Quick Tips to Become One Massive Steemer!

This is a reference for the new Steemit user. This guide seeks to demystify the Steemit platform and offer my personal tips to get you on the right path to building your Steempower.

Steemer is only one of the popular choices for referring to the Steemit masses. It would appear that Steemian is in fashion but not nearly as funny. That said let's get to the tips to help you understand what's going on around here and to maximize your growth potential.

About the image: Original composition, not my original artwork credit

Curate and curate early.
@pfunk suggested that new users who have the starting 10 Steem not worry about curating posts. That seems reasonable because at that level of account equity your curation payouts will be small and often round to zero. So at your discretion skip this section until you've accrued more Steem.

1. When you upvote it can earn you money if you curate something popular ahead of the crowd.
2. Your upvote power diminishes each time you upvote. After about 40 in a day you're out of Steem. Don't worry it recharges every 24 hours.
3. The more Steem (Steempower) in your account the more influential your votes. Check your wallet and see how many Steem you have. If they're not all powered up consider doing so.
4. Tonight a neat reblog feature was rolled out. You can reblog posts from other users. It will make their post appear in your list of blog posts. By doing so you may help bring attention to things you upvote adding to your curation reward.
5. For an early advantage follow people who consistently post high earning material. The column labeled home consists of the newest posts of the bloggers you follow. If somebody hits a homer every single time you might keep your eyes peeled for when they come up to bat.
6. That said within the first 30 minutes of a post's age curation rewards are split with the author. The earlier you are the more the split favors the author. Voting right after the 30 minute mark provides you with the full curation reward. Thanks @pfunk for the tip.

When Posting

1. Tag appropriately. It's advantageous for you to use popular tags but only use tags which describe your post accurately. The community is strengthened when searching a tag responds with the appropriate content. That begins with your tags representing your post.
2. The most popular tags are listed in the right column on the main Steemit landing page. You can search by tag too.
3. Use a tag or two at your discretion to coordinate your work. For example use the same tag on a subset of your posts to "bind" them together. E.G. I make a new cartoon called "The Adventures of Steemie" I may want to tag every episode with (hashtag)theadventuresofsteemie so a search for that will respond with all the episodes.
4. You only get 5 tags per post so use them very wisely.
5. Attribution of photos, quotes, borrowed text, citations et al is highly advised.
6. Plagiarism is usually dealt with severely. Don't copy and paste something in it's entirety. Just offer a link. If you copy paste indiscriminately it comes across like you're taking credit for somebody else's work. Always a no-no.
7. Original user created content is the most valued of all. If it's exclusive to Steemit then bonus! That said it's completely fair to curate the best of the web for your Steemit audience. If your posts are more of a "hey look at this cool thing I found" rather than "look at this cool thing I produced" then the nicest way to do that is to again provide links.
8. You earn rewards for popular comments under your posts. Invite people to join your conversation. Pose questions. Ask for their input and you may see higher rewards (not to mention have worthwhile exchanges of ideas, how nice!).
9. Upvote your own damn post! It's checked by default when you're composing it.

To Get Attention

1. Your first inline picture (or the only picture if there's just one) will appear as a thumbnail next to your post when people see the listing. Make sure it reads well at a small size and is proportional to the thumbnail dimensions. A ratio of about 1.75:1 Width over Height is ideal. Thumbs are approximately 128 pixels by 75 pixels so you can resize in your favorite photo editor for a preview.
2. People are more likely to click on an interesting headline than a matter of fact "Here's my dog... again".
3. You may be upvoted all day long but if you want to earn money you need upvotes from the right people. Study popular and unpopular posts to determine what might help your chances.
4. Study the habits of successful and unsuccessful posters (Unfair! We're all successful in our own ways!). Peer into what the whale accounts are interested in seeing. If you cater to their desires you'll maybe get some whale-lovin'.

Promote Your Post
It's been brought to my attention as well as evidenced by my own experience that promoting posts seldom leads to a post getting much traction. I'm keeping the instructions here for information purposes. I urge you to consider paying for promotion a significant gamble with your funds.

1. You have to spend SBD (still the unintentionally funniest crypto denomination to date) to promote a post. SBD is a dollar pegged token. I recommend looking at what's currently promoted to determine the amount you are willing to spend.
2. Click the rewards of a promoted post and there's a dollar amount after Boost Payments. That's how much has been spent to promote that post.
3. Outspend somebody and your post will appear above theirs in the promoted category. A 1 penny outspend works like any other.
4. Your post must be in the first pay period to be promoted. You can look at your current rewards to see how many hours are left in the period.
5. Your post will be promoted for the duration of the first payout period only.
6. You can promote your post multiple times.
7. You can promote other people's posts too. This can help you earn curation rewards as a result. Note that curation earnings are usually quite small so this strategy works better when you have lots of Steempower.

The Payouts

1. Your $100.00 post doesn't mean you will cash out $100.00
2. Remember your curation rewards? Other people earn those too and their rewards are added into your $100.00 reward. Without additional tools I don't see any way to tell what proportion of reward is for curators until after the reward period has ended.
3. Additionally the amount prior to payout is listed as an estimated payout. The Steem you're set to earn could change in value. More people could subsequently upvote your post (yay!) or people could subsequently flag your post (boo!) which lowers it's reward.
4. The first payout period will end 24 hours after the post is made if it receives no upvotes. Upvotes extend the time of the first payout period but it's often insubstantial unless the weight of the upvotes is collectively large. Incidentally one heavily weighted upvote could add several hours to the payout period. Thanks @pfunk for the correction
5. Curator rewards cannot exceed 25% of the total reward but it's sometimes much less than that. Thanks @pfunk again for correcting my info
6. That's not the end of your possible earning. A new payout period starts in which you can earn a further payout up to 30 days after the post originated. The new reblog function is expected to help old posts rise to the surface again so any post could become a surprise hit at a later date! That's exciting news for everybody! Think of all the content you've missed that can resurface. After it's 30 days old your post cannot earn any more rewards. On the plus side people may still be able to view it and you may pick up some additional followers.

Your Author Reward

1. Let's assume your final author reward is $50. You will receive 50% ($25) worth of SBD which is dollar pegged.
2. Barring catastrophe you can predict those tokens won't deviate from the base $25 by much. It will earn interest at a significant market rate if it remains in your Steem wallet.
3. The other 50% ($25) is awarded in Steem which is market volatile and will likely change in value significantly over time. It too will earn interest but more importantly will appear in your wallet as Steempower! That's Steem tokens backing equity into your account increasing your voting power!
4. Steem tokens can only be deducted from your account weekly at a rate of 1/104th of the VESTS you started the week with. What are VESTS? It's Steemit's internal way of measuring Steempower. Without getting even deeper into this topic suffice to say your Steem tokens can only be withdrawn a little at a time. Again @pfunk is totally awesome! High Five!
5. There's a tick box when posting to receive your rewards as 100% Steempower. I'm doing it for this post! Edit: by golly I meant to but I neglected to click it before publishing. Too late now :( Go long for Steem!

I've done my best to be factually accurate. Some of the above is my opinion about what should work in most situations. All information is subject to change as the system evolves and grows.

Find an error? I invite your input. It's very important to me to spread correct, accurate, up to date information. Your help is appreciated! Not only that I will upvote the comment which is the first to suggest a verifiable factual correction on a per correction basis. Happy hunting!

Everybody! Since @pfunk singlehandedly provided, I don't know, an infinite number of corrections to my post let's show some gratitude with some votes and follows. You all ROCK!