Lessons learned after my first week on Steemit

So getting started in my first week I quickly realized I was a bit in over my head. I found Steemit, got excited and jumped in before I knew enough about how to use it properly and how to build effective content for the audience here. Because of this I took a step back from content creation and did a lot of research and focused my time on applying the tips and tricks I learned to my Wife’s account (@shoogie). For this post I hope to summarize what I learned and how we reached some minor success.

Disclaimer:

Our approach requires some monetary investment, that I cannot guarantee you will get back. I only share what has worked for me.

The TLDR;

Steps taken to gain initial account growth after the first week!

1. Join beginners community
2. Read the resources in must read list (below)
3. Invest some money into your account in the form of SBD
4. Create at least one quality blog post a day
5. Use SBD to pay for upvotes on each blog post
6. ?????
7. Profit!

Getting started

For any new Steemian getting your content seen while also growing your account level is not as simple as it might seem. After my initial post I did a couple quality posts but was shocked at the steep drop in value return by the community. My first post had a pretty good return; as I have now found, this is very common. A few higher value users will upvote your first introduction post and after that you must fend for yourself. That’s fair just not something I knew. As I used Steemit more I began logging questions and tips I learned. I will simplify my learning track for you below with a few bullets…

• Join a beginners community!
  • This is critically important as there are a few that will answer any questions and provide other means of support.
  • I personally recommend, @minnowsupport
    • Website: http://minnowsupportproject.org/
    • Discord: https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
  • Minnow Support Project is full of active users who are more than willing to help you out along your journey on Steemit. Much of what I learned and am sharing in this post was answered by users in the discord or via links those users provided me.
• Must read list:
  • The ultimate link guide for new users…
    • https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@inquiringtimes/the-links-for-new-users-welcome-contest-round-3
    • Credit: @inquiringtimes
  • Discord server communities…
    • https://steemit.com/newsteem/@torico/torico-s-magickal-list-of-steemit-discord-servers-v-2
    • Credit: @torico
  • Tips on posting schedules…
    • https://steemit.com/steemit-help/@steemrocket/the-best-time-to-post-on-steemit-infographic
    • Credit: @steemrocket
  • Trending tags to consider when creating your posts…
    • I find it important to consider the combination of top payouts with also the top number of posts.
    • https://steemit.com/tags

Many of the other things I learned are available within the ultimate link guide for new users (above). Make sure you keep this bookmarked for reference.

Account growth for beginners

You might be wondering how some people on Steemit are earning $10, $100, sometimes even $1000 dollars per post. Well… they’re not it’s more complicated than the number you see and the prefixed $ only adds to the confusion over post value. Those posts are actually worth more! Example, a $1000 post once rewards are redeemed might be worth around $3300+ USD! Again I won’t go into the math you should really read the posts on “links for new users” guide above. To this point the especially the link about how steemit rewards system works.

The economic goal of earning money on steemit for writing is to make great content that reaches a large audience. If your content is good the people will respond favorably and upvote your content and maybe even follow or comment on your posts.

Sounds good and easy right… for new users not so much. But as promised here is the approach I took over my first week on Steemit.

A new user that posts content has minimal influence. Steemit starts you out with a stipend of Steem Power to help you out initially and this will diminish overtime. However that SP is barely worth anything in comparison to the large pool of established users who post daily sometimes upwards ten times daily. You will find that all of your posts will be buried in seconds on the New category and never show at all in Trending or Hot categories. This is because you simply don’t have enough influence. So you can either proceed to fight against the current, posting consistently OR you can try what I will share below.

My approach is using paid votes from bid voting whale accounts. This requires some investment up front but most good hobbies will and if you care for the site I think contribution at some point is necessary… it stimulates the Steem currency economy. Lucky for me I had some Bitcoin “dust” on one of my exchange accounts.

Dust is left over crypto currency sitting on exchanges after transfers. I had a very minor fraction of a bitcoin which at the time was worth a few bucks at most and not enough to withdrawal. Eventually Bitcoin surged to over 15k and I transferred this BTC dust into blocktrades to buy SBD.

So starting out I purchased 25 SBD. Using this SBD I pay to bid on votes from whale accounts to upvote each daily post. I spent between 3-4 SBD per post, one post I did almost 9 and the first few none. Initially I was still learning so I only paid for votes on the last 4 posts of the first week. By the end of the week I had spent almost all 25, somewhere around 21 SBD. Being a over week now we have redeemed the rewards for all of those posts and have netted a little over 31 SBD… 10 SBD profit! With the value of SBD being $8.62 USD at the time of righting this; thats roughly $86 profit on the investment!

The added upside to this process is those whale votes boost your reputation. We watched the account level grow from 35 to 45 in the first week! Another benefit is the other reward for your posts is Steem Power, which also boosts your posting and voting influence.

Although the Steem Power earned is much less than SBD, I can see over the course of months this process would snowball any user into a influential account on the Steemit community. Its not all about paid votes however, the posts being written were high quality with nice images and prompt interaction with commenting users. These are VERY important considerations because some of the value earned no doubt is from additional votes gained when these posts were bumped into the first and second page of “Hot” category after the whale accounts I paid for had upvoted.

So bot upvotes are simply not enough on their own.

There are many bots which provide this service as a means to help new users or minnows catch up. I was extremely skeptical that this would pan out as profitable. I was only hopeful to break even on the SBD invested. I also asked the community about the ethics of bot votes and it seems pretty widely acceptable; in fact, many whales still use bots as a value add to their post value.

Choosing the which voting bots to use is largely based on opinion. I tend to lean towards ones with not just higher % payout, but also pre-voting trails. Also there is some personal preference that comes into play. I first heard of Steemit via @jerrybanfield on Youtube so I like to throw him some SBD love when I can.

One last useful resource to add if you found this useful and decide to follow this approach toward account growth…. @yabapmatt has an excellent application to track all available bid bots with their voting value and schedules, here - https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html

This post represents my experience and learning track over the first week. It contains my opinions on how to start successfully on Steemit and is not paid financial advise. So follow this at your own discretion.

Thanks for reading upvote, follow and leave your thoughts in the comment section!

Cheers, Willsling