My own personal opinions on the Steemit Platform.
Hello everyone :) It has been far too long since I have posted. I’m itching honestly. For those of you who don’t know me, I go by Cerulean here, and it has been just over 30 days since I first joined Steemit. I must be honest with you all, being engaged in crypto-trading over the last year, I have looked into steem more than once, and though I found the concept interesting, I was one of those people going “But where does the money come from?”. When I was new to the world of cryptocurrencies, Steem was, to be truthful, quite confusing to me. I also imagined it to be well, somewhat the world that it is, though I imagined much worse.
I personally don’t like currencies where the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor, however, steemit has developed so many different and amazing communities and users alike, most of which love the platform with a ferocity, and do their best to support growth in every way, for users new and old. When I first imagined the Steemit platform, I saw dozens of Jerry Banfields, running around voting each other into the atmo, and taking advantage of the rest of the users. This is not the case, as it seems. Steemit is a society, or perhaps community if you prefer.
In every society, we will have people who try to cheat the system, so as to gain quick reward. Many times, this even pays off for a small time, as you can tell from even just the jerry example. However, the Devs of Steemit have done an excellent job in allowing the community to decide what content is relevant. And yes, of course, jerry’s posts are always gonna have a value of however many hundred dollars, but thanks to the transparency of the Steem blockchain, it took me about 4 days to realize that banfield, and many other peoples popularity are simply payed for.
Vote selling was one of the other things that I feared when first learning about the platform, and one of the reasons I did not sign up last year, :( though now I am here, it just kind of makes sense. Yes some people are going to sell their votes. Again, its a society, and people are free to do as they wish. We must simply keep in mind that the things we do reflect back on our personal image. I have seen many well respected members of Steemit, that earn the same amounts as jerry on their posts, simply from hard work, dedication, and investment.
Tips for New Members.
Now, I am not a pro at this by an means, as mentioned above, I have a total of 30 days experience on this platform, but I do hope the things mentioned in this post will help you succeed, or perhaps even restore some confidence you may have lost since signing up. This is most always the part where people go on to tell you to make a solid post, well educated and properly formatted, and all of your dreams will come true. This is not the case. This is in fact, obvious. If you expect anyone to monetarily enjoy anything of yours, you should put a quality amount of effort into it. I’m not going to mention any of these things.
Networking:
As I mention many times in this post, Steemit is a society. Make some friends in the community. Join Discord for one thing, its not hard at all, and I will add the link below in ‘Tools’. One can’t expect to succeed in life, just sitting at home and not talking to anyone. Life is very much so about the connections that you have made. Whether a whale or a minnow, people are impressionable. If you just walk up to them and throw some information in their face, they are very unlike to read it, and probably wont think of you again. However, should you find a way to draw in your crowd in a pleasing manner, many people will hear what you have to say, and will even perhaps think about you in the future.
3rd Party Services:
Steemit itself is technically the 3rd party imo, haha but in any case to users who are just learning about the platform, it may seem like Steemit is the platform. Now for those of you who don’t know, Steemit, has very little do do with the steem blockchain, aside from being powered by it. Again this is all just as far as I know, but from what I have learned, Steem is the blockchain, as well as one of the currencies created by it. Steemit, is an external source that connects to the blockchain, and uses the information within it to give us this awesome platform.
There are many other 3rd party services, such as steemsupply, steemd, busy.org, and so many more. Some of these are other media platforms, othersare simply informational tools. I will give further detail on each of these later on in this article.
Bid Bots... The Ethical Battle.
For those of you who haven’t yet discovered, there is a place where you can purchase the votes of large ‘whales’, or users, using Steem or SBD. Now, before you let your eyes light up, let me tell you that this is both a widely used, and debated service. The Steem Devs have never chosen to fix this, and this leads me to assume that they are something they want in their world.
The reasons people dislike ‘bidbots’, are actually quite plentiful. Consider this, for one thing, anyone selling such a large vote, very clearly has quite a large amount of power within the Steem system, regardless of how it was attained. The thing about that is, that when we send them steem buying their votes, we are in essence making them more and more powerful, and from their actions, it can be assumed that they don’t care very much for this platform, or about supporting anyone other than themselves.
Another reason people don’t like these bots, aside from supporting the occasional poor content, is that they are taking advantage of users who don’t fully understand the system just yet. Even I am still learning how the dollar amount on our post correlates to our final payout, as there are many caveats. Now, when a bid bot votes on your page, aside from the fact that they receive your Steem, as well as the Curation Reward for voting on your post, there are many factors that receive how much money you will receive. These should not generally be used for profit, though I will admit that you can get lucky should you put the time and effort in, however that time would be much better spent producing quality content for your profile.
Now, again this is strictly my opinion, but I do feel that bid-bots have a place in this world, however as a service of attention, rather than gaining profits. Think of it like this, in our modern world, how would you notify the public as a general member of society? Some sort of news broadcast perhaps, major media outlets, etc. I like to think of bid-bots as them. If I wanted right now, everyone in the entire world to hear what I have to say about yesterdays game, I could put on a live webcam show on some sort of free blog website, perhaps even Dtube XD.
The thing is, unless my news is so important that it draws in every single reader, like “World is Ending Tomorrow, Read this Now, Signed NSA” lol, many people would not click on it, unless they too were interested in what I have to say. Now, in this situation a user who could afford it, can purchase votes, and in effect, attention, because little users follow the bigger ones, just as they often do in the world. This as seen by many the other day during the awesome Bybteball giveaway, can be an excellent way to draw attention to important, pressing matters.
The last thing I would like to say though, is that they are in general frowned upon for general use. Not many big users are likely to give you a worthy vote, should you have already purchased your own, however the validity of the information in your post can affect this. In any case I wish you all the best of luck, and assure you there is no need for bots should you be willing to put a good amount of effort into your steemit account.
3rd Party Tools, A Detailed Explanation.
SteemSupply: SteemSupply Steem Supply, is an awesome web tool that you can use to look up many different things about the steem blockchain, and its users. I mostly use this website to check out how the rewards fund is doing, though there are some other solid uses for this site. To try it out, type your username into the search bar.
SteemNow: SteemNow Steem Now, is a quite similar tool to Steem supply, and even SteemD, though it has its own personal setup and functions. Definitely worth checking out though to be honest, I personally use this service least. Steem Now is for user information. Try typing in your username NOW! :)
SteemD: SteemD SteemD is an awesome tool, very focused on user statistics, an excellent way to view users past activity. Ever been downvoted? Check them out here :P To use this tool, repleace ‘ceruleanblue’ with your username in the URL.
Dtube: Dtube Dtube, is pretty much decentralised Youtube. Like Busy.org, or Steemit, Dtube is an external application, built on top of the Steem Blockchain. Dtube gets a bad rap, eeryone says they take portions of your money, and they do, however they have adjusted this so that you now receive it back. Dtube is awesome. Don’t let the haters get you down.
Busy.org: Busy.org Busy.org, to be honest I don’t know much about. I have plans to check them out in the near future, however it seems far too similar to Steemit to grab my attention right now. One key difference I have heard is that you can see precise vote values, though I believe there are many more.
Discord: Discord Discord is a an application that can be used to chat with people. Different rooms can be hosted, and it is widely used by gamers, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts alike. Discord is one of the things you should most definitely check out on this list, as it will vastly increase your networking. I strongly advise you join the PAL (Peace, Abundance, and LIberty) Server as well.
MinnowBooster: MinnowBooster. Minnowbooster, is a debatable service, though they do quite a bit to help minnows in my opinion. Not many people are going to click on an post with 0 votes, as it appears to be dis-interesting. MinnowBooster is a place where cheap votes can be purchased. This can be beneficial to a very new user, though not only new users use this service, and it should be remembered that this is nothing more than a community-oriented bid-bot.
MinnowSupport: MinnowSupport Minnowsupport is an awesome service that is essentially free to use, and helps minnows with post promotion, meeting others, and provides a nice upvote once every 48 Hrs. MinnowSupport activity takes place mostly in their Discord Server, so make sure to install Discord first :)
SteemBotTracker: SteemBotTracker This is the place where you go to find all of the “bid-bots” talked about earlier. I strongly advice you caution when using them. It’s not like people will downvote you for simply using one, however not many people will like you for it. Another option to get your post seen is post promotion.
My Final Words, & The Lasting Impression Left by Steemit:
Allright, so those are just a few of the different tools that I hope will help get you started on your awesome Steemit Journey. I wanted to mention this earlier, though I kinda lost my train of thought discussing the Steemit ecosystem. When I first joined this platform, my only intentions were to earn some steem, so as to fund my Binance account even further. After a short week, I had already sold off a small amount of my portfolio to make a small initial investment of about 10 Steem. 30 odd days later, I have powered up all my Steem, and have no plans to sell in the future.
From an investors point of view, Steem is a decent option at a first glance, though many coins are. The thing about that is, when you take a good look at the charts, you realize there is a bottom, which never gets broken. I believe this line, is all of you awesome Steemians, who love this platform even more than I. These people never sell out, and are always contributing to the platform. This is why I believe steem is an excellent investment.
In case it was not made clearly enough in my words above, I have been having such an amazing time here, met so many awesome people from parts around the world as well as local, and I have no plans to ever stop. I have so many hopes for Steem and Steemit in the future, and I know you all do too.
For those of you who have been following my ethical hacking guides:
The reason I have not posted another section in the last few days, is that I am currently engaged in developing an android application, that I plan to integrate into the Steem blockchain, as well as perhaps even an SMT in the future. If any of you are perhaps interested in hearing about, and hopefully helping contribute to this project, let me know in the comments below. I hope everyone here has enjoyed reading this, and that some new users out there learned a thing or two :)
Happy Hunting,
Cerulean