A newbies guide to steemit, written for newbies
Hello steemians! I am writing this blog post solely as a newbie to steemit that has learnt a few important things over the past day or so of my steemit life. I am indeed a baby of this site and completely new to cryptocurrencies, so I may get some things wrong, and if I do, be sure to correct me!
First things first, what is steemit
steemit is a social media website, similar to that of reddit with an added twist, you can earn money for posting good quality content. How you may ask? I really am in no position myself to say, however Christian Lains in this amazing starter to steemit is.
Here is the link:
In this video, Christian explains a few ideas and hopefully answers many questions for you guys.
A very basic outline for this is that there are three core aspects of steemit.
- Transparency,
- Decentralisation
- Reward system
This outlines that there are no owners and no controllers and therefore it is completely user based. steemit is transparent as all information available is posted publicly.
I must reiterate that all of the information presented here is knowledge that I have learnt from a variety of posts that have been read throughout the day, some thoughts from myself and ideas from the video above, and I will be linking these throughout. If I miss any, I apologise and please let me know so I can link you elsewhere too!
The first very important part of steemit, making sure your account is protected!
This link describes that as all the information is transparent, it is very important for you to have a complicated password in order to properly protect your account. The sign up process of steemit does set a minimum of 16 characters and does give you a random password generator. My advice would be to use it or you may lose it! (Your account that is)
Ok. Now you have your password sorted, it is time for your first post.
One of the most popular tags is 'introduceyourself' among others. This link shows a great insight into the most popular tags and therefore a few ideas as to the tags that you can place on your content. Please make sure to only use relevant tags for your content however! It can get annoying if you are looking for cats and suddenly find the page full of politics for example. This could get you downvoted!
One last thing about tags that I recently learnt today. The first tag that you place on your content decides which category your content is placed in and once you have posted this, you can't change it! (you can't delete content either as far as I know). This meant that today I posted my introduction post into the linguistics category. I am a linguistics student.
Anyway, posting an introduction is a great start to steemit as it allows you to learn a few of the basics as well as connecting you with the community, something that is very important as this is at it's core a social media website.
What's next?
Post content! If you are struggling to think of something to post about, that's fine (there are rewards for upvoting new and trending content that I will talk about in a second). I would suggest reading a few of the trending topics as well as some new ones and getting an idea of what exactly people are interested in and maybe you can add some suggestions of your own ideas and add content to expand on these areas!
I would also suggest that you avoid spamming mainstream posts as these tend to not be too recognised by the steem community. The first link I posted in which Christian Lains explains steemit has some great insight into this. Christian comments that very personal stories tend to do well. A post that touches peoples hearts helps them also touch the upvote button.
Downvoting is just as much a feature as upvoting on steemit, but downvoting at this moment in time gives you no monetary value unlike upvoting, commenting and posting your own content. People may downvote your content for a variety of reasons so be sure to keep your posts interesting!
When is the best time for me to upvote content?
I am glad you asked! I recently read this post which suggested to me that upvoting content that is brand new (between 15-30 minutes) and has 15 approximate upvotes as well as $4 in value (or up) should give you the greatest chance of creating some income. I would suggest going to the link to learn about this one as I don't really have much experience in the matter.
But, don't be afraid to upvote content that you like! steemit is all about encouraging great content, so don't let it slip through your fingers!
One last question, how on earth did you get these bold headings?
Another great question. steemit allows for content to be posted using markdown technology. I just learned about this today and I really like it, but of course there is an editor on the site too as this can be a little confusing sometimes! At least for my newbie self anyway!
Thanks for reading and I hope this helps some of the new steemians out there to create some amazing content!
Please let me know if I have anything wrong here and your thoughts.