After reaching 1000 followers, I thought of making a post to share a bit of my wisdom I gained on the platform to help the newbies. I honestly didn't think much about myself. I mean my vote is only worth few dozen cents while some have votes that worth over 500 times of mine. But it turns out that only few whales exist. So first let's start with basics.

https://steemit.com/welcome

The above link is where you first land when you sign up. It took me about 5 days to get my account. After getting my account, I spent some time exploring the welcome link. I read more than half of https://steemit.com/faq.html before doing a single thing on the blockchain. (A part of what skipped were the blockchain basics which I already knew very well) Unlike the plug and play vanity social media, STEEM blockchain has a higher standard for everything. That's the reason we have become the greatest massive online community on Earth. Standards!!! They matter.

Even as a quick learner some of the stuff did came across as little daunting. It's like playing an MMO for the first time. Just stick around and try to remember at least few of the stuff. Some time later, you'd be a natural.

https://steemworld.org

This site has got everything. Just check out your name or anyone's and you'd be able to see everything that's going on in great detail. The only complain I have is that it's not something for a quick overview on what's happening. It's the super advanced mode that takes few seconds to load.

https://steemd.com

This one shows the raw data of the STEEM blockchain. Every 3 seconds, a new block is created. Everything related to a specific account is shown on the site. It's your "piece" of the STEEM blockchain. You can instantly load up the page and see your bandwidth usage, voting power and many important data.

https://steemdb.com/

Do you need some well analyzed set of info on the blockchain? This is your place. It shows most of the things happening in the back end in easy to understand ways. Spending some time here would naturally help you to figure things out about the blockchain. Here is an example

If you are wondering about VESTS, they are what's called SP on the front end. SP is basically the value of your VESTS in STEEM. 75% of block reward goes to Authors and Curators. 10% goes for block producers (equivalent of Bitcoin Miners) and 15% goes to those who are holding VESTS.

http://steem.supply

This is where you can keep track of your pending payouts. It's all in one place. It's also got a bunch of additional features like the rewards calculator.

https://coffeesource.net

This is the definition of a simple nifty tool. It's the best way to find any post on the blockchain by any user and you can simply copy-paste the link when you are posting on steemit. Just use it and you'll see why it's nifty.

STEEM is Free to Play

Wait for 5 days and you get an account with 0.5 STEEM on it. If you use http://anon.steem.network you can get yourself an account almost immediately and anonymously. They have very low and reasonable prices.

Why do you charge for accounts? Aren't they free?
No. they aren't free at all. Steemit.com pays your STEEM creation fee out of their own pocket, in exchange for your phone number, email address, and social media such as reddit/facebook.
We let you pay that fee upfront to us, in-exchange for perfect privacy. We don't ask for any details.

Everything on STEEM is governed by VESTS (SP). When you get rewarded for your posts, what's really happening is people using their influence to allocate the newly minted STEEM and SBD (which is a debt instrument crytptocurrency which is the first of its kind to my knowledge)

The best way to describe STEEM is a company that exclusively serve the needs of its shareholders. If you want to have more influence, you need to pay up and power up (Back end reads this as exchanging STEEM for VESTS). If you are an aspiring writer with a tiny budget, here is my advice for you.

Step 1

Make valuable, insightful quotes on posts/comments of other people who have similar opinions/ tastes/ style/ content and earn some followers. Get a good feel of the platform. You need to know your audience first before publishing anything (unless you are going dear diary on steemit). Find out where your content fits. There are many platforms built on STEEM blockchain.
https://d.tube - Youtube on blockchain
https://zappl.com - Twitter made better (but little clunky at the moment)
https://www.dlive.io - Live streaming on blockchain
https://dmania.lol - 9GAG made better on blockchain
https://dsound.audio - Exactly what it sounds like
https://alpha.steepshot.io - Instagram with real photography reigning over selfies
https://chainbb.com - Start your own community forum and get payed for engagement
https://busy.org - Alternative to steemit.com

Step 2

Make some quality posts. Pick your platform and get ready to pay. If you know anything about F2P, that is grinding is hard. Whales can be greatly helpful. But there are only few of them and some of them can act like real jerks. Some don't even post and the rest only has so much time in the world. So get yourself some SBD. 5 is a good number. Make your post and wait 30 minutes. Don't use bid bots.

Bid bots won't make you a profit. Pick an instant upvote bot that is always profitable. You have https://www.minnowbooster.net which has become little messy these days and then you have smartsteem which has a better UX. You'll have to get whitelisted to get the higher value upvotes. Here is my referral link: https://smartsteem.com?r=vimukthi

Why 30 mins?

2 factors affect your position in trending. That is the pending payout and the post age. Instant upvote bots calculate the potential curation and as the curation reward for posts younger than 30 mins is lower, they vote with a lower value. That's why you need to wait 30 mins.

Step 3

Engage with your audience but be selective. Focus your efforts on those who are contributing to the discussion. Don't bother with random comments. Sometimes a simple upvote to show appreciation is sufficient. Allocate your time intelligently and type your stuff into the blockchain intelligently.What you typed is permanent. All your editing history can be viewed. It's all on the blockchain.
As for where I got stats like that I have the 4626th highest value vote on the platform: http://mysteemitfriends.online
Thanks for everyone for coming to wish me happy 1000: @arthuradamson @cryptocatz @d-zero @freeforever @funbobby51 @melip and the jackass who spammed my Zap + every well wisher after the publishing of this post :-)

Happy steeming!

Edit: You can also go to https://steemdb.com/api/accounts?account= and enter your account name after = to see some nice raw data. Thanks for @dedicatedguy for the tip.