A year ago, after spending just a month on Steemit and having earned quite a lot of money for myself, I came up with 9 things Steemians could do with their hard earned Steem income. It became a popular post and received thousands of views (post views have now been discontinued). That list was a result of just one month experience. Now, after having spent one year and one month on top of it, there is a lot more to share from my personal experience and knowledge of the Steemit economy and reward system.
37 Things You Can Do With Steem Earnings!
In this post, you are going to get 37 ways in which you can treat your well deserved Steemit earnings. These ways range from acts of generosity to profitable investments. When you go through the whole list, you will realize that most of the ideas may help you earn more money.
Let's begin!
1. Keep Accumulating
This is the simplest treatment you can extend to your rewards. Steemit used to have the option to select payment methods but now when your posts pay out, you get SBD, SP and Steem.
By accumulating, you let everything that comes to your Steem wallet stay as it is. The more you get rewards, the more your SP, Steem and SBD balance becomes.
2. Convert SBD to STEEM
STEEM is the default currency of Steem blockchain whereas SBDs were designed to be stability tokens. SBDs serve as liquid tokens too because they are instantly transferable. However, the real token of value in the Steem ecosystem is STEEM. From having a stake in the platform's governance system to distributing rewards to Steemians, STEEM is the most important token.
Therefore, converting SBD to STEEM has many incentives; the primary one being the owner of a more valuable token. More uses are mentioned as you read on. To convert SBD to STEEM, go to your wallet and select Market from the drop down menu.
In the market, go to BUY STEEM area and fill the information. You can buy STEEM using your SBD immediatly by choosing the lowest ask price or insert your custom price and wait for your order to be processed. I could have set price of 1 SBD = 1 STEEM and I would get 65.327 STEEM for as many SBDs.
After having bought STEEM with the help of SBD (that's what I call coverting SBD to Steem), you can keep STEEM or you can choose many of the options given in this post.
3. Power Up STEEM
The STEEM you get from the above two methods (post rewards or SBD to STEEM conversion) can be used to Power Up. Power Up simply means increasing your power (influence) in the platform. Powering up increases your STEEM POWER (by converting STEEM to SP in 1:1 ratio). More SP has two major advantages:-
- Your stake in the platform's governance increases. It means that you have a more influential vote for choosing witnesses (block producers) of the blockchain.
- Your ability to distribute rewards from the reward pool increases (i.e. you have a bigger vote value).
To power up, go to your wallet balances and select Power Up from the drop down menu.
Then, choose the amount of STEEM that you wish to power up.
Powering up can open many opportunities for you. This post covers them all.
4. Power Down SP
Having read about benefits of powering up, you may be wondering why powering down would be a good idea. Often, powering down is not a great idea. But there may be situations where you need money and STEEM's price is lucrative. Since a significant portion of your Steemit rewards are distributed as SP, you will have to power down to STEEM to avail any economic opportunity presented by STEEM's market price.
To power down, go to your wallet and select power down from the drop down menu.
Then, select the amount of SP that you wish to power down. The chosen amount will be divided in 13 equal installments and paid to you as STEEM every week.
Power down only when you are in need of money and STEEM is trading at good price. Otherwise, your SP can earn you passive income even if you are not active.
5. Transfer to Savings
Savings is a very secure option to have your liquid funds safe from theft or hack. As recently seen, many accounts were hacked through phishing links and their funds were stolen. If liquid (instantly transferable) funds are kept in savings, it takes 3 days to get them out of savings. In case of a mishap like phishing attack or account stealth, you can recover your account within a day and have all your funds 100 % safe from being stolen. More on security can be read here.
You can use Transfer to Savings option for both STEEM and SBD.
6. Sell at Exchanges to Get Bitcoin
If for any reason you need Bitcoin, you can get it by selling your liquid assets on any exchange where STEEM and SBD are listed. Reasons for getting Bitcoin can be many. While more follow, the one reason can be to hold Bitcoin because of its speculative value. Having seen the rough rides of the crypto markets, you know that there is volatility and there is money to be made if things are timed well. This will require two steps.
Step # 1 : Transfer to Exchange
To transfer STEEM/SBD to an exchange, you need to have an account on the exchange first. If you have an account, you will need two things:-
- The Steem account of the exchange to which you are to transfer.
- The memo given by exchange to deposit STEEM and SBD.
I have accounts on Binance and Bittrex. I will be using STEEM as the currency to transfer and Binance as exchange. You can choose from the top exchanges below.
Steem Markets
SBD Markets
To transfer STEEM (or SBD) to an exchnage, login to your account at that exchange and get deposit details (account and memo).
Then simply go to your wallet and transfer STEEM (or SBD) using those details.
Wait for network confirmation and your STEEM will reach your exchange balance.
Step # 2 : Sell for Bitcoin
After you have your STEEM (or SBD) on the exchange, you can sell it to get Bitcoin. Just go to STEEM/BTC market and sell STEEM. You can sell at current price of place a limit order at a higher price.
There is much that you can do with Bitcoin other than just holding. If you wish to hold, transfer BTC from exchange to a wallet like Coinbase, Blockchain etc.
7. Trade for Other Coins at Exchange
One reason for converting STEEM to Bitcoin can be to buy other coins with good potential. You may be interested in some projects like Cardano, Substratum, NEO etc. and may want to buy some coins for yourself. If you have enough Steem balances to spend, you can sell them for Bitcoin and buy pretty much anything from the BTC markets on the exchange.
8. Sell at Exchanges to Cash Out
Another great reason for converting STEEM to Bitcoin is to sell Bitcoin (because BTC/Fiat pairs are quite common). You have already seen how to get Bitcoin. After getting Bitcoin, you can sell it on Coinbase, LocalBitcoins or any other exchange available to you. You can also sell to your trustworthy offline exchnager if available. More details here.
9. Giveaway to The Community
One of my favorite ways to spend Steemit earnings has been the giveaway. When I won 75 STEEM in a contest, I gave away 15 STEEM and 10 SBD to the community. A Steemian lost 7.5 SBD in a phishing attack so I, with the help of community, transferred 7.5 SBD to recover the loss. You can conduct giveaways too.
10. Organize Contests and Pay as Prize Money
I have won a few contests on Steemit (I was first prize winner in this 
The first competition that I won on Steemit was by 
11. Gift to a Friend
Your friend may be a new Steemian requiring some support. You can extend that support by giving some STEEM or SBD as gift. I have done this a lot during my stay here. I taught a close friend of mine how to get delegated SP and then sell vote. He needed STEEM to pay for the delegation. I gifted some amount of STEEM to him and he got the delegation and started earning a few SBDs per week.
You simply need to transfer STEEM or SBD to account of your friend by going to your wallet, as shown above.
12. Support a Charitable Cause
From supporting education in Bangladesh to feeding poor people in Venezuela, there is a lot of charitable work that goes on based on the Steem blockchain. I have participated in quite a few. For example, @SirCork runs @YouAreHOPE which helps poor people across the globe. Inspired by the generous nature of the community here, I brought my 
13. Delegate SP to Charitable Causes
Another way to support charitable causes is to delegate to charitable causes. It is necessary that these charities are actively posting and using your delegation to self vote so that your delegation does not end up being underutilized.
14. Delegate to Newbie Friends
Another way of helping your newbie friends is to give them some SP so that they can have some vote value and can distribute rewards.
15. Sell Your Vote to Earn Profits
One of the opportunities that powering up opens is vote selling. You may have different views about selling votes but it comes in handy when you are not active. I have set up vote selling with SmartSteem and MinnowBooster (the two vote selling markets) and have been earning passive coins ever since.
Simply visit my guide on how to sell your vote.
16. Delegate to Bots to Earn Profits
Another way of making money from the voting market is to delegate to bid bots and earn relative share of profit. You can delegate you Steem Power to any of the promotional bots like @postpromoter, @buildawhale, @smartsteem, @promobot, and many more and earn a share of their profit (they normally share 95 % of all Steem earned with their investors) as per your percentage share of all investment.
17. Autovote Authors
Even when you are offline, you can use your SP to vote for your favorite authors. Simply use an autovote service to set up your autovotes. I recommend SteemAuto and here's how to use it.
18. Upvote Manually
The basic way to use your SP is to vote people manually. It is now called human curation and 
19. Join Curation Trails to Earn Curation Rewards
Curation trails were created to reward genuinely good content. Participating in a curation trail is a good way to participate in rewarding deserving authors. SteemAuto has curation trails too that you can check.
20. Pay for Steem Gigs
Steem Gigs is the freelance market on the Steem blockchain which accepts Steem currency as payment method. You can hire services or even provide services and pay in Steem or SBD.
21. Pay to Buy Merchandise
With the evolution of development on top of Steem blockchain, economic activity has increased significantly. People have set up Steem based merchandise shops and accept Steem and SBD as payment.
22. Invest in Steem Based ICOs
Since the announcement of SMTs, Steem blockchain has started seeing ICOs which accept STEEM as payment. There will be more ICOs based on Steem in future. You can very well contribute your hard earned rewards to get some new coins.
23. Hold to Receive SMTs Airdrops
Even if you keep holding your Steemit earnings in the wallet, some of the new tokens created via SMT protocol will be airdropped to you. These new tokens will be tradeable in the internal currency markets, so you can make a profit from these airdrops.
24. Buy Votes
You can always use your liquid balance to buy votes from bid bots or promotional tools. I don't think anyone needs further explanation due to this being common knowledge now.
25. Earn Interest on SP
If you power up your earnings, you can increase the interest that is paid to SP holders. Having SP opens many doors of profit as already mentioned.
26. Buy Resteems
Resteem services promote themselves vigorously and claim to be very popular. You can test them to find out that it is a waste of money.
27. Build a Crypto Portfolio
Like many Steemians, including myself, you can use your liquid rewards to buy other cryptos on external exchanges and build a steady portfolio. Despite having invested my own money, most of my crypto coins came from sale of SBDs or STEEM.
28. Arbitrage on Different Exchanges
Arbitrage opportunities are rare but they do exist. I have done little bit of arbitrage on Bittrex and Poloniex using the price difference on both the exchanges. Koreans have a huge opportunity of buying from Bittrex or Binance etc and sell on Korean exchanges (due to premium prices there).
29. Trade SBD/STEEM on Internal Currency Exchange
Without going through the hassle of transfering your Steem coins to external exchanges, you can trade them on the internal currency market and make profit. For example, it costs 1.17 SBD to buy one Steem right now. The value is always changing so you can always sell Steem at a higher price to make a profit. I made a trade and eventually earned the profit.
30. Pay for Joining Communities
Some Steem communities are amazing but they are not free to join. For example, 
31. Invest in ICOs
Most ICOs take Ethereum as investment. You can easily sell your Steem currencies on an exchange and get Ethereum. Then you must transfer that Eth to your Ether wallet (MyEtherWallet for example) before sending to the smart contract address of the ICO. It's a long procedure but it is a gateway into ICOs if you are interedted.
32. Lose Your Rewards by Investing in Scam ICOs
Obviously not recommended at all. But I have lost Steemit earnings worth more than $1000 by investing in a famous John McAfee scam called Finacoin. Do not invest in scam ICOs. If money is not dear to you and you wish to lose it, this is an option.
33. Flag Rubbish Content
Content quality is a subjective matter. I shared my thoughts on quality content here. But if you find some content that does not deserve to be seen by other people or does not deserve rewards that it got, you can use your SP to flag it. Guys at 
34. Vote for Your Favourite Witnesses
Your SP gives you many powers. One of them is choosing your witnesses. You can vote for your favorite witnesses here. You can delegate your power to choose witnesses through a proxy as well. I chose 
35. Pay for Inbuilt Steemit Promotion
If you have money to waste, pay it for promotion through Promoted tab on the Steemit website. It used to be prime promotional tool before bots came. But it is ineffective. But people still use it. See here.
36. Support Development Projects
Developers are genius people but they do not always have enough money to carry out extensive development. You can support their dev efforts by donating some money to them. 
37. Use Transfer Memo as Chat
Steem transfers come with option of writing a memo with them. The feature is necessary in external transfers where memos act as address specifiers. However, the feature can be, and has been, used for chat purposes. You can send messages to anyone using transfer memo. Make sure you do not offend others with it.
Conclusion
I have been working on this post for a while now. I had the idea in mind for months now but I have been missing from Steemit lately. It's great to have completed the list of 37 things you can do with your Steemit earnings. I have tried to cover everything briefly after making the first dozen or so items detailed. If you need further guidance about any of the parts, you can ask in the comments below. If you have an idea of more things that can be done, mention it below as well.
I hope Steemians find this post useful. Please resteem it to help it reach more people.