How to grow your Steemit account?

It’s a long walk from a Red Fish to a Minnow, to a Dolphin and hopefully soon, a Whale. Everyone wants to be a whale. So much more you can do and you can help others, but your account grows at a faster rate as well. The rich get richer – faster…

But the best bet is to understand the platform and use this to your advantage. Abusing the system will reduce your rating and thus impact on the platform or ability to generate a higher income.

So what can you do to get yourself out of Minnowland into the Dolphin lane? Firstly we have to see what qualifies as a minnow. Based on the amount of VESTS or MVESTS (million vests) that you hold on to, will you be categorized in to the following:

• Plankton = 0 to 1 MVESTS
• Minnow = 1 to 10 MVESTS
• Dolphin = 10 to 100 MVESTS
• Orca = 100 to 1000 MVESTS
• Whale = 1000+ MVESTS

How do you see how many VESTS you have?

When joining the Steemit platform, there is a massive learning curve, but once you have that under the knee, will life be so much easier. The witnesses help building Steemit up and some release programs or tracking sites to the public which helps you and your account to grow.

When I open Steemit, I open Steemd and Steemstats in different tabs as well. I think it has become my new routine. Steemit being the blogging platform, Steemd is where I track all my stats and Steemstats is what I use to see when my posts will pay out, so that I can use the @minnowsupport upvote channel.

As you can see, we have just under 31k VESTS or 0.031 MVESTS. Yes, I am plankton. Whales can eat me for breakfast, lunch or dinner. However they please. Luckily most seem to be decent human beings. Remember, they have lots of money invested in Steem & Steemit and thus would they like to see Steemit grow.

How do you see your account? Use http://steemd.com/@yourusername (obviously replace yourusername with your Steemit user name – in my case http://steemd.com/@darnscotty)

How to invest into your Steemit account?

You can increase your amount of VESTS by either creating, curating or powering up. A very good read is this post HERE by @minnowsupport. They suggest that you concentrate the most on the following:

• Plankton or a Minnow – Comment
• Dolphins & Orca’s – Creating
• Orca’s & Whales – Curating

Yes you should be writing posts and building your channel in a way that you like it. In a way that not only represents what your interests are, but how you are as a person. Your main objective as Plankton/Minnow is to increase your followers. Build your community.

There is nothing more frustrating than having 1000+ followers, but they don’t interact with your posts. They don’t read, comment or up vote. So to counter this, you have to read others posts, give insightful and proper comments. Don’t waste everybody’s time with “Nice post”. No, write why you liked the post. Where do you differ and why? What suggestions can you give from your side?

Not only will the poster appreciate your interaction, but might decide to follow you. Maybe someone else stumbles upon the post and read your comment and follow you that way as well. I have gone to bed and woke up the next morning with 3 additional followers. Where did they come from? Posts, comments and upvotes.

Once you have more interacting followers, can you concentrate on your posts. Your followers might decide to interact with your posts, especially if they share a common interest and this will increase your payouts.

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The more payout your posts receive, the more Steem Dollars (SBD) and Steem Power (SP – aka VESTS) will be paid out to you. The more Steem Power you have, the more power you have on the platform in general. The more power you have on the platform, the more likely it will be that your posts get noticed and interacted with. Your posts will be visible for longer.

Whales have massive platform power and their main objective is to curate. They look for content which they not only like, but feel will add value to the Steemit community. Let’s be honest, we would all like to see and read posts where a lot of time and effort was put into. I am not a fan of the 1 picture post with no text. This is not Instagram. But you can use your Instagram pictures on Steemit to improve your posts.

Powering Up

Vests are shares in Steemit. The more shares you have, the more power and authority you have, the more payouts you will receive. When you comment, up vote and submit posts, do you get paid in SBD and Steem Power. You can use your Steem Dollars to buy STEEM and then power up your Steem Power by converting the STEEM currency into Steem Power (VESTS).

I have been on Steemit for a month and as expected, the growth was painstakingly slow. After reading up a bit more, did I stumble upon the @minnowsupport project. They taught me that it is suggested that you do not post more than 4 posts per day and up vote more than 11 – 20 times per day (check your voting power on Steemd and keep this as high as possible).

Use your posts and up votes wisely!

But this raises the question. Is there a faster way to increase your Steem Power, thus boosting your account even more than the standard @minnowsupport, @lovebot, @randowhale etc?

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Investing in Steemit

Yes, there is a faster way for you to grow your channel via investing into Steemit. We all like free money, but what if you can invest a little each month and get more free money in return?

After my recent day job salary, could I invest some money into Bitcoin. As I am in South Africa, did I use an app called Luno. I paid fiat money (ZAR) into my Luno account. Converted it into Bitcoin. Sent the Bitcoint from my Luno wallet to my Bittrex Bitcoin wallet. From there I bought STEEM and sent the STEEM from Bittrex to my Steemit account. Once it reflected, could I power up and buy more VESTS.

If you work very hard on posts and commenting for a whole month and you have some extra cash, why not give your account a bit of a boost?

Disclaimer – Please note that I am not a financial expert. Do not use my advice or story as the absolute. Use your common sense and do your own research before spending your money. I cannot be held liable for any losses.

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