Repository
https://github.com/steemit/steem
Introduction
I joined Steemit in January 2018 and I kind didn't know what to expect. I knew it was a social media platform but I have been on several other before like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media for some time. So social media was not new to me.
I had heard of Steemit since mid-2017 but was feeling reluctant to join, the main talking point of people who encouraged you to join was that Hey you could earn from this social media platform. That in itself was a crazy idea because I had never earned from my social media activities. And I thought to myself it is worth a try, prior to this time I had funny experiences with schemes on making money online. It usually ended in one form of scam or the other so I didn't expect much so that my heart won't be broken at the end. I joined with little optimism but still hoping for the best at that point.
Registration
My initial thought was that the registration would be very smooth and take only a few minutes just as we have with conventional social media platforms. First of all, registration is like a queue, you register and wait for your account to get approved. You have to provide a unique and suitable username of your choice, an email address and a working phone number. You need a working phone number because a confirmation code would be sent to you to verify or authenticate your phone number. This is also done to avoid abuse from users.
First time I registered I didn't get my account approved because of my network service provider. Other people who also tried to use that particular network provider (MTN Nigeria) didn't have their accounts approved. I had to switch to Airtel Nigeria and my account was finally approved, I didn't feel too happy because the initial username I wanted did not materialize and I had to go for another.
There are currently other means of creating an account by third parties. One is by paying about 3 Steem for an express account. The price might have gone up due to the drop in the value of Steem in the last few months. Another is by delegating about 15 Steem Power from an account on Steemit, this is to enable the account to be able to carry out activities like posting and voting.
After my registration was approved, some amount of steem was delegated to my account to enable me to carry out basic activities on the steem Blockchain. After earning some steem and steem power on my own, the delegation was taken away but I didn't even notice it. As at then, I didn't understand how the platform worked.
Setting up my profile
From a newbie point of view, setting up an account on Steemit was not as easy as we know on conventional social media we are used to. They share some similarities like profile photo, cover photo, display name, location, about and website. Some of the information is optional on your profile.
One of the challenges for newcomers is uploading a profile picture and cover photo. Under the settings, you are to just put the image URL. You have to go to a third party website to upload your picture, then proceed to Steemit with the URL. It is kind of stressful and I had to search Google to know how to do it.
Gender is exempted from the options and I kinda find it sometimes awkward because most people try to maintain anonymity on the platform. They don't upload a personal profile photo and that means it is hard differentiating their gender. The only way to know most times is when you read their posts, at a point they would likely reveal their gender.
Generally, I like the simplicity of the profile display, it is easy to navigate and get whatever information you want.
Introductory Post
The person who introduced me to steemit told me to make an introductory post. I talked about myself, my family, my goal and aspiration in life among other things. If you read my introductory post you could get a brief summary of my life so far.
But my post didn't get the necessary attention because I used the wrong tags. I didn't know the first tag was the category the post will appear on. I used classroomchallenge instead of introduceyourself
I earned just $0.28 and 17 votes
Classroomchallenge was a contest organized around December 2017 for new comers on steemit, the idea was to have a group of persons come together and have a leader or teacher who introduced them to Steemit. The contest was worth about 200 Steem the equivalent of about $1000, that was big money as at December 2017 and January 2018. One of the conditions was that each new account had to have an introductory post. So when I made my introductory post, instead of using introduceyourself as the first tag, I used classroomchallenge and my post automatically appeared under the classroomchallenge category.
I tried to change it but it did not work so I had to leave it. Well, some members of my classroom couldn't complete some of the requirements and we ended up not winning the contest. But I was happy at least we tried.
Series Backlinks
This post is part of a series where I will be detailing my experiences on Steemit and how it has helped shaped my life for the better.