I spend a lot of time answering newbie questions in https://steemit.chat/channel/deutsch ... With the flood of new users I had to answer a lot of questions more than once. To make things easier and for future reference, I asked @followyourjoy to compile all her questions into a list, so that I can make it into a post.

I didn't expect that many questions ...

I might get some answers wrong, but I will try my best to answer correctly.

If you find any mistakes, please let me know in the comments !

1. What if the cheetah bot votes me up because I forgot to link to the (my) original article ? Will I have less earning potential?

Yes.
If cheetah has marked a post, some automated accounts (bots) will not vote for it.
Also, manual curators might not have the time to verify your identity.
The best solution is to get whitelisted. Go to:
https://steemit.chat/channel/steemcleaners-public
If you can prove that it's your blog, they can get you on the whitelist.

2. What if someone votes after the post got paid out. Will there be another payout? Or is it done after 7 days?

There will be no further payouts for a post after 7 days.

3. How does more Steempower help me? I always see that my votes count more, so it helps the person I’m upvoting - but I guess there must be a reward for the person owning a lot of Steempower, too? Can you list the personal benefits of accumulating steem power?

By holding STEEM Power, you increase the impact of your vote.
Also, you get an interest rate on your STEEM.
9.7% of the newly generated STEEM gets distributed towards STEEM Power-holders.
Also, you get curation rewards for voting.

With STEEM Power, you can vote for witnesses, and have an influence on future decisions concerning the STEEM network.

4. Should I buy steems and convert them to Steempower or should I buy SBD and convert them?

I can NOT give you financial advice.

If you think STEEM is a good investment, you can buy both and move them into STEEM Power.

At this time it is not recommended to use the 'convert to STEEM Power' option in the wallet.
Use the internal market instead, or external exchanges.

_{Currently there is too much demand for SBD and it's overpriced.
Converting SBD will 'burn' those SBD and decrease the supply.
That's why the witnesses have decided to give you bad conversion rates, to disencourage users from using this function.}

5. To avoid buying Steempower with my own money - should I convert all my earnings to Steempower in the beginning?

Again: No financial advice

There are many benefits from holding STEEM Power, but I can't recommend any financial instruments.

6. I understand the difference between Steempower and Steem/SBD now. But why do we have two different "currencies"? What is the difference between Steem and SBD? Both are tradeable on exchanges. In which case should I trade which?

SBD is meant to be pegged to 1 US$.
For one, this makes it easier for newcomers to crypto-currencies.
Also, for financial transactions ( i.e. with shops ) a stable currency is preferable.

7. And is the goal to keep the SBD always at around 1 USD? To be a stable currency, or why? But the Steem can go up infinitively? So is it worth accumulating Steem (through writing or buying)?

Yes.
STEEM could go up a lot - It could also crash and lose all its value.
It's up to you to decide whether you think STEEM will have value in the future, or not.

8. How much is "a lot" of Steempower? Right now I have 72 Steem in Steempower. Will I notice a difference when I have, say, 300? Or only at 100,000 or so?

Have a look at the richlist here:

https://steemdb.com/accounts
http://steemwhales.com/

You will see one major difference, once you reach a certain threshold of 2 MVests. (?)
Currently 1MVest equals 482.427 STEEM.
( source: https://steemdb.com/ )
Once you reach that point, Steemit.com will unlock a slider and you can change the voting weight. ( From 1-100%)

For me a major change was, when I could see my single vote giving 0.01$ for a post.

9. What does the number in brackets mean in my Steempower wallet?

This is delegated STEEM Power.
When you created your account, some STEEM Power from @steem was delegated to your account.
This account belongs to Steemit Inc.
They can also withdraw the delegated STEEM Power in the future.

10. As of how much Steempower is one considered a whale?

I think, 1 GigaVest ( currently 482,427.000 STEEM Power ) is the threshold.

11. What are these badges I see sometimes on other people's articles? Are there rewards attached to them?

These batches are created by other users.
@arcange or @elyaque.
There are no rewards attached to them.
Gamification is on the Steemit Roadmap and we may see these batches or something similar integrated with Steemit.com in the future.

13. What counts more - commenting or upvoting? Or resteeming? Do I profit from resteeming someone's else’s post?

This is very subjective. Some comments get good rewards.
Commenting positively without upvoting can be very insulting :D

If you give a post more exposure by resteeming it, and it gets more votes, you can increase your curation rewards.
Other than that you do not profit from resteeming directly.

14. Should I comment on posts that already have a lot of votes or should I focus on posts with zero votes, to be the first one?

There are different strategies.

I personally, would like to see more comments on undervalued posts, but commenting on one of the whales can be very profitable.

15. Does my first vote of the day count more than my last one? Or how many do I have? How can I be economical with my votes but also be generous to the ones I'm voting for?

As of now, you have 40 votes per 24h without draining your Voting Power.
( This will change with the next hardfork - to 10 votes/24 h. )
You can review your voting power here:
https://steemdb.com/@followyourjoy
or on:
https://steemstats.com/

Normally, your Voting Power is higher, after you let it regenerate for a while.

16. How do voting bots work? Would you recommend using them? It sounds like they would help me spend more time creating instead of reading and voting, is that true? I checked out steemvoter.com but it asks for my private posting key when signing up - is that save to do? What other bots are there / which would you recommend?

I generally don't recommend using them.
If I were to use a service like that, I would choose https://streemian.com/
It's run by @xeroc - a trusted member of the Bitshares and Steem community.

I run my own bots and I would encourage anyone to look into this, if you want to learn a bit of programming.

If you don't have the time to manually vote, you should maybe consider to not hold on to your STEEM Power, or follow a trusted manual curator on Streemian.

17. Is there any other way to earn Steem? Does Steemit have jobs? Or how can I find out about contests?

There is the steemitphotochallenge, the memechallenge, the steemitculinarychallenge and many more.
I suggest you look for yourself. Maybe you find some nice posts to vote for along the way ;)

You can also make some STEEM by helping @curie or the @steemcleaners.

If you have products, or a service to sell, you could offer those for STEEM.

18. How can I get my posts more noticed? Or more "whale" upvotes? Are there tags I can use, or groups in the chat, that really work?

First of all: please don't spam your links all over steemit.chat !
It will not help you.

Some tags get more attention than others.
I can't really recommend one, as it depends on your content.
Have a look at the trending tags here:
https://steemit.com/trending

If you can find one or more popular tags, that fit your post, use them, but don't abuse popular tags.

19. Should I open more than one account? E.g. one for English one for my native language? Or for different topics so I don't confuse my followers?

I guess this depends on how much you post.
Some people do bilingual or multilingual posts and are quite successful with it.
Having multiple in accounts and not clearly stating it ( aka sockpuppets ) is frowned upon.

20. Is it a good idea to create a small group of people who support and upvote each other? Or is that not advices/not working?

Building your own network helps.

21. What are some ways I can maximize my profits as a newbie (or even oldie) besides posting as much as possible? Do have any hot tips (aside from everything mentioned above)?

I wish I did.

Engage with other users, try to be friendly ...
Be consistent.

I've lately seen a user join the TRAIL community @steemtrail and his own rewards magically jumped up.
I don't think it brings value to Steemit as a community, but I don't have a lot of impact myself.
I wish the whales would take more responsibility for their voting patterns and take some minutes out of their day to look at Steemit.

I wish you good luck.

22. How can I let my Steemit account work for me?

You can automate some functions with Streemian.

Also some people are quite successful with automated status reports.
I personally don't vote for those, ( except for my own @deutschbot :D ) but I'm only a little dolphin.

---

Done.

I hope, I have answered all questions correctly and that this may help some future users.
Please don't go off on me for criticizing the TRAIL - I just hope that with the influx of new users, the need for curation trails is soon over.

If you would have answered some questions differently, please do so in the comments.

Again: Good luck to @followyourjoy - maybe I see some of your posts in @deutschbot's report soon.