Once you have been here more than about two weeks and have been doing your 3-4 posts daily to build your following, you will almost certainly run into this error when posting:
“bandwidth limit exceeded. Please wait to transact or power up STEEM."
This quickly becomes frustrating. I know the first time I saw it, I nearly panicked and started looking for clues – any clue as to what I’d done wrong!
I’m going to introduce you to another website which will help you understand what is going on.
In the url for your blog, replace the word “steemit” with “steemd” and hit “enter.”
On this page, the main feature is a running dialog of what you have been doing on Steemit.
At the top left corner (I’m using a computer, I don’t know what it looks like on a smartphone) is a box with some information. Here is mine today :
This box is really, really important for understanding what is going on with your account!
When you started your Steemit account, your “voting weight” had the benefit of some “delegated steem power” - I am guessing it was probably around 30 to begin with, but mine was down to 27 SP before I knew about this. This “voting weight” is far more than just saying how many pennies you give at a time when you vote… it tells the system how much priority you get for bandwidth!
Now, Steemit will keep you from going under 15 SP, but at that level, you have very low priority which means that if there’s too much going on in other parts of the world, you have no chance of posting anything! Some mornings, I had to wait 6 hours to be able to post! In my evenings, it was just fine, but not in my morning. (Some will tell you that time - i.e. waiting - is everything on this, I argue that the time is the most important part there until you are able to fix your situation.)
The way to solve this is to “power up” using the earnings you’ve started to receive from your posts (or investing real money.) At first, it will be only pennies at a time, but then, someone with good voting power will upvote you and suddenly, you have your first post that’s worth over $1! That was a landmark for me! And the first time you hit over 1 SBD is the time to start powering up. (Sure, you can do it before then, but I didn’t feel it worth my time unless I could do a whole dollar.)
I will take you step by step on how to power up.
First, you need to look at your wallet tab on Steemit.
Next to your Steem dollars amount (third line down on your blog’s Wallet tab) is a down arrow. Click/tap on that and go down to “Market.”
Now you can see what's going on with the almighty SBD and Steem if you look at the graph at the top.
Lots of green activity is good. Lots of red activity is what caused a lot of panic around here recently.
However, unless you're putting real cash into it, at the beginning, you don't really care too much - you're building Steem and a following so that your blog can be profitable a few months down the road! So, we disregard the pretty colors and look at the Buy Steem section.
As you can see, I don't have very much that I can invest right now, and my OCD tells me to invest in whole dollar amounts, just because I'm like that - and like round numbers to make it easier to keep track of how much I've vested of my earnings.
Anyway, on this form, I put the number of SBD I want to invest on the bottom line (currently active in my screenshot.)
Then, I click on "BUY STEEM". It prompts me for my Steemit password. When that's entered, you have now put in a bid for STEEM. It will also tell you the minimum amount of Steem to expect for your investment.
Now, you will have to wait a bit for someone to pay you Steem for your SBD. Sometimes, it will take seconds, other times, it can take hours. It is easiest to watch for your order on your Steemd account.
Once your purchased STEEM hits your account, you can “power up.” (Although you generally need to have some bandwidth in order to achieve this, so make it a top priority once you have some again.)
Back to your Wallet you go. Find the down arrow next to your amount of STEEM - as you can see here.
Choose “Power Up” - tell it the amount to power up and hit enter. (Again, my OCD dictates that I do whole numbers - it also makes it easier to keep track of.) After you enter your password to confirm, your Steem is now transferred to Steem Power (SP.)
Realize, however, that to begin with, this doesn’t 100% fix your bandwidth problem because Steemit will reduce your subsidy by the amount you invested! Doesn’t seem quite fair for a newbie, I guess, but they will keep you at 15 SP until you “vest” more than 15 SP yourself.
Others have advised me to invest everything back into Steemit for the first 4-6 months to get a good base of bandwidth, voting power and followers.
The day my account hit 31 days, I was able to get above the 15 SP voting weight.
At that point, I was still fighting for my share of bandwidth, but it seemed to recover more quickly and I no longer had any "delegated" SP from Steemit investors.
Since rising above the original 30 SP level, I have had no problems with bandwidth. (I have, however, heard from someone who is a way above me, that he still runs into it from time to time, so you're not completely out of the woods for quite some time, but 30 seems to be where things start getting good again.
I hope this helps you understand a little more about this whole “bandwidth” thing. I know it confused the heck out of me until I started understanding a bit more of what was going on. It at least reduces frustration and confusion quite a bit while you patiently wait for your account to become stronger.
I will talk a little about voting power next time...
(Logo found on Wikipedia Commons with Reuse licence - ownership remains with Steemit.com)
Lori Aberle Hopkins – photographer at Viking Visual, author, student-of-the-world.
Follow, upvote and resteem me here and on Facebook
Check out my work at: RedBubble, ImageKind, and CafePress.
Camera has changed from time to time, the photographer has not. :-)
Unless otherwise stated, all photos are original to me and © 2008-2018.
