Hi Steemians and Busyists and eSteemians and Utopians,

We are lucky that while billions of people are wasting time of Facebook and Twitter etc, we are on Steemit or Busy.org or Utopian.io or eSteem; making contributions to the community and earning cryptocurrency due to the benevolent nature of Steem's economy.

PS: I mostly post from Steemit.com or eSteem app by @good-karma but I recently had my first contribution approved on @uopian-io. This post is my first one on @busy.org and I am pleased to be here.

I am on Steemit for 6 months now. I have observed and shared a lot of personal insights and experiences. I have created many guides and tutorials as well, which have since helped literally thousands of people to do better on Steemit. I am going to combine my experience in these 7 lessons that I hope will help you do better on Steemit.

1. Seek First to Learn, Then to Earn

The phrase is inspired by the habits number five in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which says:-

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Seeking first to learn how Steemit works and why successful people are successful translates to seeking first to understand. You're on a new platform which is based on a blockchain and rewards in cryptocurrency. Please understand its system first.

Don't learn so that you can manipulate the system (you can't do that), but learn so that you can offer what the community expects from you; value, contribution and engagement.

To learn about Steemit, do check the Steem.guide by @jerrybanfield and its future editions. Some of my guides will feature too, hopefully.

2. There are NO Shortcuts!

There are simply zero shortcuts that work. You'll either be frustrated and leave or be caught and punished with flags. Many people think they'll collude with friends and make a group who vote each other all the time. They do not realize that even a group of 100 people will only give you $0.10 at max if they all have no Steem Power.

• Upvote for upvote does not work even if you get 100 votes because these people who are voting on your posts have zero vote value.

• Follow for follow is another shortcut most rookies are mistaken about. You cannot get any support from such followers because most, I'd say all, of them are losers just like you. Harsh but true.

The only way to success is the way in which you do some valuable work and people reward you for providing that value. Avoid the shortcut thinking.

3. Consistently Contribute

If there's one word to summarize all the advice that experienced Steemians will give to you, it's contribute. What is a contribution? Anything that is valuable to the community. A thing which helps people know you, take a decision, make an improvement, enhance their knowledge, or do anything that people deem valuable.

And you have to do that on a consistent basis. People should know you for doing valuable things on Steemit for a long time.

4. Prioritize Relationships over Rewards

Take any account. Let's take @kus-knee. Visit his profile and open his latest post. Read it and then write a detailed commentary on that post. Also follow him. Then visit his profile every other day to see if he has posted something new. Read and comment. Repeat.

You'll slowly become familiar to him and you'll be able to know him better too from his posts and writing style. It will become a relationship of its own. Whenever he will see your post in his feed or comment on his post, he will be inclined to reply and even upvote it. Because you put in effort to make that connection.

I cannot talk enough about how relationships have helped me on Steemit. I have a genuine desire to make good connections from the day one and I have hundreds of them now on Steemit. So many people have made an undeclared connection with me too by consistently appearing in my comments. I try to upvote and reply to them on priority.

If you focus on building relationships, rewards will multiply. Try it.

5. Always Reply to Comments

That's one thing I have been doing regularly. I may have missed some due to commitments but I come back to replies tab and reply them all. The person who comments on your posts is a reader; not necessarily keen to be your follower. But when you reply and keep the conversation going, he or she tends to check you out and follow you if you fit the expectations.

You will see an amazing increase in the number of your followers when you make an earnest effort to reply to all comments in a way that is seen as valuable. I resteemed a @jerrybanfield post on the subject. Check that out for further evidence.

PS:- Upvoting valuable comments on your posts is a habit that you can borrow from me and you will see amazing effects of it too.

6. Do Not Spam, Beg or Plagiarize

Short comments like 'good post' are spam. Comments saying 'I followed you. You follow me and upvote my posts' are spam. Comments not relevant to the topic of the post are spam. Comments containing links, and that too irrelevant to to the post, are spam. Do not spam.

Do not beg. Just because you're new or struggling to understand how to get rewards, you should not resort to begging as a way to get some rewards for no work. Work hard. Learn. Put in effort. Show patience. You will get rewards.

What's not yours is not yours. What others wrote is theirs. Do not post content that is stolen from another author. Do not try to scam the system by spinning. You will be caught and you will be punished.

Note:- All gifs are from Giphy and are used to make the post interesting.

7. Participate in Steem Blockchain by Choosing Your Witnesses

Witnesses are responsible for maintenance of Steem blockchain and producing blocks. They run heavy nodes and RPCs to keep the blockchain transactions happening. We are not talking about their technical expertise though. We are interested in choosing the best people to run the Steem blockchain and make decisions about it.

These people are called Steem Witnesses. By clicking the link, you'll go the Witnesse page and see a list of witnesses there. While I just voted for @busy.witness as my 15th witness, I still have 15 more votes to give.

I would like to mention people or accounts that I have voted for witnesses because of their amazing services (which need some explaining and not the subject of this post). I voted for @ausbitbank, @steemgigs, @timcliff, @good-karma, @jerrybanfield, @aggroed, @pharesim, @curie, @lukestokes.mhth, @blocktrades, @utopian-io, @blueorgy, @sircork, and @dragosroua for witness. I would encourage you to see all of them and vote for them if they seem appropriate people to you to handle Steem blockchain.

I'm pretty sure these are not Steem witnesses.
After you vote for a witness, always see their witness updates so that you can truly appreciate their efforts for Steem blockchain. Also, let them know that you voted for them and support their efforts. They will support your efforts too, if of good quality.

Conclusion

Steemit works but only if you are ready to make it work. I have spent 6 months and I am so happy. I wish I had joined in July 2016 rather than June 2017 but I am thankful that I joined. There are millions who are still wasting time of Facebook like I used to do before.

On completion of half an year, I wanted to share something to inspire Steemians and guide them to success. I hope you found this post to be useful.

Please consider upvoting and resteeming.