Earning Steem$ with Upvotes, Comments, Curation & Resteem

Earning Steem$ with Upvotes, Comments, Curation & Resteem

I have discussed these three topics a previous article in which I covered all the ways I think you can make money on Steemit right away as a beginner. But I think these topics are so important that I wanted to review them in more detail. The heart of a social media platform is interaction or engagement. But on Steemit it’s more, its money. Please forgive me for being blunt, but many people don’t stay active here if they don’t make money, so let’s talk about the money.

Curation and Comments
Curation: all posts have a reward listed next to them and 75% of it goes to the author, while everyone who upvotes the post gets to share in 25% of the reward in proportion to your voting power, which in the beginning might not be much. So in the beginning you might not make much on curation. Steemit is like an ocean, there are always larger fish out there upvoting the same posts as you and getting big shares of the rewards.

But when you write a comment you now are the author!
So regardless of your voting power, you get 75% of your comment reward, which frequently is greater than your curation reward! So one way to make more money is to make a comment related to the post and even better ask a question and engage the author. Even posts with high rewards sometimes have few comments. Everyone wants a piece of the post reward so they upvote, but in general there are many more upvotes then comments.

(There are exceptions as some authors have a very engaged following with lots of comments or some posts are contests with hundreds of comments which are entries, but for regular posts in general there are few comments.)

Now while a comment isn’t a guarantee of an upvote, many authors do upvote comments and it’s free money. Plus comments represent engagement and create the opportunity for you to show people what your writing style is, how you think, etc…

Also please realize that a good comment will attract not just the attention of the original post author, but also other people who read an article frequently glance down at the comments and sometimes upvote them. These people may also check out the comment author’s blog. This is free money and free advertising, except it’s better than free advertising because you can get paid.

PLEASE don’t actually use this section to advertise your posts, as that is a Steemit No No, but comment about the post. That stimulates engagement, which leads to people following you and people upvoting you.

So I suggest that you upvote and get what you can from curation, but comment because that’s where big money is for the small fish in the Steemit ocean: plankton, minnows and to some degree dolphins.

Remember human interaction is the heart of Steemit. Once you start interacting with people you will notice that their upvotes get more generous and hopefully so do yours. They also start reading your blog and commenting. This is called engagement and is a central part of the platform.

Lastly, look up your curation rewards on Steemworld and compare them to author rewards. Remember don’t stop upvoting, because that still earns you money. But get a second income by leaving comments for those comment rewards.

ReSteem
The arrow which lops around is the Resteem button and it basically places the article on your blog page in a list of your articles, but it is clear that someone else wrote it. This is a good thing for you and the author. The author gets more exposure as now all your followers get to read his blog and possibly upvote it. This action increases the post reward amount and since you get to compete for part of the post reward this is good for you too, as it increases your curation reward when your followers upvote this post. So I call this a WIN-WIN. The author wins and you win. Plus people appreciate it when you Resteem their article, tell them you resteemed it also when you comment on their post because they are more likely to upvote your comment! This is engagement, and engagement is at the heart of social media.

I like to say “Engagement is the new Networking”
About ten years ago “Networking” became the most valuable tool in business for success. I think engagement is really a synonym for Networking.

As I said above, I think that on Steemit you should engage people who write posts and people who comment. I think this engagement is how you get people coming back to your blog to read what you write.
You read their stuff, they read your stuff, you two comment about each other’s stuff. It’s a social interaction where you talk to people and form relationships.

You will see some authors have many hundreds of people following them and they have been here for a long time. They get large rewards on their posts because they have an engaged following. Some people have 2000 followers and no comments on their posts. Their followers are not engaged. Others have less than 1/4th of that and 50-60 comments on their posts, because their followers are engaged, they not only follow, they upvote and comment.

At least that’s my take on it from studying different authors, but I am just one person reading what one person can read.

Steemwork
Steemworld gives you great stats on your articles, your upvotes, your down votes and separates your rewards into curation and author rewards and lists them separately so you can see exactly how much you make on every action you take, which I think is invaluable when formulating a plan. My suggestion is think, plan, execute and measure using Steemworld.

There are other places like Steemd and I am sure other sites which also measure these things either partially or completely, if those are better for you, so be it. I suggest you compare them.

Personally I find the format on Steemworld to be clean and easy to understand. Plus as you use it you learn more about it and it becomes more valuable. I was intimidated by the page in the beginning because there is so much information there, but it is neatly compartmentalized, so spend a little time figuring it out and you will be glad you did.

Lastly
Remember that we all start out new on this platform and we learn to earn. So read, think, measure and verify.

Please feel free to write me if you have questions about what I have written.

@shortsegments