Welcome to Steemit!
I am writing this post for the new Steemians joining Steemit on a daily basis, especially those that I intend on inviting over to start writing articles on this platform.
This is just the bit you should know, starting up.
- What is Steemit
- Setting up your account
- Understanding Rewards
- CASHING OUT
What is Steemit
You may find various definitions of what Steemit is, based on popular opinion. Here is mine.
Steemit is an article / post writing platform that offers you financial rewards based on upvotes and curation.
Yes, that is a very basic explanation. To make a longer story of it, Steemit is an online website platform where you can basically share anything you want, from articles to photos, and actually be paid for it thanks to your fellow Steemians. What happens is that people read through articles that are posted live on Steemit, they upvote (as when you 'like' a post on Facebook) any post that they support, and then your article is allocated a financial value, called Steem-Blockchain-Dollars (or SBD).
Understanding the Steem Blockchain". If you are not a fan of cryptocurrency or do not understand how they work, then you can ignore that section. All you need to know is, you write an article, you publish it, people upvote it if they like it, you get paid for it.
So you may be wondering how this is possible. To understand that, you need to understand who the creator of Steemit is. Steemit Inc., a company based in New York with the HQ in Virginia, was established by two people, Ned Scott and Dan Larimer. You may know Dan as the creator of BitShares crypto platform and the EOS crypto coin.
Setting Up your account
Alright, let's get you paid. So when you first enter the Steemit.com website, there will be an option to Login or Sign Up. Click on the Sign Up option. Feel free to create your wonderful username here. You will be able to setup a profile name later, but for now choose something that would look good in a URL. If you choose generaltyga, then your site address will be https://steemit.com/@generaltyga, and when people as you what your Steemit name is, you will have to use @generaltyga.
Once you have types in a username, and Steemit has confirmed it is available, you may click on 'Continue'.
You will now be asked for your email address. If you are lucky (sarcasm), you will be treated to a captcha robot to confirm that you are human. When everything is nicely done, you will receive an email to confirm that it is a valid email address.
Once you have confirmed the email, the site will now ask for your phone number to send a text to. Please note: If you have a Steemit blog already with your number, you will not be able to reuse the number for a new Steemit account. This is why many are going for the Paid option, which I believe ignores this problem.
Insert you number, receive a text and confirm your number and finalise the setup.
You will now receive an email or screen saying that your setup is complete and you have to await approval. Now there is nothing for you to do but sit back and wait for another email to come to you to say that your account is approved. You will also receive a link to obtain your own special password.
NB: Do as the site says and SAVE YOUR PASSWORD. Save it on your computer, your phone, your tablet, the back of your hand, on your forehead... save it everywhere. This is not a joke. If you lose that password, you are doomed. There is no password recovery, as it is a random generated password that is saved NOWHERE.
So please, before you continue, save that password, click to confirm that you have saved it, and then log in.
Understanding Rewards
Now we come to the fun part. The rewards. This is why you are here, no? Well, I hope you are here because you love writing, but you are writing specifically on Steemit for rewards.
There are two type of rewards you can receive. The first is the one we have been speaking about often. These are Author Rewards for your posts. As mentioned before, you will see the US dollar value of your post for the 7 days of its life before you are paid out in your wallet in Steem Dollars, or SBD.
And then you get Curation Rewards. There are various ways you can receive curation rewards, but the three I am most familiar with are the following:
Commenting on other Steemian posts and being upvoted for your comment
Resteeming other Steemian posts to your blog
Upvoting posts
CASHING OUT
Everything has led to this point. Everything I have said will help you understand how it is you get paid out. You might have skipped my whole article just to read this section first. And that is ok.
This section explains how cashing out works and how to do it.
You can either cash out your SBD or your STEEM. It is up to you. I have been advised to wait until you either have 10 SBD or STEEM minimum before you cash out, as the fees for cashing out won't make any amount under that worth it.
And this is how it works.
You need to sell your SBD or STEEM for another cryptocurrency. So before you even consider writing your first post, get yourself a decent crypto wallet that support Bitcoin and Etherium wallets. For South Africans, I highly recommend the Luno Wallet. I use it on my phone and have received cash outs every time. It is a South African brand and is linked to almost all South African banks.
So here is the process of selling your SBD or STEEM once your wallet is set up and you have BTC and ETH wallet addresses setup:
- Go to your Wallet
- Click on the drop-down for Steem Dollars or STEEM
- Click on Sell
- You will be take to the Blocktrades website. Make sure you put SBD or STEEM in the Sell section, and BTC or ETH in the Buy section
- Indicate how many SBD or Steem you want to sell, and it will automatically tell you how much BTC or ETH that equates to.
- Put in your Steemit user name
- Give it a moment to link to your account. There will be a button asking you to connect with Steemconnect. You may have to register your Steem account on Steemconnect once, but after that it will always connect automatically.
- Under 'Your Receive Address, you need to copy and paste you BTC or ETH wallet address here. This is where your BTC or ETH will get paid out in. It will tell you if that is a valid address
- Once you have finalised, complete the transaction. If everything went well, your wallet will tell you there is a transaction coming in. Luno goes through a confirmation step where it needs 30 confirmations first before it is paid into your wallet. It is an automatic process. Usually I get my Ethereum paid out the same day. I prefer paying out in Ethereum as the minimum withdrawal limit is less than Bitcoin.
- Once your BTC or ETH has been paid into your wallet, you can then either use it to play the market by selling and buying as prices rise and fall, or withdraw it into your bank account.
- Enjoy your money.