How Can a New Minnow with No Money Get Started on Steemit?

What works to get started working online and reach the next level, especially on Steemit?

This is part 2 of the interview with @followbtcnews where I answer questions about Steemit. If you would like to read part 1 of the interview on Steemit go to part 1 of the interview!

How can a new minnow with no money get started on Steemit?

Jeff:

Let me ask you this. If you're a new minnow on Steemit, let's say I go tell my buddy today, "Look, there's this blogging platform called Steemit.com where they pay you to write content." He doesn't have any money.

Honestly, when I started, I went to Bittrex and I bought some Steem to give me a little push start. I'm not a whale by no means. I have a small amount of SP. I still bought a little bit just to give me that little push start.

When somebody doesn't have any money, but they know how to write. They're just starting out on Steemit, so they start off and I think they get 26 SP just starting out. What kind of advice could you give that might help that new minnow become successful on Steemit?

Jerry:

Jeff, that's an outstanding question. First, we don't think we have any money, but if you look at all the money we spend, a lot of us have enough money for other things.

I am a recovering alcoholic and no matter how broke I was, I could get a handle of vodka. I could get something to mix it with. I could get a large pizza to go with it. I could get some video games to play while I did all that. A lot of us have areas where our money is short circuited.

We kind of waste money in a certain area. Then, we don't have money for anything else. Lots of us, we do have money if we can become consciously aware of where we're wasting it. Some of us, yes, if you're 13 years old and your parents control all your money, you may absolutely not even have a dollar in lunch money to put on Steem Power.

In that case, we'll go through that scenario where there is not even anything at all, it is possible. I'll show the example here. I've just resteemed for the first time a post there.

To summarize all of this, the best strategy is to think about what would I write that would be extremely helpful for someone else? Specifically, it's nice on Steem, you can intentionally aim at particular people.

Let's have a look at this new account named @amazingstats which is run by Larry. Larry set out to make a post that would be extremely helpful for me. He wrote a post called "Discover the Secrets Jerry Banfield Used To Make $32,616.66 On Steemit In 78 Days." He writes this entire post about my time on Steem, which here is the key thing.

He helped me fantastically in the post. He showed me something I didn't even know. A lot of us think we know a lot about ourselves, right? He made this incredible infographic, an incredible leap of faith. He got nothing. He had no guarantee I'd even see this post. He took a giant leap of faith.

Then, he showed me in this one data point here, he helped me see that I had a post that had reached over 20,000 people. I could see exactly what it was. I did not know that.

I resteemed his post out to all my followers. He's got hundreds of upvotes and he made some extra money on it. Now, he's got more followers off of it. He got lots of comments on it. He's got a very strong start on Steemit. You might look at it and say, "Okay, so he made $15 off of it."

The next day, I used the information he gave me to make a post called "23,349 Views from Google on 1 Steem Post?"

Now, that post made me $258. When you look at it, he made $15 helping me make $258. He helped me to do something and he helped me several more times, so guess what? His earnings are not finished with the $15 he got on this post. I now am following him and I'm interested in what he's doing. He's provided a huge influence to me. I've given him a shout out in several places.

I also gave him another upvote on this comment, which gave him another six dollars.

He's made about $20 on this, but in addition to that, I maybe gave him something even more helpful. I gave him some laser focused tips right here.

He said he was going to do certain authors next, but I gather he probably doesn't know the best ways to contact them exactly, who to do in what order, so I gave him an exact list. I said, "Do this author next, here's how you contact her or do this author next because you're likely to earn the most and get the biggest response by doing her."

I told him, “Contact her before you do the post, so she's ready to do it, so she resteems it to all her followers and you've got a good chance at earning hundreds of dollars. After you make one of her, do Craig Grant, do him next, and then do Papa Pepper after that. Then do these next five authors after that.”

He made another comment here, so I'll upvote him. Now, he's got another five dollars. He's up to about $25 earned.

The bottom line out of this is, he made a post that helped me fantastically and he now got help back from me. He got my attention. He got help back from me. He now is in a very good position to essentially optimize this technique and repeat this again and again. He started out, he did something really helpful for me. Now, I just want to give and give back to him.

Jeff:

That makes perfect sense. I see the exact post you’re talking about, by @amazingstats, and I see the infographic that he put up here, and the comments you talk about below. That's pretty amazing.

Basically, what he's done is he's provided something valuable to help you. By doing that, he's communicated with you. You’re communicating with him, so his information has helped you and you’re helping him because it's a two-way street there.

Communicating with other users on Steemit and build a camaraderie with them, building a relationship with them on Steemit, by either doing posts or comments.

Does that sound about right?

Jerry:

Yes.

Jeff:

That is something else right there. I see this exact post and boy, that's a heck of an infographic too. My goodness, I have not seen this post yet. I might have to go read it. I can't read it right now, it looks like it will take me about 20 minutes.

I’m going to definitely advice the listeners to go take a look at this. It's a pretty cool infographic and I will paste the link in Discord so everybody can see it. I can appreciate that for sure. I have a habit of telling, and I actually learned this from @aggroed, the person that started the Minnow Support Project.

He has a saying pretty much for new minnow starting out: Spend time reading other people's post, upvoting and commenting, but meaningful comments.

Don't just go in there and just say, “Hi. Great post,” and leave. Actually, read the post and make a comment that has something to do with the post. That way, you're building a relationship with the other users, and a lot of times they will follow you. Now, don't post none of the follow for follow, like I said, make a meaningful comment, that’s for minnows.

Dolphins, make a post and those followers you got from being a minnow, those are now going to come and upvote your post when you're a dolphin. Then whales, obviously make posts and curate. When I say curate, I mean, like you know as well as I do, going around and upvoting valuable and unique content from users that are actually providing good stuff to the platform.

That seems to work out well for a lot of people and that pretty much goes with what you're talking about, as far as what AmazingStats did. He provided something that was very helpful to you. You all started a conversation. He was rewarded for that and you were rewarded from that because you've got some great information from him and you resteemed his post.

He's going to gain followers from that. In the long term, that's going to really help him, because the more followers you have that are actually interested in what you're talking about, is definitely helpful on the platform.

I think that's definitely a good, great tip, Jerry, for helping these guys to get started, just interacting with other users, other Steemians on the platform.

Jerry:

Thank you, Jeff.

What is a minnow, dolphin or whale on Steemit?

Jerry:

For the viewers on my Facebook and YouTube that are watching this, would you help with some of the Steem basics if they don't understand what a minnow or dolphin or whale is? Would you explain a couple of those things if the viewer is new?

Jeff:

Absolutely.

On Steemit, you have terms that were just made up by the users on Steemit. Obviously, a minnow is real small. A dolphin is a little bit bigger, and a whale, if you don't know the size of a whale, then I don't know. The minnows obviously are the new guys, that don't have a lot of what we call Steem Power, which means the power of your vote, the power of your account.

The more money your account is worth, the more Steem Power you have. If you have 5,000 Steem in your account, and 5,000 and under is usually considered a minnow. When you get up over, I don't know the exact stats for the different things, but let's just say 5,000 under you are going to be a small minnow.

Once you get up over that in between, if I'm not mistaken, I want to say in between 5,000 and 40,000, or 6,000 and 49,000, or 5,000 and 49,000, you would be considered a dolphin.

If I'm not mistaken, anything over 50,000, you're going to be considered a whale. Again, it's just a matter of how much your account is worth, because your account worth is how it helps you establish how much your upvote is worth to somebody.

For example, my Steem Power right now is close to 4,000, so I'm technically considered a minnow. When I go and upvote somebody else's post at 100% Steem Power, my upvote to them is worth about 58 cents.

What is a 100% upvote from Hive account@jerrybanfield worth?

Jeff:

Now, Jerry, I know you are over 50,000, but could you give us an example of what a 100% upvote from your account might be worth to somebody at this point in time?

Jerry:

I've just crossed 50,000 Steem Power a little while ago. I am really relieved to hear I'm a whale. It's exciting.

Jeff:

Absolutely. That is great.

Jerry:

I think I just upvoted that comment Larry made on AmazingStats 100%. My voting power is close to 70 of those. So I think my full power upvote is like seven or eight dollars today. I can make about 10 of those a day.

I can give out about 70 dollars every single day on Steem. Now, I could just give it to myself if I wanted to, but it's like sex, it's better with someone else. 😂

Jeff:

Yes, I got to say, there's a lot of opinions on Steemit about people upvoting themselves and upvoting other people. Personally, I think an investor should be okay with upvoting themselves a certain percentage. If I have ten 100% upvotes a day, I see absolutely nothing wrong with me upvoting one or two. If I'm only making one post a day, then I feel like I have every right to upvote my one post that I make each day.

But spend the rest and I think it's a good idea to upvote other people's post that deserve it, somebody with good content, because it's going to do two things, in my opinion. It's going to encourage them to post more, then they're going to talk good about Steemit to their friends, to their families, it's going to bring more users.

More users on Steemit means more buy pressure on the actual coin itself, which raises the value of Steem and it makes us all more money.

Does upvoting on Steemit take money from your account?

Jeff:

Jerry, one more question I'd like to ask you. I already know the answer, but I want everybody else to know. When you upvote somebody, like we were talking about a minute ago, you can probably give out about 70-80 dollars a day. When you're giving out this 70-80 dollars to other users, this doesn't take any money out of your account, right?

Jerry:

That's right. That’s the amazing part, is when I just did that upvote on Larry on AmazingStats, that didn't cost me anything except voting power and I get 20% of my voting power every day.

Now, that's cool at a $1 or a $1.50 Steem price, but I think this is going to go up 10 times. Imagine then $500 to $1,000 a day, I can give out with my upvotes. That's when this thing is just going to snowball in ridiculous levels.

Jeff:

It doesn't cost you a penny when you upvote somebody. Like you said, if it raises 10 times, you're going to be giving out $500 to a $1,000 a day, but it's not going to cost you a dime.

Jerry:

Yes, it won't cost me anything.

It's like having the money and a certificate of deposit, that I can basically withdraw 7% off every week. Meaning in about three months, I can pull it all out.

Jeff:

That’s pretty awesome. I don't know of many places you can just go give somebody money and it doesn't cost you anything.

For new people listening, this gets technical. We won't go into the whole thing, but the reason it doesn't cost me or Jerry or any other user money to upvote is because there's something called a rewards pool that is funded by something else that Jerry and myself both run, which is called a Witness, which is the backbone of the platform. It runs what's called a blockchain.

Jerry runs what's called a Witness that signs blocks on this blockchain. By doing that, it also puts money into a reward pool and it puts a small amount of money into the actual witness owner themselves, not a lot. Some of us are lucky to get enough money from our Witness to pay for the server. I'm sure you could agree with that. That is what is supplied, the rewards pool that gives you the option of upvoting other people and it's not costing you any money.

If you don't mind, I’m going to ask anybody who's listening to this show, make sure you go look at Jerry's profile and vote on his Witness because he's providing a valuable service for this blockchain. Without the witnesses, Steem wouldn't be here, because the blockchain couldn't run and what Steemit blogging runs on is this blockchain.

Just take a look at that. I have to agree, right now as we're talking, if I'm not mistaken Jerry, Steem is somewhere around above $1.50 or so, I think. I don't have Bittrex open right now.

Right now, like you were saying a minute ago, when you upvote at 100%, that puts somebody's post at about seven or eight dollars per one upvote. Now, I can remember just a few months back, Steemit went up, I want to say $2.25 or $2.30, somewhere in that area. I remember the higher the price of Steem, the more valuable somebody's upvote is. I have to agree with you on, as far as I see Steem going up in price, so all our money in our account is going to keep raising.

The value of our money in our Steem in our account is just going to get higher and higher, and it's going to raise our voting power. That's a great thing.

So these people, followers, Jerry, that you're helping and you're resteeming their post, you're upvoting them, as the price of Steem raises, your upvote is just more and more valuable to them, and that's a good thing. That’s something that I think a lot of new people that are considering joining the platform, and people that are already on the platform, can look forward to.

I've noticed that the sign-up rate for Steemit has grown quite a bit over the past few weeks from some of the stats that people submit.

Final words

Thank you very much for reading this post, which was originally filmed as the video below!

This is the second part of the interview with @followbtcnews and I invite you to look for part 3 that will be in a future post.

Would you join me today, by leaving a like on this video or upvote this post on Steemit?

The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.

If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?

Love,

Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcription by GoTranscript.

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PS: Witness votes are the most powerful votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together?

Or