Someone on Facebook was asking me about getting started with STEEM, so I decided to just make a post on the how and why of profiting from STEEM.
I'm going to break it down first for content creators and then for investors.
Note that you are probably already signed up on Steemit as you read this, but I'm writing also for all the people just learning of the platform, so I start at the beginning.
Why for Content Creators
There are people completely supporting themselves writing on Steemit, creating videos on dtube, finding products on steemhunt, making music on dsound, etc. These are all STEEM dapps.
At the rate I'm going, in a year my complete living expenses may be covered by the article per day I write on Steemit, the Medium-like dapp for STEEM. Definitely in a few years they will be.
If you like creating content and would like to get paid for doing so, then this is the frontrunner in that space. As the frontrunner, it will be hard for the many up-and-coming competitors to catch up. Even if you are also going to do some other paid content platform, you should also be getting some foundation laid for yourself on at least one of the STEEM dapps.
How For Content Creators
If you intend to create content to "mine" for more coin that way, you should realize that while the platform starts everyone off with 15 free STEEM (in the form of Steem Power - SP), in order to really succeed on the platform by American standards, you really need to plan on having at least 100 STEEM/SP.
(SP is the form of STEEM that you can actually use on the platform to upvote content, yours and that of others. It isn't as liquid as STEEM, which slows the velocity of the coin, preserving value. It takes 13 weeks to convert SP back into STEEM so that it can be sold on exchanges.)
Since you need really 100 SP to make much of an impact on the platform, and since the starting 15 the platform gives you when you sign up is gradually withdrawn as you earn that first 15 SP with your content creation, you might as well just create an account immediately with something like http://anon.steem.network and just pay the account creation fee. All the fee does is get you a minimal SP allocation so you can start.
But then you'll still want to go to Binance and use a limit order to buy yourself some more STEEM. If you don't already buy crypto on an exchange like Binance, then once you sign up with anonsteem you can just go in your wallet to buy more STEEM through https://blocktrades.us
The reason you want to buy more STEEM and power it up is that the more SP you have, the more you can upvote people, giving them more of the daily rewards pool, and start building your audience more quickly. (You can also upvote some of your own content if you think it deserves rewards.)
The reality is, people may love your content, but what will really make them follow you daily and comment on your posts (plus give you upvotes) is that they see you upvote them at least .02 each time they comment. And that you also upvote their posts by at least .01.
With the meager 15 SP free accounts from Steemit.com provide, your 100% upvote right now wouldn't even be worth .01. As you can see with this handy upvote calculator, 100 SP at today's price of .90 will allow your 100% upvote to give someone .01. It would take about 300 SP to give .02. That's at today's incredibly depressed prices though. As the price of STEEM rises, so will the power of your upvote. My upvote was once worth almost a dollar, but now it is only about .45.
If you can invest a few hundred dollars in STEEM, that will greatly speed up your success on the platform.
(I made this in Canva the other day using an image provided by 
Why for Investors
If you don't want to create videos, photos, articles, etc. but do want to earn from crypto, this is still a great coin to invest in.
It has zero fee transactions and processes 10,000 transactions per second. Compare that to single digit transaction speeds for BTC and double digit for ETH. Much, much faster!
If you take a look at blocktivity.info you'll see that it has the 2nd highest activity of any blockchain. Just behind EOS and ahead of ETH. And it is one of the few blockchains out there that is actually in use already, with 60,000 active daily users. That number is growing at a rate of about 2,000 people per day and will accelerate now that the overall crypto markets seem to be rebounding.
At some point, many institutional investors are going to enter the crypto space, and they are going to be looking at details like the above in making their investment decisions. When that happens, STEEM is going to fare better than most altcoins.
So the future looks bright for this coin, merely in terms of the kind of price appreciation you can get with any coins.
But additionally with STEEM you can hold it in your wallet and let others use its earning power for a fee. You can get 10-30% annual returns just by loaning out the use of the Steem Power (SP) that content creators need to succeed on the platform.
That's 10-30% you get for loaning the SP, not the STEEM itself. At no point do you lose possession of your coins. Those remain in your wallet.
I don't know of any other coin that offers both strong price appreciation potential AND passive income, without your needing to set up a server and run a masternode.
How for Investors
I won't go into a lot of detail on this, as the sites you can use to do it speak for themselves.
Basically you want to buy some STEEM on Binance, then set up a Steemit account so that you have a wallet with a handle that's easy to use. Mine is 
If you go through the free way of getting an account at Steemit.com it may take a week or two to get your account. Since you're buying STEEM anyway, you might as well just use http://anon.steem.network to get your account immediately. (The free steem the other way gradually gets taken back anyway.)
Once you've got your STEEM in your wallet, you'll want to power it up so that you can loan out the SP to people. You don't loan the STEEM; you loan the Steem Power.
So click the arrow beside your holdings in your wallet and choose "power up" from the list.
Then you'll need to decide how you want to profit off STEEM lending.
Do you want to delegate to a bidbot, which allows content creators to buy upvotes on their posts, with most of what they pay going to you?
Do you want to delegate to individuals, who want to upvote more than they can afford to buy in STEEM right now?
If you choose the former, go to https://smartsteem.com/invest/voteselling and use the calculator there to see what you can earn, then follow the directions to sign up and start lending. Their return averages 15%.
If you choose the latter, (which you typically earn more for but is a little more effort) go to https://www.minnowbooster.net/market and accept one or several of the lease requests. Right now the % returns offered seem to be hovering in the 10-17% range, but a couple months ago when I did it they were more like 25-30%. People offer less when the price of STEEM is down, so as the overall crypto market comes back, the % you can earn this way will probably rise to old levels again.
That's it. A lot more simple than setting up a masternode, isn't it?
In Summary
There's lots of potential benefit from buying and using STEEM.
Learning to succeed on the platform as a content creator takes a lot more study and experimentation, but in my experience it is well worth it. I actually created a really inexpensive course teaching the "getting started" steps and I just came out of a meeting with the principal of a local high school where I'll be teaching Steemit blogging for crypto to the Native American students.
It's a new world to learn, but well worth it. Enjoy! And if you wind up signing up and/or buying some STEEM because of this article, please comment below to let me know!
Resteems always appreciated