HELP FOR NEW PEOPLE TO STEEMIT

I have recently managed to get a number of my friends to sign up to steemit and I am now am getting a lot of whatsapp messages asking the same questions! So in a bid to help and and type it all out only once I wrote a little fact sheet for them and thought I should share it incase it's helpful to others.

I know there are already lots of tutorials and help articles out there but I find sometimes they are written by people that this stuff comes so easily to, that it's hard for people with limited computer skills to understand. I'm going to try my best to answer all my friends questions from a newbie perspective so I can send them this and then if it helps someone else great:) I hope I did an ok job of explaining things, i'm pretty new to this platform too so if anyone spots anything that can make it easier to explain please comment!

• The long code you get after signing into your activated account, is your password and you will never get another one. If you loose it and have money in your account it will be gone. Save it in multiple places!!!!

• How do I put a profile picture up?
  You can add your pictures in 'settings'
  You must put in a link to a picture not the picture itself. You can get this link from a facebook photo by right clicking on the picture on facebook and selecting copy image location and pasting that into the profile link in settings.
  

if your pic isn't on facebook you can upload it to this site
https://ctrlq.org/images/
and copy and paste the generated link (direct link url) into the profile box and do the same for cover picture.

• How do I pay for or use bots
  Bots and upvote systems are when you pay for an upvote using an automated system. The return you generate will be different each time. You pay by going to your wallet, hitting the little arrow next to steem dollars and assuming you have some steem dollars you can transfer them to the bot by putting their account name in after the @ sign, the amount you wish to send and then in memo the url of the post you would like upvoting. Each bot service has different rules on payment and how much to send so read up their rules before sending and make sure you spell it right or you may not get your money back!

• How do i put money into steem?
  To add steem to your account you need to already have money in crypto currencies litecoin, bitcoin or ethereum. I personally find the easiest platform to buy crypto from is coinbase. Once you have crypto you can go to wallet and to buy steem. This will take you to a site called blocktrades. Here is a direct link
  https://blocktrades.us/

Put your account name into your receive address for example mine would be 'ultravioletmag'
the amount you would like to convert and then hit the blue button that says 'get deposit address'. This will generate a qr code and a long address. You then go to your wallet, say coinbase, select the currency you want to use to convert to steem, type in the amount and in the send address you put in the long code from the blocktrades code or you you can scan the qr code by holding your phone over it.

• How do I make posts, can I delete them or change them?
  You can post by going to the big blue square, which say 'post'. You can add a video by copying and pasting in a link to a video you have already put on youtube or dtube and you can add pictures by dragging a picture into the post just be sure your cursor is where you want the picture to end up first. Once you have made a post and sent it to the blockchain there will always be a copy of the original post on the block chain but you do have 7 days in which to make changes to the post for the appearance of your blog. After 7 days you can't change anything. The tag words at the bottom are five words that describe your post, type them in small letters not capitals with a space not a comma inbetween. ie 'art painting spiritualart love artist'. It's a good idea to look at popular catagories down the side and include at least one of these thats relevant to your post.

• what is flagging?
  If someone thinks your content is inapropriate, perhaps plagerised off the internet they can flag your post. The more steem power the person has that flags you the more it will affect your account standing. If you feel the flag was unfair you can contest it by going to the steemit chat platform and joining the group #steemcleaners-public.

• What is powering up and powering down about ?
  Powering up is converting your steem dollars and steem to 'steem power' or SP. This gives you more influnce when you like people's posts, comments and will generate more income for you over time.

Powering down is what you do when you are ready to start removing your steem to your bank account. It will reduce your influence on the steem network but at some point everyone is going to want to power down some of their money to be able to take cash out of the network.

Everyone will choose to use steemit in different ways , for some it will be investment and they will just keep increasing their steem power and not power down, others will wish to convert their steem or parts of it to dollars they can take out of the site and use to supplement their income or become their income.
You will work out over time the balance you wish to have with your account.

• How do I convert my Steem dollars to steem power?
  Go to your steem dollars that you have collected, click the little arrow next to it and click on 'market'. In the 'buy steem' section put in the amount of Steem dollars you wish to convert in SBD$ and hit buy steem. Start with a small amount first to make sure you have done everything right. It's best to try to buy your steem when the currency is low.
  

Once you have bought steem power you can go back to your wallet and it will show up in the 'steem catagory' again ht the little arrow and select 'power up'.

• How can I earn more steem?
  You can earn steem by posting content that people like and also by commenting on posts. The higher someones steem power when they vote on you the more it will be worth. You can have 100 people with 0 steem power like something and earn nothing and then earn 100 dollars on one like if they have a huge amount of SP (steem power). You can also get curation rewards for your comments and upvotes on other people's posts btu this wont happen while you have 0 c as your voting power.

• What is a whale and a minnow?
  A whale is someone with a huge amount of steem power and a minnow is someone who is just getting started. If a whale likes your post it's happy days :) lol

• How does upvoting work?
  When you 'like' a comment this is called upvoting. The more steem power someone has when they like your comment the more money their vote will be worth. When you start your vote will likely be worth 0 c unless you have invested in steem power. Your vote value is based on your steem power not your steem dollars.
  You will get money for liking comments also. There is a lot more to how this system works but for now this is enough to get you started and you can do a lot more research and learn over time how to optimse voting.

• Why do the earnings for my post go up or down?
  If no one has removed their votes or added to them and your post values are fluctuating it is probably because the value of steem has changed. Steemit is built on a blockchain and uses the currency steem, the price of steem i.e if steem is up or down will affect the value of your posts.

• What is resteeming?
  Resteeming is when you like someone elses post and wish to share it on your own feed, it's kind of like a 'reshare' on facebook. You can do this by going to the post you like and hitting the little two way arrow at the bottom of their post.