Steemit Things I've Learned In My First 7 Days - #1
I'm going to write a series of things I've learned here... as I learn them. I will keep them short and to the point to not waste too much of anyone's time. They are obviously meant for the new people because frankly they (like me) probably jumped in and have to learn on the fly.
-If you have any questions about what I discuss, ask them in the comment section below
-If you like what I talked about and think your followers would like to learn from it, "RESTEEM" it.
(note: you don't get paid to resteem something, you just help to spread around a message that you like)
-If you have another topic you would like me to cover next, then also reply that request in the comment section
Here goes:
Upvoting And How To Follow Your Voting Power
The first thing I noticed was that my upvoting seemed to be useless after the first few upvotes. It seemed like I voted a lot and while the first few showed up as a penny ($0.01), almost all of them after that were never affecting the amounts.
I just kept upvoting and upvoting figuring it would fix itself as time went.
After awhile I learned that your voting is limited and controlled through something called "Voting Power" (see pic below). Essentially what that means is that you get your voting power reduced by about 1% for every vote you make (for now at least, as you are small). So if you upvoted 100 people in one day, you would be completely out of power and would have to wait to "recharge your power"
Recharging Your Power
Recharging your power is actually something rather simple, it just means: stopping voting while your "power meter" gains. It gains about 20% of its strength back automatically each day. (Note: that means it will take you 5 days of "not voting" to get back to where you started if you let it run completely down). Which of course I did, and I gotta tell you is hard to not upvote people on this site ;)
Finding Your Power Meter
You can find your "voting power meter" at the following site:
www.steemd.com/@(yourusername)
My example: www.steemd.com/@davemccoy
(of course you will want to look your own voting power so insert YOUR USERNAME after the @ sign)
This site can tell you many interesting things about your account, but for now I believe the most useful feature is to help you "regulate" your voting power.
This is just one tip of something I have learned in my first 7 days. I have many more things I've learned and if people seem to find it interesting, then I will continue to prepare more of these tips that I find. It is up to you in the community to let me know if it is useful.
I want to point out that I am by no means and expert and I am just offering my humble advice based on what I have learned. If any more experienced users have more to add, I welcome them to do so and help everyone out!
Thanks for reading and I hope I can help a few people along the way :)
Thanks for sharing @davemccoy I have been wondering why my votes were producing zero from 0.01. I will do as advised and recharge for now. I would like to upvote this because it made me understand but I don't have any power at the moment. I'll wait for your next helpful tips and will surely upvote there :)
haha on waiting for the upvote, I know exactly how you feel... Its like you feel cheap not upvoting, but on the other hand if you don't let it recharge, your power will always be low... Just resist the temptation, people that have been around for awhile will understand ;)
And thanks for explaining that it helped, it motivate me to do another point!
Have a nice day/evening @wanderlass and stay in touch!
Thanks @davemccoy :) will use my upbvote wisely and resist the temptation to upvote for now :)
:) ... One of the things I've been doing, is if I really like a new article then I resteem it instead of liking it. At least I help a little by getting the author a little more exposure!
I have resteemed this :) Most of my followers are newbies like me so this would be helpful for them too.
Awesome @wanderlass, that is perfect. I certainly appreciate that and it is a way to recharge your upvotes too! And thank you :)
I did that too! Then a kind person showed me the link like you have here. I love looking at that page and have learned a lot from it. My vote is still essentially worthless even at 100% and it was hard to wait 5 days for it to come back up. I really like to vote for people and the cool things i see here......I'm getting this awful feeling here of wanting to be a contribution to people and not having any power to do it. A couple of generous people voted me some big votes the first couple of days i was here thank god! Since then pretty much no one votes on anything i do - i get a couple of votes it's true. I get comments from people also that don't vote for my post. I find this strange and to be honest pretty rude. I made a promise to myself not to comment without voting the post up. I just think it would be crummy to tell someone i like their post but not enough to vote it up... This post is long and rambly and ranty and i hope you won't be too annoyed with me. The only way i can contribute to anyone would be to buy Steem and power up right? I vote as much as i can with trying to keep my vote over 80% and comment too...with a vote up ;)
Hey Ross, do not worry about annoying me because you certainly don't annoy me at all... In fact I'm very happy that you explained your frustrations so that I may be able to give you some advice to help you.
First, you are doing better than you thought. You haven't even been on the system for a whole month and you are up to a 39 Reputation. As that gets higher, people will respect you more.
The fact that you are frustrated with the amount you are receiving per post is partly a consequence of you not understanding how the system works. It is a system that is built (ingeniously I might add), to do different things for different types of people. It is something that happens in the real world, and while you might not understand it (yet) that doesn't mean it is not "good". In fact, I would say what they are doing is great and it is giving people all over the world a chance to truly change their lives.
Next, you haven't converted your SBD's into STEEM yet (which I will be discussing over the next week). Its complicated, if you want to be a longer term beneficiary of the system, you will want to convert your SBD's into STEEM, and then "power up" that STEEM into STEEM POWER. This will do 2 things, it will give you more power behind your votes but it will lock you into staying into the platform longer. In other words, STEEM POWER is just STEEM that must be sold over a longer period of time. But if you plan to stay with them for a long time, then you would want to do that and I can show you how if you ask.
Next, I know you said you like to upvote people even though you read my article and that certainly is your choice. But you are going to continue to get next to nothing by do so. You are actually not helping yourself or the author because the author wants to see you as big as possible too (that way your votes WILL MATTER). So I suggest you follow my advice and let your Voting Power recharge and get it into the 80 t0 95% range and carefully monitor it. (I refresh mine after every vote.
Now you may think that the failure to upvote is being rude, but it is indeed NOT RUDE. Writing a nice sincere comment explaining your thoughts about the author's work is far more valuable to the author than the faceless upvote that us newbies have. Anyone who has been on this site for very long, DOES understand that. THEY want you to "engage" them by viewing their work, commenting on your thoughts, and when you feel it is great, then you can also resteem it.
You're going to have to trust me on that, just try to give comments instead of upvote and you will see what I mean. If you were going to give 50 upvotes in a day, don't give ANY but instead write 50 nice comments telling the author what your thoughts were. Over time, it will do several things, but it is a skill that will help you to meet new people.
Next, while you have 67 followers, and that is good. Don't be shy in following other people. If you are in a post where you like what they are talking about, follow the other people in that post that are there admiring the same thing as you. You have at least one thing in common, and probably many more. So again don't be shy and follow many people that you think will be someone you would like. (note: if you don't like someone, you can always unfollow them easily).
That is enough advice for now to get you going, but you are viewing your process from the wrong perspective. You are actually doing well and if you listen to the things I told you and do them, then I am confident that you will find much more success.
ps... one last point, the beauty of steemit is the opposite of what you allege. You don't have to put any of your money into them to succeed. I have not put a penny into it and plan to earn my STEEM POWER the same way you are. It takes time to do it right, but that is why it will be successful... Good things aren't easy, they just have to be possible to be achieved.
Take care and let me know if you want to convert your SBDs into STEEM POWER and I will show you how.
Thanks. Just what we need. I'm a newbie too and it's great to see simple, piecemeal advice that even my tiny brain can understand.
Aww that is a nice compliment @looksfarwoman :) ... I'm glad you found it helpful and appreciate you complimenting me on my explanation! Stay in touch, I will do more of these soon!
Thank you for this!! I am very new to steemit also.. lots to learn but worth it I think! :))
You are welcome @teamtruth! I definitely think it is worth it. I enjoy interacting with people and there isn't enough hours in the day to satisfy my appetite to learn! :)
This was helpful, thank you!
You're welcome and I'm glad it was useful to you! Thanks for letting me know, it makes the effort to put it together worth it when people respond. Cheers @jentz44
Of course! Im still trying to figure out how it all works. Have an idea on some of it, but not enough yet. I love it when others post tips and tricks on how it works. We need more posts like this for newcomers. Keep it up!!
I'm in the same boat as you @jetz44, learning a little more every day :) And I agree we need more posts like this for newcomers, but I think they designed the system so that we (the newcomers) can learn it, teach it, and share it with others.
If it wasn't intentional, then at least they surely are getting that result (which is fine by me because I like to help people to get it) ;)
Thank you so much for sharing this information.
Today is my 4th day here. So was wondering about Voting Power.
Now I understand, Looking forward to learning and earning more with you
@robertmannino
thank you for letting me know it was useful to you @robertmannino. I look forward to also learning and earning with you too, so stay in touch! :)
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Once again, thank you @resteemable... You are there to help us new steemers out... I will have a topic including your valuable help in one of the future "things I've learned".
Note: If anyone is reading this message and don't know how to use @resteemable free service, I suggest you ask. It is a great tool to get you exposure and help you out in your "newbie" days.
Thank you @davemccoy for the explanation of voting power. As a newbie I am excited to learn more. I hope you continue this series of what you’ve learned.
Nice post
Thank you @aligaby89 :)
thanks very much im also new her .. its my first day 😊
You are very welcome @birla! And I also want to say "welcome" to you. Since it is your first day, I'm sure you have many questions and lots of things in your mind. But when you feel like you have questions, feel free to ask me (or for that matter just about anyone here on steemit)... People want to help you, so dive right in! And of course, always have fun :)
Thank you @davemccoy! Very informative and I hope to read more because Steemit is rather complex. Cheers!
lol, you are right about that @lesshorrible ... I try to think of it as steemit is filled with amazing amount puzzles to solve... Fortunately for me, I'm a problem-solver by nature (so I like it) :)
And glad you like it and encourage me to do more, I will do so. Thanks for the reply too