Dear Product Hunters, I want to warmly welcome you to the Steemit community. A new social media network that functions under the Blockchain. In this article I am going to explain to you why Steem is the future, and why you should join now before it gets more popular.

Lets start by saying that Steemit pays you to engage and be involved in the community. That means every upvote, comment and re-steem will become $$ in the future. People have come to earn <$1,000 in just a few hours!

What is Steemit?

Steemit is a relatively new company, founded in early 2016 by Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer, and it's powered by blockchain technology. It uses a new cryptocurrency to reward users who blog, comment, upvote etc. Unlike Facebook, and Instagram; if you are a blogger, Steem offers another stream of reveneue aside from content creation, influence marketing, and ads.

To purchase Steem tokens you can first buy Bitcoin or Ethereum on any major cryptotrader such Coinbase and Poloniex and then send it to your Steem account via Blocktrade for you to use and gain Steem power.

Key terms to know:

Steem power

influence tokens which give you more control over post payouts and allow you to earn on curation rewards.Part of your STEEM POWER is currently delegated to you. Delegation is donated for influence or to help new users perform actions on steemit. Your delegation amount can fluctuate. The more you have the more you can let people earn on their posts.

Reputation

- This is based on how many upvotes you obtained. They also take into account the reputation of your upvoters.

Curation rewards

According to the Steem algorithm, Authors are paid 97.5% of the share when people upvote between 1-15 minutes in. 15-30 minutes in, the reward is split 50-50 amongst supporters that voted in that time. After that, the author gets 100%.

Minnowers

Thats you and me :) at least in the beggining. Since we started recently, we start from the bottom of the pack. Our upvotes give only 2 cents. You can buy Steem and gain more influence.

Dolphins

users that are more settled and have more power in the community.

Whales

The early adopters and giants of the network. They have the most influence, some of their upvotes can reach $300!

Voting power

With many upvotes comes to some responsibilities, upvote content you find helpful because your upvote power can drain down.

Here are a few helpful articles and sources that helped me get started: https://steemit.com/steemit/@shenanigator/the-ultimate-guide-to-steemit-money

https://steemit.com/reputation/@lukestokes/reputation-advice-from-someone-in-the-top-0-38
https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/the-currency-of-steemit-isn-t-steem-power-steem-or-sbd
https://steemit.com/blogging/@lukestokes/last-week-i-made-usd1-500-worth-of-cryptocurrency-blogging-on-steemit-here-s-how

Here are a few accounts to follow: @jerrybanfield @trevonjb @lukestokes @benchi.

Please contact me if you need any help with your journey, remember its all about the community :)