For new people signing up, please don't repeat my mistakes.
While its nice to finally have made it to the steemit platform, the signing up process could have gone a little bit smoother..
I made a few mistakes that cost me both time and money. In the end it was a little frustrating too because they could have all been avoided easily.
So what exactly happened?
The first step in signing up with steemit is coming up up with a username that you would like to use and be known by.
Once the service has checked your username is available and not in use, you need to give steemit your email-adress and then your phone number.
After giving your phone number you receive your Steem confirmation code.
This is the point where I got lost. Once I had used the confirmation code, I was expecting to receive a confirmation email within a few minutes. This did not happen so I thought something must of gone wrong, so I retried, but the system was now saying that the phone number has already been used.
The system could have made it more clear by continuing that message with a reminder that the registration process can take a few days, in some cases weeks to get completed. To not try to re-register.
I thought something had gone wrong so I tried to register again, now using a second phone number.
Still nothing arrived in the mail, but my available phone numbers were used already so there was not much to do, other than wait.
And wait I had, It took around 2 weeks to get that account verified. I know the team is working on this, and it might have been bad luck, it has to be created on the blockchain and paid for the platform etc. Thats not the best user experience for a new user, but I understand this is still in beta so what the heck.
Lesson 1: Dont spend your own, your friend and your moms number on signing up. Be patient, it can take some time. You can only use your phone number on one registration-attempt.
The other hard learned lesson was with the second step of the registration.
After a long wait I had finally received the confirmation mail in my mailbox. It contained a link that I had to click to activate my account. This is the point where Murphys Law reappeard. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".
I had to attend some other bussiness as I saw the mail about the registration process, so I left it open and had to return to it at a later time.
To my surprise, when I clicked the link in my mail, it now said : Oops. Invalid token.
After googling around I found out that the registration link was only valid for 7 days :( . Again, would have been nice to be warned about this in the email I got. After signing up to steemit-chat I noticed I was not the only one making this misstake and that the team are working on this issue.
Lesson2: Check your mail at least once a day and register quickly once you get the activation link. Otherwise your phone number and email are spent once again. Time to find new number and mail, and wait for some time again to get things going. Totally not userfriendly once again.
Once this happened I had already used all the numbers at my disposal and did not want to redo everything again, new phone number, mail etc so I looked for options.
Finally I signed up with blocktrades.us using their paid "create a steem account" service. After spending roughly 0,02 ETH (12$ at the time) I got my account, got to keep my username and everything worked out quite ok.
The thing that did not work out so well was that the account I got setup only had 3 steem power in it. It seems like you get around 15 steem power (although delegated) when you sign up using steemit.com:s own signup form for free.
Lesson 3: Paid signup-services work, but you might pay more for less steem power. Also remember to change your password after signing in, the service you used to sign with steemit has/had your password and few things are 100% unhackable.
Lastly I want to say that you need to have some steem power to have your voice and actions count for the things you do on the steemit platform. Good content and activity on the platform should help you on the way. Since I had less than the minimum amount you start with, I decided to try and transfer some steem from a cryptocurrency exchange to my account and convert them to steem power. And it worked.
Maybe I will post a video and/or explain how it is done, if anyone is interested.
Let me know and I will show you how.
I hope that this post will result in at least one person less making the same mistakes I made while signing up,
Peace and good luck!