“It’s Facebook That You Get Paid For”
Steemit started just a few months ago and, well… it’s picking up steam!
The quick explanation is that it’s Facebook meets Bitcoin or that it’s like Facebook but you get paid to post, upvote (like) and comment.
Steem comes from “esteem.”
- You get paid in Steem, which is a currency.
- The better things you vote for, the more clout you gain. The clout is called “Steem Power.”
- If you vote within the first 30 minutes something is up, you’re helping the author and you get nothing. If you vote after 30 minutes, you get a share of the post.
- Authors typically make half of what you see a post being worth.
- You can cash out (into dollars) what you earn or roll it into Steem Power, giving your votes more clout.
There have been posts that have made $44,000 or more!
It’s free to join – just use your Facebook account and then keep track of the crazy long password you get because there’s no password retrieval system… at all!
Books
Steem Cash
I learned about Steemit from a book called “Steem Cash” which I recommend. I’ll probably end up writing my own book about Steemit sometime in the future, but for now, check out that book.
You also get access to their Facebook group, which is good because everyone there helps upvote each others’ posts.
→ It’s just $9.
Steemit 101: Discover How to Make Money and Have Fun on the Social Media Site that Pays YOU to Post and Vote on Content
Wow, that’s a long title. The book is really good. It’s by 2 experts on Steemit. They give out insider tips and really explain how it works and what you can do with it. If you want to get into Steemit, then this book is essential.
I got the Kindle Unlimited version and I’m trying Kindle Unlimited free for 30 days, so you can get it for free that way.
→ It’s $0.99 or Free – Get it now
Video
Here’s a video about Steemit:
Links
- Steemit for Dummies (like me) – Everything you need to know in simple terms (steemit.com)
- STEEMIT explained to my GRANDMA!!!!!! (steemit.com)
- Download the Steemit Whitepaper (steem.io)
After You Sign Up
Once you’re a member (it’s free), please go to my account, @tcstix, and follow me. If we’re friends on Facebook or Twitter, let me know and I’ll follow you, too. We can then upvote each others’ posts.
To upvote a post, find the up arrow:
There’s also a “Reply” link to the right, which you use to post a useful comment. This screen shot shows an “Edit” link because this is a screen shot of one of my posts, so I’m able to edit it. Normally, you won’t see that.
Some Useful Links and Terms Explained
When you get to your account/profile page, you’ll see a bunch of links:
- Blog – This shows just all your posts.
- Posts – This show all your posts and replies.
- Replied – This shows just your replies.
- Feed – Shows the posts of everyone you follow (like your Facebook news feed).
- Rewards – Shows the rewards you’re earning by curating (upvoting) or authoring posts.
Your wallet show your balances:
- STEEM – Tradeable tokens that may be transferred anywhere at anytime. Steem can be converted to Steem Power in a process called powering up.
- STEEM POWER – Influence tokens which earn more power by holding long term. The more you hold the more you influence post rewards and earn for accurate voting.
- STEEM DOLLARS – Tokens worth about $1.00 of Steem.
- Estimated Account Value – The estimated value is based on a 7 day average value of Steem in US Dollars.
Submitting Stories
Submitting stories is where you author posts. The link is at the upper right.
It doesn’t work quite as easy as Facebook does… yet. My guess is that they will continue to develop the interface to make it easier and easier to use. By doing that, they’ll get more people using it but it’s not too difficult to understand.
Basically, you can just type but there are some things you should know so that your posts look good and are easy to read.
The “language” used here is called “markdown” which is similar to HTML, which is called “markup” but easier. You can use HTML if you know it.
In order to submit a story, it needs a title/headline, story and tags (category):
1. Put Spaces Between Lines
Don’t just go down one line to start a new paragraph but make sure there’s a blank line between paragraphs. This makes your articles easier to read.
2. Use Headings
Headings are what I’m doing now. See “Submitting Stories” above and how I’m using headings to number paragraphs? They tell you what’s in the paragraph before you read it. When you use headings, your articles/posts are easier to scan and that makes them easier to read. When your content is easier to read, people will enjoy it and they’ll be more likely to upvote it.
3. Write Short Paragraphs
Limit your paragraphs to just a few sentences. It’ll make the content more “bite size” and easier to consume.
4. Have Good Content
Don’t worry about the word count. There are short articles making lots of money and long articles making lots, too. The trick is to make the content interesting and useful. Write as many words as it takes to do that.
You’ll soon start to see that the Steemit community is a bit self-serving. Not all of it is but a good amount is.
5. Have Great Headlines
Make your headlines compelling. That means make it so that people want to click to find out what your article is about.
To create headlines, you’re going to wrap your text in heading tags. You can basically use heading 2 and heading 3. You take your text and then before it, you turn the heading on and after it, you turn it off.
So let’s say this is your text:
Your Heading
To make it a heading 2, use the “h2” formatting tag:
<h2>Your Heading</h2>
The first one turns it on and the second one with the slash in front, turns it off.
Here’s a heading 3:
<h3>Your Heading</h3>
That’s the HTML way of doing headings you can also use the hashtag:
## This is Heading 2
### This is Heading 3
6. More Formatting
There’s more formatting you can do using the markdown language:
For italics, use a single asterisk around words:
*This is italics*
For bold, use double asterisks around words:
**This is bold**
7. Links
Making links is easy. All you do is post the URL in a line, like this:
https://www.tonyherman.com/
Of if you want to use different text for the link, do this:
[link text](URL)
So the link text goes in brackets and the URL goes in parentheses:
[click here to read more](https://www.tonyherman.com/)
8. Images
Images are fairly easy, too. First, you need to get your images up on the Web somewhere. I use my websites to do this but not everyone is going to have a website they can use.
So first, upload your image to an image sharing website. People seem to be liking imgsafe.org to do that.
You then get a URL (address) to that image. It’ll start with “http://” and you need to include that. Copy the link and then just paste it on a new line, like this:
https://tcstix.com/wp-content/uploads/steemit-logo.png
The first image you have in your post is going to be the preview image that people see, so make it a really interesting one and an image that looks good when shrunk down a little (not too complex).
9. Videos
For videos, you’ll just post it to YouTube and then grab the embed code and paste it where you want it:
10. More Writing Tips
Get more, great writing tips in this somewhat long (but full of great content) post that I did:
How to Write Amazing Articles on Steemit That Will Attract Upvotes (@tcstix steemit.com)
11. Your First Post
The first thing you should post is an article about yourself in the #introduceyourself category. A good format to follow is what I did in my 2nd introduction:
Allow Myself to RE-Introduce… Myself (@tcstix steemit.com)
Here is kind of the order of things:
- Greeting (heading 2)
- Your picture
- Prove who you are by listing websites and social media accounts
- Include a video you make just for Steemit
- Tell your story
- Give some “proper recognition” to Steemit (stroke everyone’s ego)
If you’re looking at my post, I spent probably 4 hours on that. Yeah, it took a while. I wrote it, proofed it, added more content and then added images. After that, I made a video, edited it, uploaded it to YouTube and then posted it in the article. Whew!
Like I said, make your content good.
12. When Should You Post?
Well, it seems the best possible time to post is on Mondays at 1pm Central time:
When is the best time to publish on steemit? (@bitcalm steemit.com)
There’s a lot of interesting data there.
See? This is the kind of stuff that makes good money – posts that are about Steemit and have good info, good research and it’s stuff people want.
Conclusion
It’s just getting started, so now is a great time to join!
-Tony
