New on Steemit? Bots explained, followers, free steem - Here is some help to grow!

Everyone knows how it is to be new, it’s fun to start with and then it sucks! You start looking around for finding out what you are doing wrong or what you are missing.
I have been in this exact situation, and pretty much still is, but it is however going the right way, this is why I figured I’d like to share what I have found of USEABLE things here on Steemit so far.

UPVOTE BOTS:
There is plenty of these out there, and I will here list those I have come across on my 1 month here, some are better than others, and some has a tad of risk towards them as well, and as a minnow, you probably don’t have hundreds of SDB to throw around with, so you are maybe a bit strict when it comes to investing in your posts. Anyway, here are the bots that I have tried so far.
The purpose of these bots, are that you pay an amount of SDB, and the bot will afterwards upvote your blog/post.
If you think about it, there is actually a lot to gain here, and little to lose (unless you gamble), I will only list the ones I have experience with, and not some that I have not tried at all.

@minnowbooster <- I actually use this one every time I make a new blog, review and so on, it is very dependable and very fast, can only be used once pr day.
Price: 1 SDB (Fixed price)
Expect in return: Around 2 SDB +/-
upvote eta: instant
How to: Go to your wallet, and make a transfer of 1 SDB to minnowbooster and in memo put it full link to the blog you want upvoted.

@randowhale <- This I also use every time, with a combo of minnowbooster. This is also very dependable and fast, it has some sleepy times, but if it sleeps it will send your money back instantly.
Price: 1 SDB (Fixed price)
Expect in return: Around 2 SDB +/-
upvote eta: instant
How to: Go to your wallet, and make a transfer of 1 SDB to randowhale and in memo put it full link to the blog you want upvoted.

@booster <- This is a bidding bot, and can be luxurious., I haven’t seen bad outcome from @booster yet only good, and my bids has been around 1-3sdb.
Price: 1-? SDB (bidding)
Expect in return: hard to say, but normally the upvote is at least twice the sdb you bid.
upvote eta: upto 2.4 hours
How to: Go to your wallet, and make a transfer of ? SDB to booster and in memo put it full link to the blog you want upvoted.

@bellyrub <- this is a bidding bot and can be very good, I have however only used it a couple of times, but both times I had no complaints, this is what I would call a “medium bot” and a current feature is that by using @bellyrub then @zeartul will randomly pick some posts and upvote them with a vote worth up to 13sdb. So this can be very profitable.
Price: 1-? SDB (Bidding)
Expect in return: hard to say, at least what you paid.
upvote eta: upto 2.4 hours
How to: Go to your wallet, and make a transfer of ? SDB to bellyrub and in memo put it full link to the blog you want upvoted.

@lovejuice <- this is a bidding bot, and it’s in the low end, it is good for minnows who doesn’t have many sdb to play with yet.
Price: 0.1-1 SDB (Bidding)
Expect om return: around 1.2-1.4 SDB
upvote eta: aprox 96 minuts currently
How to: Go to your wallet, and make a transfer of ? SDB to lovejuice and in memo put it full link to the blog you want upvoted.

How bidding bots work?
It works like this: Every 2.4 hours there is a bidding round, where you can bid whatever you want 1sdb 5sdb 10sdb whatever, and when the 2.4 hours are up, the bot will divide the upvotes in percentage regarding to the bidders (example A1 bids 20sdb, A2 bids 10sdb, A3 bids 10sdb, then A1 will get 50% upvote and A2 + A3 will each get 25% upvote) but don’t expect that high upvote power from it, as there are a big chance that more than 3 are bidding on it within the 2.4hour period. But before using it, go check it’s wallet, then you can see what the current bidding is and get a better picture of what to bid

The 2 I personally use most frequent is @minnowbooster and @randowhale , this makes the post worth normally around 4.50 SDB, and I paid 2 SDB, this means that I spent 2 SDB and will gain 3.375 SDB (75%) but now your post/blog has a more likely chance to get more upvotes, as many only opens posts if it already have earned, instead of standing at 0.. Of course you won’t get it all back in SDB, but it goes to your account divided in SDB and Steem Power. So you should now be able to get more depending on your content of course, the reviews I do isn’t that famous, but they are good enough to help me learn, and gets some attention, and you should easily get your post up to 5-6sdb, and if you do this with 1 post pr day, then your steempower will get a good growth.
Now if you are thinking, just using bots for your stuff won’t get enough upvotes and still isn’t enough, well… This is when your content comes to play, in order to get upvotes from other steemians, you need to have good content, without good content you most likely won’t get long to be honest.

DAILY FREE STEEM:
If you haven’t seen it already, there are actually many who daily offers free steem, in exchange for an upvote and sometimes a resteem. I actually have done these for a long time, and every day there ticks a little power and sdb in on my account, it’s lovely and doesn’t take much time either. You should visit the following profiles each day and press the upvote button, the more that does it on a regular day basic, the higher the reward is, this is also a good way to grow a little. In some of them you can also interact a little by making a comment, that can actually pay off as well.

Only Upvote needed: @lazarescu.irinel / @hamzaoui / @littlehelper / @monajam / @msg768 / @public-money / @sbd.giveaway /

There is also another one that is a bit more “Next Level” and good for especially minnows (new) and that is @nicnicy ‘s project. Here you also have to resteem and follow all @nicnicy followers, so this is a very good way to get a good follower base to start with, this is a “everyone helps everyone” thing, and I have been using this and still am, highly recommendable especially if you want to increase your followers to a couple of hundred within no time.

MAKING BLOGS/POSTS:
When you make new blogs/posts, there are numerous of things to take in consideration, and there is already a guide made for this, you can see it here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@allasyummyfood/steemit-lessons-all-parts-in-one-post-for-beginners
It’s a training helpful video guide made by @allasyummyfood and is highly recommendable for watching, it contains videos explaining the most basic stuff like, How to Write a Post on Steemit, How to Upload Pictures on Steemit, How to Use Tags and Keywords on Steemit. But also in the little more advanced about how to make money on Steemit, how to get noticed, and a lot more, there is 12 lessons in total, and they are worth a watch if you are serious about Steemit and want to do good here.

When you start making your own posts, you should find something to write about that interests YOU, because when it’s in your interest, the content is so much better than writing about something you don’t care about, and you should never ever copy paste from the internet, Steemit is for original content, and copying from the internet will get caught eventually as there are some bots that searches for that, to get rid of copy/pasters.

It is also a very good idea to include at least one picture, for it to be shown in the sections with a picture instead of blank, also remember to always post in the propper channels, like if you are writing about traveling then find 5 relevant tags for that and post them there, remember the first you write is the primary channel.

COMMENTING / UPVOTING:
When you upvote other peoples content, you earn curration awards, meaning you actually earns from that post. You can also earn from commenting on content, but you need to make your comments interesting and interactable, this means making long good relevant comments, dont just write "good post" write why you think its a good post, and share your oppinion as well, this will make others upvote your comment, and it will gain you more steem power by doing it "the right way"

I hope this has been a helpfull article, if you have some questions you are more than welcome to ask, and I will answer everything that I can, as I don't hold the answer to everything yet. If this was helpfull for you, you can also resteem it so it will be on your own feed and easier to find again.