The click you just made changed your life, but you don't know it yet.

I know what you’re thinking... What am I doing here ? Did I just get lured by a clickbait title ? Have I fallen that low ?
You may have, or not...
Internet can be surprising : you click on a link without conviction, maybe by curiosity, maybe by boredom, and end up reading for three hours straight, making discoveries you couldn’t even imagine one click ago and wind up changing your life’s goals for the months or years to come. All that with a simple click, one you made while others didn’t.

You won't regret this one, as you just stumbled into a new world of opportunities, the one click that will give you a clear advantage in the foreseeable future. But wait ! Don't congratulate yourself just yet, there's still a lot of things to be told...

Welcome to Steemit !

Trouble begins ! Everything requires efforts. To seize opportunities, you must understand what is going on. If you don't know who the belligerents are, you shouldn't be on the battlefield !
I'm strapped like a solja, man ! Stop beating around the bush or I'll get angry ! Please tell me... What is this shteemeet thing you're talking about ?

What is Steemit ?

Technically speaking, Steemit is a platform - more specifically a social network - based on the blockchain protocol, reaching its consensus via Delegated Proof-Of-Stake (DPOS). Don't worry if you don't understand, this part has a very limited added value, but it has to be said as it is the core of Steemit. What we're interested in is its functions, its applications and the opportunities it offers.

It opened in June 2016, so it is relatively new. Some people see it as the replacement for Facebook, Twitter and all traditional social networks. Some see it as the new global currency thanks to its fast transactions and the quantity of these it can handle. Some see it as a core system made for building applications on top of it. Let's not go to far in the future and what it could evolve into and concentrate on what Steemit is right here and now.

Steemit is a site where you can blog and get rewarded for it. It's Facebook but with the "Likes" having a monetary value. So the rewards you will get vastly depends on how many followers you have, on how many people "like" your post (it's called upvote here), hence you will need to build your community like on any other social sites. It is an auto-moderated, censorship-free social network. Upvotes separate the good grain from the schaff. Your personal information won't be sold to anyone, as everything you put on Steemit is public (so you're choosing what you want the world to know, or not).

Why you should get involved on Steemit ?

Steemit is gaining momentum, with more active users, more posts, more comments everyday that passes. It's easier to build a community now than it will be in 3 months, in a year, et cetera. As it is still new, the majority of people here feel strongly concerned by the well-being, the promotion, the evolution of the platform, creating strong and vibrant communities that you can't find anywhere else. A lot of us are living Steemit, convinced that we're seeing the future in a exclusive sneak preview.

As one image can be more powerful than a thousand words, so let me present statistics to you (made with love by @penguinpablo in his Weekly Steem Stats Report :

Weekly Number of Posts and Comments

Weekly Users Transacting on the Blockchain

^{We can see that approximatively 70 thousands users are active on Steemit, but this number doesn't take in account simple visitors (people only reading posts without voting, posting, commenting or making transfers), so the real number must be much higher.}

Your first steps on Steemit

First of all, you will need to create an account (by clicking Sign Up on Steemit main page or by going here directly). You'll need to enter an e-mail, a phone number and wait one to five days (depending on your country and on the number of pending registrations) to see your account get validated by the Steemit team. Once this is done, you're ready to explore.

But what if I just want to read ? Do I need to sign up ?
Of course not, you can read articles, browse the site without signing up. But once you're logged in, you can upvote some posts, rewarding authors you like, and that's what Steemit is all about. And this act is rewarded too. It's called "curating" (meaning moderating content). To explain it simply, 75 % of the rewards of a post go to the author and 25% to the curators (the people who upvoted the post).

I'm here to write but my first posts didn't encounter much success.
As any social network, the beginnings can be difficult. On Steemit, it's all about interacting with others. If you only post without reading and commenting other people, you'll never be acknowledged and followed by others. You must get involved and you'll rapidly make friends, people with the same center of interests or even discover new subjects, new groups and all the magic that can happen with genuine human interactions.

I got some upvotes, but didn't get any rewards on my wallet.
Rewards are distributed every 7 days. So you just need a little patience.

What is Steem Power ?
Steem Power is, to put it simply, your sympathy capital on the platform. The more you have, the more your votes count. Every reward you gain can be converted into it, allowing you to invest in the platform and offering better rewards to the authors you support by upvoting.

My personal advices

Now that you understand what Steemit is, how to open an account and how to begin, I want to share with you some advices. I'm still relatively new to Steemit myself and I still have a lot to learn. But maybe my advices are better for beginners than really experienced Steemians (that's the name, but you can say Steemers, or in fact, you can call us - and you - whatever you like) as I'm still going through this difficult beginner phase :

^{Source : Creative Tim's Blog}

For me, rule number 1 is interact with people. There's nothing more important on Steemit. If you decide to post articles, focus on quality rather than quantity. Read other people's posts, do what you would like them to do. You want people to read your posts, to comment and interact with you, so do the same. You want people to upvote your posts, so upvote theirs. You'll soon be surprised discovering you're speaking with people who live at the other side of the globe but still share the same vision of life, the same passions as you.

Number 2 is to get involved in a community. It can be your national community (I personally found great support in the #fr community, as I'm French it seemed like the natural choice) or any community that revolves about a particular subject. Speak with people, get to know them and let them know you. There's a lot of new projects emerging every day to improve Steemit, to make complementary applications (I'm thinking about #busy, #utopian-io, #dlive, #dtube, #dsound, #zappl, #fundition, #steembasicincome and so much more), you will surely find one that inspires you and drives you to participate in the project.

Number 3 is to promote Steemit. Once you're acclimated to your new way of life, you understand that the thing that will profit all of us, whether you're a lone writer, an app developer, a simple blogger, someone looking for interactions, for discoveries, someone just following a few people because theirs publications interest or motivate oneself, is promoting the platform. The more users, the more activity, the more projects related to Steemit there is, the best it is for all of us.

Back to you !

I told you everything I know, and that's thin ! If it seemed too complicated, don't worry, just try it and decide to go back to Facebook or not after. It cost you nothing but it can bring you so much !
I wasn't on any social network before Steemit, and I now know it's the only one I'll ever be on.

I wish you the best !