Steemit (FAQ) Frequently Asked Questions, Common Myths, and Misconceptions
Here's the ANSWERS you've been looking for.. You can earn more if you learn some secrets on how the system was designed.
I've done a lot of research, so they seem like secrets. See if you know these:
Q1. I'm new to steemit. I see people making thousands of dollars on their posts. I made 11 cents, what gives?
A1: Good quality content doesn't always get the attention it deserves. But many times it does! Keep contributing, and eventually one of yours is going to catch wind and go viral. Use the time between your submissions to do more research, pick and choose better things to talk about, and improve your writing style.
Q2. Ok, I saw a guy do a make up tutorial and make thousands. So another guy one did the same, and he made a lot too. So I did my own male makeup tutorial and I made hardly anything? Why?
A2: As a fluke, the makeup tutorial was funny, and people liked it. That doesn't mean everyone wants to see multiple copycats of similar content. These things are fads, and not trends and are very short lived.
Q3: Steemit is broken! Only the whales decide the content. I wrote 5 posts about this problem, and I got 20 or 30 votes from other people who think the same thing!
A3: What you ended up doing was attracting similar minded people to your complaint, who also had no steem power. I hate to say it, but misery loves company. Instead of complaining about it, and hoping that gets you to the front page. Why not be creative? Think outside of the box, and write something that is stimulating and interesting to not only whales, but all types of funded steemit users.
Q4: My writing isn't as good as some of the other people. What can I do?
A4: Unfortunately we live in a world of thumb texters on phones. "r u going 2 da party 2day?". This is how we text on a daily basis. Short form expression has ruined the way people communicate. We are so use to getting our content from trained and established writers that many of us don't know to write well.
Use this as an opportunity to practice and get feedback. If you ever wanted to get a response on the value of your writing style, try different things. Make the effort to spell check, and have someone read over your work BEFORE you submit it to the blockchain. (A friend or family member can help!)
Q5: Is there money to be made in commenting? I never made any real money that way before.
A5: Just like regular stories, a valued comment can earn significant upvotes too! I got paid $87 SBD for a comment I made once. It doesn't happen often, but it can and will happen, if your contribution is good enough. There is more than one way to earn money by participation on steem.
TIP: Never say "I agree with your comment" without upvoting too! Takes only a click! :)
Q6: What if people start grouping their votes, or selling their votes? Isn't that already happening?
A6: NO! Doing that is a stupid thing to do which won't last long. It will also earn your name a bad reputation if you are caught doing it, and a whale bot (or multiple bots) will follow you around the system downvoting your votes. Grouping votes together to promote poor content won't work. If you game the system, you're going to lose.
Q7: What are bots? Why don't we find ways to ban them?
A7: Bots, are automated computer programs that are alive on steem. Bots can't think of new content, so they don't write stories. There are good bots, and bad bots. The good bots are taking care of the bad bots, so don't worry. Also, some bots are actually helpful. This is a very large debatable discussion too large for a faq. But in simple terms, we do need good bots to be present, and we do have those here already.
(Bots upvote, downvote, and comment with preprogrammed phrases). Don't worry about them.
Q8: How many stories should I post a day? More is better, right?
A8: No, more is not better. In a given 24 hour period, the value you see next to stories is how much relative steem power is estimated that the story will earn if it continues holding the percentage of upvotes it has, in relation to all other stories on the system.
So if you write 1 quality story, that story competes with the rest of the stories on steem that day.
If you write 5 stories, now your first story is competing with your other 4 stories AND also the rest of the stories on steem that day. Why compete against yourself? Wait a day, and write your next one. You have much better chance of earning more by doing that.. Save good ideas for tomorrow, and invest all your time into one, good, story instead.
Note: As of July 26, 2016, the following will be true:
If you post 10 low value posts in one day and only 1 of them “hits it big” then that one popular post will only get to keep about 15% of what it would have earned it it was the only post posted that day.
Q9: I just found a news article that I think all people on steemit will be interested in, can I just copy/paste the article and put a reference? As long as I link to it, that's shows I didn't steal it right?
A9: Steemit isn't a news headline ticker. What you could do, is reference the story, and talk about how you feel about it. This may attract other people who have the same "take" on the story that you do, which could lead to a lot of comments, discussion, and upvoting.
Q10: I thought of an idea for a new feature that steemit needs! How do I get the developers attention?
A10: The developers and other key people who are in the stack development channel read these posts. Even if they do not upvote yours, or make a comment, it doesn't matter. Many times someone may have thought of it already OR they are already working on it, OR it is ready, but not scheduled to be released yet.
The short answer is: Post about it once, but before you do, search steemit to see if someone else already posted about it.
Q11: Why is searching steemit important for past content? How does that help me?
A11: People find it easier to submit a question (which has already been asked numerous times), because they are too lazy to research the answer themselves. This adds to the endless scroll of new posts problem.
If you search existing steem posts, you'll quite often see good information, and good comments that have already been made. You can also see what posts have already been saturating steemit, and avoid writing the same thing, and earning next to nothing for it.
Q12: Why does it seem that no new features are coming yet? There is hundreds of things I'd like to see. What are the devs doing? Just sitting back and getting rich?
A12: No, they're doing the exact opposite. The devs are monitoring, tweaking, developing, and fixing the system. Running a blockchain, and a site like steemit is extremely difficult.
You see posts and stories on here that go viral? The WHOLE SYSTEM is going viral. Any idea how hard it must be to run a viral system, that is viral 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? But they're doing it, and they're doing it well.
This is what they're probably doing in an endless loop right now:
Phase 5: Allow the system to scale, bear the load, become stable and security tight.
Phase 6: Build more features.
Both of these phases take a long time. (Several weeks and months, sometimes longer). You have to be patient.
Facebook has been around since 2004
Reddit has been around since 2005
Twitter has been around since 2006
Steemit launched beta only in 2016.
- It's going to take a bit of time, but it's outperforming all expectations.
Please share this story if you found it helpful. If you have any questions you'd like to see answered in the future, please comment.
Bonus Question: If I upvote a good post after it is 30 minutes old, am I too late to share in the earnings?
Answer: NO, you are not too late. Just don't upvote too many posts too often, otherwise your daily voting power decreases.
For 30 days (starting July 26, 2016) after the first payout a post may still accumulate new votes and at the end of 30 days one last and final payout is made. After this time, additional votes have no impact.
Your daily voting power is the blockchain trusting you to upvote only good, quality content. Use it wisely.
If there is anything wrong in the FAQ, please let me know. I suspect a lot of people are reading it without upvoting.
What they don't realize, is that this helps all of us, you and me too. When the junk posts stop filling up the "endless scroll", all of our really quality posts are going to get noticed more. So if you read this, and think you found a secret. It's not really a secret. Steemit will change for the better when most people understand how it was designed, and the reasons for it.
If there is value here, please upvote.
I really would upvote you, because with your post you got some colored places in my (still) dusty steemit map, but I think a upvote a year later doesn't make much sense, right?
Right :)
Well done intelliguy!
This helped me a lot!
Cheers
It took 4 hours to write, perfect, find, edit, design images. A lot of work. Glad you found value in it.
Sure did! Keep it going though
good tips
thanks
goood tips
By the way did anyone notice? Leaving an honest comment can earn you money too. Just don't spam. :)
Thanks!
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://i.imgsafe.org/15587103d5.png)
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I'm curious to see if i started writing a story on here, kind of like people do on deviant art, if that would get attention. I've always dreamed of becoming an author. This could potentially set me up.
Only one way to find out... :)
good job !!!
I am not a huge whale, but I do care very much about this platform and recognize that you are all gold that we are literally mining out of the human capacity for creation. Which means all of the users who join from all over the world (some places where 1usd a day is a huge pay raise!)...
I hate to put it that way. Lots of people might think whales are special, but they really are humans with faults and needs for help too. But one thing they had was information and for good reason. Most of those who are in whale positions knew about steem largely because they sniff the hell out of bitshares, attended weekly hangouts with dan larimer and read his blog or sacrificed so much that they got to overhear it while around people who might have let statements slip that pointed to another chain potentially launching.
If it is none of these they likely heard from someone who learned from one of the above. In which case, they should consider themselves very very (like ultra) lucky because they got in on steem within days if not hours after it launched.
Even then some had to survive an early hardfork, which if you think about it is quite an ordeal. But alas crypto is known to be a place of danger--which is why you will often hear people say "don't play with money you can't afford to lose". And they are right.
But other than that, they are just like every other (thoughtful) person out there. If you are thoughtful, you know who you are. You have a tendency to always tinker with ideas and/or stuff attached to/manifested through ideas on a near constant basis, seemingly forever. <--intentional run-on, but i digress :D
So imagine them all joining a community where they empower others and gain over time lots of power and funding in the ecosystem because they have formed groups of peers who resonate and discuss each others perceived the truths as much as possible. Then we are mining the most valuable gold of all. Ideas created and evolved from human interaction.
Remember, whales have to have a long term vision (or steem goes down and they lose alot of value in their Locked steempower). If they are smart...they are investing in things to help allllll the users to do a number of things:
They must all prove themselves to you guys and gals, but so must all the new community members prove themselves. Fortunately, when you create good content, you are bound to get noticed. Or when you have a heart of gold and ideas that make the sun shine...you will eventually get noticed. Everyone's unique value will eventually be more evenly reflected, but anyone who knows how any game works will know that the beta testers (you lucky sods :) and founders/developers (like the GM's and their "GM Islands") live and breathe to keep the ecosystem strong and you empowered.
Not saying we will never disagree. I'm just saying those moments are just as likely to strike gold (maybe moreso) than any other moments in our community.
I can't wait til 1 year from now there are steemit veterans all walking around with upvotes that give .15-4.00 ea. I will laugh...and they will too :)
Per the last sentence, I seriously doubt you can back that prediction up with numbers. VOting is porportional, and the porportional voting power of the whales is growing, not shrinking. There might be a few inbetweeners who had many big articles upvoted and now have a 6 figure balance in SP. But the amount you have to have in your SP account to make a difference with a single vote is growing, not shrinking.
Veteran whales get bored, too rich, and will retire or move on to something new after powering down.
Some whales might even be human and just sort of "die" like in real life.
So what could transpire in a year from now is unknown.
yeah sure, its possible i suppose. But we can make predictions based on observed conditions. There is no evidence, aside from "all the whales might die" (which is kind of greusome and i really wouldnt want my vote to increase in value that way) which indicated that non-whale votes are going to be worth more a year from now (as fuzzy predicted) rather than less. The information available now indicateds that SP is consolidating, not dispersing.
i think all this points are very helpful
thanks @intelliguy for your perspective
Thanks a bunch for such a helpful post!! Steemit should have a FAQ in their sidebar and this post can indeed work for it.
Thank you! Wonderful post.
Be creative, nice advice, i will try
Quality content is key.
Thank you that was a valuable read for a newbie like me. My goal is to find out as much as possible before writing my first post