Top 3 Things Every New Steemer Needs To Know - Steemit Explained

Steemit is a very popular cryptocurrency-based network. You've heard of Bitcoin, it's been skyrocketing lately. Steemit is very similar. The trouble is, there are so many terms, so many things to get used to. This video is going to show you the top three things that every new Steemer needs to know. Hey guys, my name is Spencer Coffman. This channel is all about making information known to you. We've got software reviews, plug-in reviews, online hints and tips, social media how-to, and lots of information about the Steemit blogging platform. So you can grow your following, share your information, and make money online. Today, we are going to talk about three things that every new Steemer needs to know. But first, what is Steemit? Steemit is an amazing cryptocurrency-based blog platform where you can write posts, comment on people's posts, and share posts, and get paid for doing so. You get paid because there is a general amount of cryptocurrency in a pool that's generated only so much every week. That is designated out to all the people that use the platform for sharing and voting on other people's posts. When people vote on your posts, you make money. At the end of a week, that money is given to you in the form of the cryptocurrency. You can choose whether to reinvest it, to keep it, to cash it out, whatever you like. The point is, it's a social media network, a big blog platform, where you can start making money on other people's posts and on your own posts. So there are three things that every new Steemer needs to know. The first one is very important. It is voting. Within voting, there are two different categories. One is upvoting, and one is downvoting, also called flagging. So when you upvote a post, you are allocating money towards someone's post. You are telling them that you like this post, and you're giving them money for creating that content. This costs you nothing. The money doesn't come from you. It comes from a pool that is designated to you. So every week, or every day, really, you get a new allotment of this cash to spread the wealth and share with other people. It's kind of like a platform that silently promotes altruism, making you vote on other people, because if you don't use it, it goes away. It expires. So let's say I give you $10 right now, and I tell you, you have to give this $10 to other people. You can choose whether to let this $10 burn in the fire right here, or you can take it and give it to someone else. Now, when you do that, you can allocate either $1 for 10 people, or you can give $5 to one person, and then the other $5 to five different people. It's up to you. The question is, will you give that money away, or will you let it burn? That is the point of upvoting. And when you upvote posts, you're sharing that money. As you grow in more reputation and steam, we're going to talk about this in a later video, you can designate how much money you want to go to specific posts. But as a new steamer, a minnow, you're called, you will only be allowed to vote on all these people, and it will be the exact same dollar amount you allocate to everyone until you hit 500 steam power. Again, we'll talk about this in a later video. You will not have the option to designate specific amounts towards people's posts. But the point of this is, if you're new here, you need to start upvoting other people's posts, upvoting content, and following other people. The second half of this is downvoting, also called flagging. When you flag someone's posts, you are reporting them for an error. You're basically telling them whatever they posted is inappropriate, it's wrong, they shouldn't be posting it, so you're putting a flag on it, you're downvoting. The interesting thing is, when you flag a post, it is like the opposite of upvoting. That's why it used to be called downvoting. When you upvote a post, you are allocating money towards that person's post. When you downvote, you're taking money away. However, you don't get to keep this money. It goes back into the pool to be reallocated to other people who get upvotes. The problem is, if you start downvoting a lot of posts, and you're invalidly doing it, like you're maliciously trying to put other people down so you can rise to the top, you are going to get flagged, and you are going to be shut out. They have a lot of moderators on Steemit that will watch for that sort of stuff, and if you start doing things for your own personal benefit at the expense of other people, you will be gone. Like I said, they kind of silently promote altruism on this blog. So the best way to do it is only flag content that is spam. If you run across something that's spam, racism, hate speech, something that shouldn't be on there, put a flag on it, and you can even put a comment down there saying why you flagged the post. Now, you may get some sideways glances from whoever posted that because they may be some kind of an activist and they want to post that, but don't worry. As long as you justify your case, put it in there, you'll be fine. You're covered. And if need be, you can always go and remove that flag later if you did it in error. So the second thing you need to learn about Steemit is your wallet. Your wallet is a very important part of any cryptocurrency network. Within the Steemit wallet, there are three different categories. So the first one is Steem. Steem is like a cryptocurrency cash that you have on your account. Steem can be used to send and transfer to other people. You can give it out as awards. You can buy things with it. You can purchase upvotes. You can purchase power. All kinds of stuff. You can trade it on a cryptocurrency website like Poloniex or Bitrex or Blocktrades or somewhere like that. You can buy more of it on all those places. If you need to buy more of it and you're not approved on any cryptocurrency trading network, put a comment down there in the section of this video, and there will be plenty of people who see that and will be willing to offer to sell you some of their Steem through a service like PayPal or somewhere, an online transfer. So don't be afraid to ask if anyone is willing to sell their Steem on PayPal. Now, you may have to pay a little bit more because you're not on a cryptocurrency trading platform, but that's okay. It's important for you to get Steem. So if it costs you 20 cents more, don't worry. The next thing is Steem Power. Steem Power is your voting value on Steemit. Basically, when you vote, it's worth something. So if you vote and you're worth one cent or you vote and you're worth 10 cents, that is a reflection of how much Steem Power you have. Now, Steem Power is derived through a couple of different factors. You can either get it from redeeming rewards. So when you publish a post and at the end of a week, you get a payout. Part of that payout goes to your Steem Power and part of it goes to the third part of the wallet, which is called Steem Dollars. We'll come to that in a minute. When you get the Steem Power, that builds a ranking, and that ranking is attributed to your votes. In addition, you can get more Steem Power by powering up your Steem. So if you have 100 Steem, you can power that up into 100 Steem Power. And now your vote value will be something like maybe one cent to two cents. Basically, it's like 100. So if you have 100 Steem Power, your vote is probably going to be one penny or one cent of SBD, which is probably along the lines of 10 to 20 cents at the time of this video in USD because SBD is worth more than USD. That's a lot of acronyms. You're going to get it after a little while, but it makes sense right now. It's going to be a lot for you to get into, but that's why this video is so helpful. And that's why you should really consider subscribing to this channel to get more information on this. But when you power up Steem into Steem Power, that happens instantly. So as soon as you click power up, it'll be like maybe a minute or two, and you'll have Steem Power available for your account. However, if you wish to take Steem Power out of your account, that is called powering down. When you power down Steemit Power, that will turn into Steem. The problem is that will take 13 weeks. So when you power down, if you decide to power down 100 of your Steem Power, that will eventually turn into 100 Steem, but you won't get it instantly. It will be split up evenly over a 13-week period, and you'll get a payout every week. So this is done to try to prevent people from powering down all their Steem, because like I said a couple of times already, the point of this is to help everyone grow together and share in the wealth. So if you power down, your vote value shrinks, and then you're not promoting other people as much as you could be. So the basic recommendation is power up as fast as you can, get as much Steem Power as possible, keep it there, use it to vote on other people's posts, because a little hint on voting is anytime you vote on someone's post, if you vote early enough, like within the first half an hour to an hour, you'll get a curation reward. That is something that is important. It is like an affiliate commission. You get rewarded for finding good content on people's posts. So if you vote and the current value of the post is only, let's say, $4, and at the end of a week, it gets up to $400, you might get 25%. You'll get up to 25% of that $400. So that is a pretty cool thing. So a little incentive on voting. Our third factor in the wallet is SBD, also abbreviated as SD, or called Steem Dollars. This is the cryptocurrency that runs the platform. It is a trading money that you can use to buy Steem. You can then convert that Steem into Steem Power. You can also give that away to other people, or you can buy other things with it, like votes. You can do whatever you like. You can trade it on other cryptocurrency places like Bitrex or Polynex. It is a monetary unit that can be used for whatever you like. It is an investment. So that portion is really nothing to do with your powering and your status. It is more the currency that you can use to trade. You can put that into your bank account. You can use that to live on. When you get a payout from a post, half of your payout is going to be in SBD. The other half will be in Steem Power. So you can take that half and you can put it in your bank account. You can use that to live on. The third thing today is permissions or keys. Keys are something that are essential for you and your presence on Steemit. There are three types of keys that you can use. The first one is a posting key. Now, all keys are either private or public. The public keys usually start with the letters STM. Usually, you will not use these. The only way and the only time you would use these is if you're going to transfer something to somebody and you need to put one of those public keys in a memo. This is very, very important. Never put your private keys in a public memo. It's something that we're going to talk about later on. But just know that if a key starts with STM, it's safe for you to put that anywhere. If it doesn't, do not put it anywhere. Now, that being said, a private posting key is okay for you to give out to a service. So, for example, let's say you're going to go on vacation or you like voting on other people and you use a service called Steem Voter or Steem Follower or Minnow Booster or whatever they decide to call themselves. You can give them your private posting key and they will vote on your behalf, which means you can be not on the platform, but this bot will be voting for you on other people's posts and you can start reaping rewards. Now, the private posting key only allows people to do two things, make new posts and vote on posts. That's why it is safe for you to give it out. The second key we're going to talk about is an active key. This key, again, there is a public and there is a private. The private one you have to log in to show and when you get that key, it is used for monetary transfers. In addition, it can be used for everything under that. So, you can use your active key to transfer money, which means sending and receiving, buying, anything like that, and posting and upvoting. So, you can use the active key for that. Never give your active key to anyone because if they have your active key, they can log in and transfer money without your knowledge or even with your knowledge. If you trust them, then I suppose you could do it. But basically, your active key, you want to protect. The private key, that is a posting key, you can give out. Our third key is the owner key or a master key. This key, you don't want to give to anyone, period, no matter what. The owner key, you keep to yourself. It is something that you, again, you have to log in to view it. This key can be used if you were to log in with the owner key. You can transfer money, post and upvote. In addition, you can change any of the other keys. This is why this one is something that you should just download, save it on your computer. When you're on Steemit, don't access it. Just leave it and don't log in with it. Don't use it anywhere. Don't give it to anybody because it controls your entire account. You can change everything. The big thing about Steemit is if you are ever to lose access to your account, such as losing your password or losing your owner key, or someone gets it and they change things, you're out of luck because it is a crypto platform. It's like if you lose your Bitcoin wallet address, there's nothing anyone can do. So don't lose it. Don't give it to anyone else. Give out your posting key if you have to. Keep your active key and definitely never give out your owner key. So that is it. That is the three things that every new Steemer should know. Voting, wallet, permission keys. Keep those in mind. If you have any questions, I want to hear from you in the comments below. Post anything related to anything in this video or if you have any other terms that you need to find. Any questions on Steemit, I want to hear from you. Read all the other people's comments because you guys can learn so much from each other. I really look forward to hearing about them, reading them, and jumping in when I can. If this is your first time here, I'd love to have you subscribe to this channel. It's all about making information known to you so you can have the information you need to make the informed decisions about the tools you need to be successful online. Until next time.