A beginners guide to Steemit, a social media platform that runs on unique blockchain-based social media model. It rewards content creators/bloggers with cryptocurrencies for their contributions.

What Is Steemit ?

Steemit, developed on Steem (a social blockchain), is a social platform that empowers content creators by rewarding them with cryptocurrencies. Steem claims to be the only blockchain-based social media model in the market that supports real-time applications, like Steemit.

What Is Steem (STEEM) ?

Steem is a social blockchain that relies on immutable content and an in-built incentivization mechanism. The blockchain offers an open-database where content is available in a plain-text format. There are a total of 324 Steem-based apps, the top three include Steemit, DTube, and Utopian.

Steemit

On July 4, 2016, Steemit was launched as the first app on the STEEM blockchain. It serves a community of users with an automated set of news and commentaries based on their choice. It provides them with a source to earn by posting content and offers cryptocurrencies rewards in return.

DTube

Dtube is a decentralized platform for video creators that is built on the Steem blockchain. The purpose of DTube is to provide its users with a platform that is:
Free of advertisements
Resistant to censorship
Providing payments (incentives) in cryptocurrencies
A fair platform for video content creators

Utopian

Utopian.io is an open-source project that runs on the Steem blockchain. The platform gives rewards to contributors. Utopian is similar to Steemit, however, it cannot be used as a social platform for posting regular content. The rewards on Utopian.io are strictly tied with the contributions that users make in the open-source projects, by fixing a bug, adding a new feature, and so on.

How Does Steemit Work?

On Steemit, users that create content offer value to the network as it attracts new users to the platform while also keeping the current users interested and amused. This facilitates the distribution of the currency to a larger number of users while also increasing the network impact.

Users who take the time to rate and vote on the material published on Steemit help with the distribution of the coins to the users who are contributing the greatest value. Depending on the collective wisdom of the public gathered through the stake-weighted voting mechanism, Steemit rewards both of these actions in proportion to their worth.

Smart Media Tokens (SMTs)

The Smart Media Token (SMT) is Steemit’s native digital asset. It can be embedded in web apps and used to incentivize people to engage in and develop any platform. Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) on Steemit encourage everyone to create and sell Proof-of-Brain tokens, which are the tokens that dispersed by "upvote" and "like''-based algorithms and can be integrated into internet sites to offer rewards and stimulate growth, while websites are compelled to use sustainable, currency-centric revenue models.
On the Steem blockchain, Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) is a concept to create a consensus-level token generation system. SMTs are an improvement over previously made blockchain token authorization protocols. These improvements include properly crafted token sale extensibility, automated liquidity providers, decentralized token markets, interactive token distribution variables, as well as a huge ecosystem of tools influenced by the innovative characteristics of the STEEM token, such as fully-automated distribution functions to content creators.

Vision Behind Steem (STEEM)

Steem was built from the bottom up to overcome the primary hurdles of social media-based economy acceptance and profitability. According to Steem’s official website, the same tactics that have helped big social media platforms flourish can be utilized to help cryptocurrency get off the ground. Cryptocurrency-based economic incentives can significantly aid the establishment of a new social media site. The team behind Steem thinks that the synergy between cryptocurrencies and social media will offer Steem a significant competitive edge in the industry.
Steem's objective is to develop an algorithm for evaluating individual contributions that most community members believe is a fair estimate of each contribution's subjective worth. In an ideal society, members of the community would work together to assess each other's contributions and determine a fair reward. Algorithms must be developed in the actual world to be resistant to profit-driven manipulation. The exploitation of the scoring system on a large scale might cause community members to lose trust in the economic system's apparent fairness.

How Is Steem (STEEM) Unique?

Steem has fast transaction rates (every 3 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and allows free transactions because of its smart bandwidth allocation. Steem's blockchain is designed to support large-scale social applications. An interesting point of Steem is that it handles more transactions than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined, and it is being used by over 1 million users across 324 Steem-based apps.

How To Buy Steem (STEEM) Coins?

Follow these steps to buy Steem coins:

1. Choose a cryptocurrency exchange that supports Steem (STEEM) and register an account. (Binance, Bittrex, and many others support STEEM coin)

2. Find a supported 'STEEM' trading pair such as STEEM/ETH, STEEM/BTC, etc.

3. Choose the trading pair and enter the amount of STEEM coins you want to buy

The same process can be followed for selling STEEM coins.

How To Make Money With Steemit?

The most popular platform of Steem (STEEM) at present is Steemit - a social forum where different contributors post their content and generate revenue in cryptocurrencies.
To earn money from the Steemit platform, you have to create posts on Steemit forums that are interesting and engaging. Users who like your posts will 'Upvote' them which will generate a percentage of revenue for you in the long run.
The amount of money a user can earn depends on their voting power. Voting power can be earned at the time of creating a post/article or any piece of content.

You can choose to get paid 50% in STEEM dollars (SBD) and 50% in STEEM power or 100% in STEEM power. Good content will always be upvoted more, thus earning you either STEEM power or STEEM dollars or both, depending on the option you selected when posting the content.
Steem (STEEM) Price
STEEM price currently stands at $0.437, as of December 13, 2021. Its 24-hour trading volume on exchanges is around USD $28,822,288.