Steemit, blockchain-based social network review

 

With social media having a big impact on our daily lives, some of us  just want to start a career with our expertise in posting stuff. But the  biggest problem with this soon emerges – no proper revenue streams.  Well, Steemit is here to change that with its social network that allows  users to generate revenue from upvotes and posting.

What exactly is Steemit?

Steemit is a new social networking site, similar to Reddit, that  launched in June. There are several differences, including the ability  to let you generate revenue. Reddit itself was designed to only share  content, but this new service also provides a way for the platform to  share revenue with its users. Steemit has built a Reddit-like platform  on their own blockchain to allow users to be rewarded Steem Dollars and  Steem Power just for voting.

The social network itself is a website, which can be viewed without  an account or if you want to start being rewarded, sign up. It was  designed for content creators/entrepreneurs who have work they want to  share and be rewarded at the same time and readers who want an ad-free  experience and to reward people with something more than just a vote.

How to earn crypto?

The site uses 3 different types of ways to reward users: Steem, Steem  Power and Steem Dollars. Steem Dollars are used mainly on the website  as rewards and Steem Power is used to increase rewards. Steem is the  cryptocurrency that can be traded outside of Steemit, which you can  convert Steem Dollars into.

There are several ways to earn but I found that voting is the most  interesting way of earning. All you need to do is check out the feeds  and categories, most of the stuff is actually quite interesting, and  give it either an upvote or downvote. You get rewarded and the reward is  50% Steem Dollars, 50% Steem Power. This can earn you a decent amount  if you are one of those people who like to check out content. Even  though the amount you earn isn’t much, it adds up after some time since  you can upvote/downvote as much as you like per day.

Another way to earn is simply posting content. Yes, even though there  are no ads on Steemit, yet, you can get rewarded for posting content  and unlike Youtube or ads, you are being rewarded per vote which is  pretty awesome compared to the services such as Youtube which do not pay  much for any video that has less than several thousand video views.

Interestingly, Steemit is ad-free, unlike Reddit or other social  media sites that have “promoted posts”, “Sponsored links” or ads in  general which gives the user a smooth, clear experience rather than  annoying ads that sometimes become very annoying when trying to view  content.

The overall website is very easy to use and probably easier to use  than Facebook, to be honest. You can submit “stories” also known as  posts with fonts, links, etc and checking your Steem wallet is quite  easy.

Withdrawing and depositing Steem  

The main problem I found was withdrawing and depositing Steem into an  external account because right now, Steemit is still new and it takes  time to convince an exchange to trade it. As a result, there are only 4  options to trade Steem: Poloniex, OpenLedger, BlockTrades and Bittrex. The good  news is that all 3 will be able to withdraw and convert your Steem to  Bitcoin. The bad news is that OpenLedger requires either Bittrex or  BlockTrades to fund your account which will take time. Also, BlockTrades  is fast but takes a high convenience fee. Lastly, Bittrex is a full  exchange, it needs you to verify an account which takes some time and  since this is a forex exchange, it will take time for your Steem to  sell.

Other than that, I found that Steemit is worth my time and effort. My  rewards for my first post was decent and with Steem tokens going over  1000% in value, if you or your friends enjoy Reddit but want to try out  blockchain-based social media platform, you can join the Steemit  community and get rewarded.