I'm a Noob That Wants to Share What I've Learned With Other Noobs!
Steemit comes with a steep learning curve. I know that I am a noob, but I have learned a lot over the last 2.5 weeks! So I thought why doesn’t this noob teach other noobs what she has learned so far? Some of these things I only found out about a couple days ago...why not learn about them now so you can be successful now?
Do not choose the 100% Power Up option for payout (at least for right now!)
When I started here many moons ago (or it least it feels that way from the amount I’ve learned on here so far!) I happened to read a post that said that everyone should be using the 100% STEEM Power payout option. The post was old. The reason why you shouldn’t use it is because last year Steem Back Dollars (you know, the stuff that you get paid half of) was worth around a dollar. They intended for SBD to be always worth around $1. Well, guess what, its not worth one dollar. As of this moment SBD is worth $5.52! If you choose the 100% Steem Power option you will be missing out on a ton of SBD that you can use to buy STEEM to power up. I did this for my first couple posts because I didn’t know better. But now I do, and so do you!
When I found this out my mind was blown.
The price you see on your post does not reflect the current price of SBD. Since the creators of Steemit intended for Steem Backed Dollars to be worth $1, the price you see reflected as the value of your upvotes is currently inaccurate!
This is my post: It shows the value of my post at $29.17.
But when I check Steem.Supply it shows the true value of my post at the current trading price of SBD and STEEM taken into account
I was made aware of Steem.Supply this week and it is truly an excellent tool to look at the value of all your posts and comments. It calculates you how much you will be paid out in SBD and Steem Power. It also shows other metrics about your account including the total value of your account, what kind of engagement you are receiving on your posts and who your loyal followers are. Thanks @dragosroua for making this great resource!
Make sure that you don’t drain your voting power! Every vote you use will make each subsequent vote worth less and less. You can check your voting power on Steem.supply or Steemd.com. Your voting power will recharge around 20% a day. I drained my voting power early on (I’ll explain why in the next point) and I have been trying to get it to recharge ever since.
The reason why I drained my voting power when I started is because I was upvoting so many low effort comments! I was just happy that anyone was commenting at all! This brings me to my next tip, commenting.
Make an effort with your commenting, I know that this has been said by almost everyone who has written about Steemit since it started. If you comment “nice post” not only are you offending the person that took hours to write the original post, they may actually flag your comment which will lower your reputation. I think the breakthrough moment for me was when someone commented "Nice post brother." on my post. They could have at least said "Nice post SISTER" instead..since...I'm a girl and all.
I have been reading more and more posts where the writer confronts the “nice post” comments instead of just ignoring them, and I can see why. If you read a blog post and you don’t have anything besides “nice post” to say, it’s best to move on and find posts you do have something to contribute on. Another thing to remember that if you take the time to comment on a post, always upvote the post you are commenting on! It’s just the right thing to do. You say thank you to the author when you upvote them, not when you literally comment “thank you” on it.
If you don’t have enough voting power, wait until you do to comment and upvote. The other reason why I drained my voting power early on is because posts that are over 7 days old DO NOT PAY OUT! I swear, when I learned this I screamed “OH NO!” I had been reading old posts and upvoting them! If someone writes something awesome, go to their page find something current to vote on instead.
If someone takes the time to comment something thoughtful, reply. Build relationships. Actually use Steemit for what its intended for, not just to make a buck! You will not find the will to put in the work over the next several years if you don’t find actual interest in the future of Steemit and building the community.
I know it’s hard not to apply your worth as a writer to the dollar value of your posts. I tried to prepare myself for that happening in the beginning, but I still felt let down. The truth is when you start on Steemit like us it is nearly impossible for your posts to get seen. Try not to take it offensively when you don’t get any upvotes because no one knows you exist yet! I say try because it’s hard. I would know. Spend most of your time learning and reading on Steemit first. If you leave a funny or thoughtful comment it will give someone an incentive to check out what you post about. Let it happen organically...because if you spend your time begging for upvotes or for other people to check you out they won’t.
People can tell you are not genuine when you do this. I am way more likely to check the account of a person who says something thoughtful and doesn’t ask me to check them out in return. (And I am literally no one on Steemit, I am a plankton... can you imagine the people that have been here for years?) I want to find interesting people to follow because I am looking to make real connections in this community over the next several years. YES, I think in years, not days or weeks or months! I would rather have 200 real followers who actually think what I have to say has value then 10,000 who will never care to read my posts or interact with me again. I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way.
These are just a couple of the things I have learned so far. There are already so many incredible resources on Steemit and I have spent over 80 hours over the last two weeks absorbing all the knowledge that people who have been here for months or even years are offering for the low price of my 0.01 cent upvote. To me, that’s a bargain!
-Emily
If you found any of this information useful, would you give me the honor of your upvote and or follow? I do appreciate every single one! If you found anything I said above incorrect I would love to know, so I can edit the post and so I can learn! If you learned something about Steemit since you started and would like to share it with me… I would love to read it in the comment section below!
Hi Emmyem. Thanks for sharing some tips. I was unaware of Steem.supply.
I wanted to also comment on your observation about leaving a comment that is low quality, like nice post. The reverse is also true. I have found several users who do not acknowledge a comment, no matter how well thought out and I am sure many are like myself, and will not follow that person. It is clear I am to little to be important enough to them to be given the energy of a reply.
I would like to add to your tips for noobs, if you don't mind. Being an indie writer/publisher I have spent a lot of time over the years understanding visibility. There is a golden opportunity here I think even many whales don't understand. The titles to our blog posts are indexed by Google. Yesterday I checked one of mine and it was the first result on Google. So if you keep this in mind, you can try to figure out creative ways for your title to be something one would search on there for.
Like yourself, I learn more every day, often by posts months or longer old. Thanks again for sharing. I have read many of your posts now, my favorite being the one about your house and your husband tackling the issues. He sounds fearless when something needs tackled and it was funny reading your reactions to it.
Hey good call on the google search aspect. I was aware of this but I didn't really think about using that to your advantage to draw web traffic. Just checked google and I also have a post that is in the number 1 spot.
Thanks. I spent years trying to understand their search engine for an author website I had.
Hey! Yeah I know what you mean, I think that some of the larger people don’t feel the need to
reply to us plankton because they are so beyond that now, you are correct that we should be also paying attention to amount of interaction we receive on our comments as well. Something that I’ve realized though is that I have found people to follow through their comments on another post. So if you don’t receive a reply all hope is not lost, someone else might click on your profile to check out your posts!
I did not know that about google, but if that’s true that’s a great way to gain visibility! I’ll have to look into that!
Thanks so much for reading my posts, I appreciate it! Yeah my husband defintely keeps things interesting...lol
Very useful post for new people. I have been meaning to looking into how the payout for old posts work and didn't realize they don't pay out at all. I have def upvoted old posts. Thanks for sharing and setting me straight. Oh, and I recently got like $100 for this post but took the whole payout in steem and no steem dollars. Realized shortly after how much I screwed up...
I'm glad you found this helpful! There is so much to learn on Steemit, I feel like I learn something new every hour! I hear you on the 100% STEEM payout option, I did it too! Im sure in the end it wont matter that much as STEEM overtakes SBD's price in the long run :)
As someone relatively new to Steemit, I found this post quite useful, so thank you! I also didn't know about steem.supply until your post and it's definitely a useful resource, so thanks for introducing that to me as well!
I did know about payouts disappearing after a week and I wrote a post about it (which didn't earn anything - heh), because I find that to be one of the best things about this platform. If you want to earn anything from Steemit, you have to continue to be creative and continue interacting and building relationships. It's the only social media platform I've seen that truly encourages community building.
I know one of my goals with Steemit is to grow my account so I can help other interesting content creators grow their accounts, but I can tell that's a long way off. In the meantime, I'll keep creating content and interacting with interesting content creators - I'm sure I'll get somewhere eventually.
Good luck on your Steemit journey as well!
Hey @jasonvincion thanks for your comment! I'm glad that I could teach you something :).
Yeah, I can understand that its pretty frustrating to get absolutely no upvotes. Its super important to connect with as many people as possible first by commenting as much as you can. Think for every post that you do you need to do 25-30 comments. I see that you are into beer and brewing, theres a great developing beer community here on Steemit. My husband @bradlovesbeer is one of them, hes a noob too! There is a weekly contest called #beersaturday where people post what they are drinking along with a story. I think 5 people get a price of some SBD which can be used to promote your posts. I hope this helps a little! I am still learning and hope to create a post once in a while to summarize what i learn along the way.
Thanks for the advice - I appreciate it! I've got some commenting to do and I'll check out your husband's blog, as brewing is definitely one of my passions (and my profession). I'm not sure I'll be able to participate in #beersaturday today, as I'll be busy brewing a batch. Maybe I'll have time after I'm done!
Thanks, Emily! This was really helpful. I recently read a comment that made me want to up my Steem game. The writer essentially asked, "if your Steemit blog was your company and you were the CEO, what would you do differently? You need to think like that if you want to make money here." Wow! And then you said you spent about 80 hours researching ... talk about living out what I had just read. So thanks for not only inspiring me to keep learning but also making it easier by sharing what you've learned!
I still don't understand how we get back our voting power ... I know I've been draining mine too (upvoting comments just to be nice). You mentioned getting yours to recharge ... does it just take time?
Hey @helenoftroy! Thanks so much for reading! Haha, yeah I tend to get obsessed with something when start something new, and Steemit is my new obsession. :)
Your voting power regenerates at a rate of about 20% a day. I obviously dont take my own advice though because I have not been able to get it to recharge. If you completely get off steemit if your voting power is down to 0% you will have 100% in 5 days. Hope this helps! Im going to follow you now and look forward to seeing your content :)
Hey @helenoftroy, I just noticed that you are selecting the 100% power up option on your posts for payout. I explain in the post above but basically you should be choosing the 50/50 payout option right now. This is because STEEM is worth $4.40 (or so) and Steem back dollars is SUPPOSED to be worth $1 but its actually worth $5.30, so if you choose the 100% power up option you will be missing out getting half of your payout in SBD, which is worth way more than its supposed to. You can then use that SBD to trade it for Steem to power up later. Hope this helps (Sorry I didnt wanna comment your nice posts but rather do it here lol)
Haha (about not wanting to mess up my posts) ;) Thanks so much for reading and following!
I read what you said about the 100% power option but had already posted mine. I'm going to go in and fix it before I post again! I like that you explain why that's old advice :)
Thanks for your post. I think I've been treating upvotes too much like Facebook likes and playing it too fast and loose. I've been trying to educate myself, but I think I just need practice. cheers!
Thank you for reading! Yeah, my voting power is still trying to regenerate after I drained it a couple weeks ago! Youll get the hang of it eventually :)
So, now that I have checked out Steem.supply, what does it mean that I have 70.80 percent voting power? It also says each vote is currently worth 0 :-(
But you're saying that each day we gain 20 percent? And will my vote value go up with my influence or with my STEEM? I know you may not have time to get to all comments - but if you're bored :-)
Your vote value goes up with amount of Steem Power you have. You can either earn it by posting or by buying STEEM. (I am doing both, buying as much as I can)
Your voting power is at 70.80% so if you stop upvoting now, it will take you about a day and a half for it to recharge to 100%. Once you get back up 100% your vote will be worth a cent again, (you should have around 10 votes per 24 hour period worth 1 cent) then it will need to recharge. Hope this helps!
Yes - thank you!
Hey guys! I don't know if you learned this already. But don't get too crazy about having a 0 worth vote, it's just because the other decimals don't appear in that form, and as many people have signed up, our voting power is distributed within the entire community as well. So, even though it shows as a 0 worth vote, it does have value, and it does add to the bill count, as long it's in the 7 day period. Cheers!
You got a 12.58% upvote from @mercurybot courtesy of @emmyem84!
Thank you emmyem84 for making a transfer to me for an upvote of 2.03% on this post!
Half of your bid goes to @budgets which funds growth projects for Steem like our top 25 posts on Steem!
The other half helps holders of Steem power earn about 60% APR on a delegation to me!
For help, will you please visit https://jerrybanfield.com/contact/ because I check my discord server daily?
To learn more about Steem, will you please use http://steem.guide/ because this URL forwards to my most recently updated complete Steem tutorial?
This post has received a 2.06 % upvote from @boomerang thanks to: @emmyem84
Hey! Nice post, I think there will be many more to come here and learn about steemsupply, I thank you for that. Never read about it until now and I have spent my entire month here reading about a lot too, so, how awesome! Do you know about the busy interface and steemnow?
I think is pretty well written and explained about the 100% power up, I was thinking about it, but I think I will keep earning 50/50 and see how that goes. I've been trading a lot too, what I do is to trade my steem through steemit and sbd through blocktrades to a different wallet (binance) and from there I trade my money to bitcoin or bitshares (from there I play with other currencies, besides those 2 I also recommend stellar), I often make 1 steem per day and then send it back to power up! One thing I would say about blocktrades is that you always need to be aware of the fees, blocktrades almost had me these weeks by throwing an extrange fee in sbd/steem exchange (1 sbd/0.9 steem and viceversa!) and that's why I prefer to go through bts and btc first, but always checking out how much would I obtain first.
Cheers and again, thank you for caring about others. Happy steeming!