Newbie Mistakes to Avoid

Well I joined Steemit a little over a month ago and boy has it been a learning experience!

Gee that hat is tasty I thought ... maybe not so much!

My first post, which I considered a well written analysis of an interesting and popular topic - the introduction of Ethereum ASICs - got absolutely no rewards.

But things have improved and I'm getting some small rewards now.

So I wanted to pass on a few tips for new Steemit users based on my mistakes and misunderstandings.

1. Understand that a Steem Dollar (SBD) is NOT worth a dollar, despite what the FAQ might indicate. For complex reasons, the SBD has been trading close to the price of STEEM itself for around 5 months.

2. As a consequence of this, DON'T USE the 100% the "Power Up 100%" reward option for posts. It is a bad option because the "Default 50%/50%" option awards SBDs as if they were really worth 1 dollar (but they are actually worth over $3). This means the Default option gets you more than double to overall rewards. More detail here, including in comments.

3. Understand that upvotes are only useful in rewarding posts up to 7 days old, when rewards are calculated and paid out.

4. Learn about the concept of Dust votes. Basically, unless your post or comment is showing at least $0.03 worth of upvotes by the end of the 7 days, you won't get any rewards because the system rounds votes worth less than $0.02 after deduction of curation rewards down to zero. More detail here. Thanks @thedarkhorse

5. What your wallet shows as Steam Power actually represents the number of Steem that your Vests would buy today, not the original value you purchased or earned it at. Basically when you PowerUp Steem to Steem Power you effectively invest in the Steem ecosystem, like buying a share. The price of a Vest in Steem is going up slowly so that it doubles at about 1.9% every year. See more detail here and updated here Thanks @preparedwombat

6. Finally, in order to succeed you need to not only write good content but get other users with a decent amount of Steem Power to be interested in and upvoting your posts.

I hope this helps newbies and others to understand how things work in the Steemit world better.