RE: My thoughts after getting a $100 comment, and my way of giving back to the community!
SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!! 💜 You deserve the reward because you did sit down patiently and answer a new Steemian's question in detail, which is actually quite helpful to many others as well! When i first joined Steemit, i saw a post (sorry can't find it now) about how Steemit is a place "to please the elites rather than the general crowd." Just paraphrasing here. Now i've learned the terms are "whales"(the elites) and "minnows" (the general crowd)...to be honest i had to google what a minnow was, i eat fish but seldom remember their names... please don't judge me! So back to the point, why are some Steemians more powerful in their votes, and generate more "steem money" while the others don't? How do whales become whales? It's still a mystery to me... Anyway, it's really nice of you to immediately give out what you have gained from the community. That's the spirit we shall all endorse! Keep up the good work! 💜So proud of you! (P.S. I don't have a high-paying comment but i did receive $80 from my post of doodling/calligraphy yesterday which was quite a supprise to me too and I'm truly grateful to all the upvoters, so i'm keeping the tips for now. lol)
don't worry, i can hardly tell different fish apart either. they all look the same to me :p
there are a couple of ways you can become more "powerful" on steemit with your votes. i'll try to explain the 2 main ways:
you just keep posting and commenting and slowly grind your way up. when you get steem, you can "power up" and it will add to your steem power. steem power is basically your power level. the more you have, the more weight your vote will carry on steemit :)
just buy steem from one of the many exchanges and power it up. you are essentially buying yourself into the system, so you can consider it a shortcut. but there is risk involved since the price of steem can fluctuate, and you might find yourself on the losing end of an investment.
most whales on steemit today are those who have been here since the start, and have either accumulated steem power from posting over the year, or simply invested in steem when the price was low. lowest point was when 1 steem was worth $0.07, and now it's worth about $2!! so there are some users like @trafalgar who went balls deep and invested $100,000 when steem was at about $0.20, and now he is worth over $1,000,000 on steemit :)