was setting up my account and didn't truly read the rules.

First off, what I had written was truly just a post about my experience...but...if you read it a certain way it could be seen as pure advertising for the coin I was playing with. I was doing the experiment to see if it was a scam. I didn't think it was after researching but the way I wrote the article may have sounded like I was only interested in selling it.
Truthfully, there was a bit of that but the post was meant to be a fun read which could end up in me losing $100. While finishing it up I thought, "Hey, if someone wants to research the coin and join because I inspired them then I should get the referral bonus." I had researched other's posts on the same topic and didn't realize they were breaking the rules too. I could have felt all upset that I had been flagged but the old "did you ever go fishing and catch all the fish" story came to mind. They happened to catch me. I was a spammer, not the funny post writer I was trying to be.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Well I am here to tell you not to do what I did.

I have another tip for you.

DON'T USE RANDOM PICS FROM GOOGLE, ETC.
There are rules about it. Read them if you don't believe me.
You could be flagged as Spam and a plagiarizer. I would hate for fellow steemians, especially minnows, to spend a lot of time creating a great post only to be banished because you grabbed a kitten pic from Google that was under copyright protection.

That doesn't mean you can't spruce up your posts with pics. In the FAQs it lists a couple places that you are allowed to source free pics from. Of course you could use your own photos but I didn't have a picture of a referee that I had taken myself(Go figure). These pics I used in this post are from Pixabay. There is also Pexels. Bookmark them and source from there. There is no copyright on them and that makes them OK to use. Many of Googles images are not open copyright and you will be stealing it. Hence the Spam tag.

There you go. A bit of advice from a newbie who deserved the SPAM flag I got.
Sorry steem gods. Won't happen again.
PS: I didin't stress about being relegated to the basement files of steemit. Everyone has to learn how to play. But also everything we do here is recorded on blockchain so my post will quietly live forever! Ha!!!

This has been another gold medal post by Procyon21.