Some more Newbie Tips for well… Newbies!

Following on from my recent ‘Some Newbie Tips for well… Newbies!’, that got LOTS of comments, I thought I would do a follow-up.

During these dire STEEM price days, there are still new REAL people joining the blogging platform via probably Steemit, and though blogging is now only one aspect of STEEM, it is still popular at least for the moment.

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Let me share my one years’ worth of experience with you to eradicate some bad habits before they start and earn you more by doing the ‘correct’ things.

When I say ’correct’, everyone’s perception of that word can be very different.

There are some general things that most of the veteran STEEM blogger community frown on, and it's better explaining these than you falling prey due to ignorance and inadvertently alienating some from you.

Self-Voting

This has been talked about until the cows come home, but if you’re new and don’t know a thing then read on! You can self-vote your own posts and even your own comments, but should you?

You can also pull your golf trolley on to the green when playing golf, but should you do that too?

The comparison is not quite the same. Etiquette tells us that you don't pull the trolley on to the green unless you want some middle-aged chubby red-faced bloke screaming from 200 yards to ‘get it off'.

I personally vote up most of my posts but voting up your own comments is generally frowned upon. It’s your choice about the posts, but I would recommend you don’t vote your own comments.

Meet other Steemians if you get the chance!

Gaining that personal connection is important, especially if you are new. Watch for meetups in your local area, or if there is a big meetup like SteemFest (which generally happens once a year), try to attend.

SteemCamp 2018, not many attended but it was worth the trip and yes I'm in this picture... somewhere!

In the UK, there are frequent ones in London, usually attended by @redrica and @adetorrent amongst others, but the next biggish one is on May 11th, 2019 in Leicester.

I'm seeing that SteemCamp tickets are now all gone, but as the event was re-scheduled, this may no longer be the case, perhaps @shanibeer can let us know?

EDIT: Tickets are still available for SteemCamp UK here, thanks @shanibeer.

If you are outside of the UK, look and find them. The connections you gain will make it all worthwhile.

Install the Discord client

There is a huge community of Steemians that use Discord and many servers that are out there. Join Peace, Abundance, Liberty and you can get a free vote every 30 hours.

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Helpie helps talented new people with support but you need to have proven yourself with your writing to some extent. They tend to check out your blog before admitting you, which is another reason to write well, but not too well just yet.

@paintingangels is or was my way into @helpie long ago. I'm not sure if it's the same now. @helpie did only take new people on recommendation. Just keep this in mind for later.

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@heyhaveyamet (HHYM) scans the #introduceyourself tag on a daily basis and looks for newbies with promise. @thekittygirl and @brittandjosie are part of the same group.

Follow them and join their server, ‘The STEEM Terminal’ which can be found here.

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..and then there's The Steem Engine, my first taste in writer's guilds. The say you never forget your first and I got temporarily rejected when I first applied, but don't let that put you off.

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@thesteemengine is quite an elite group but if you can write and don't produce crap it is well worth applying except...

At this time we are not accepting new members, nor are we reinstating former ones.

The Steem Engine are NOT currently accepting new members, but I'm sure @enchantedspirit will chirp up something in the comments about this. The rules are not harsh but fair and good content is liable for an up-vote if you are accepted

EDIT: @enchantedspirit has indeed commented, see below.

There are many other servers for other topics such as @drugswars and @steemmonsters, it really depends on what your interests are.

Gaming

DrugWars is free to play and the team are trying to introduce new content to improve the gaming experience. It's not the best in the world but can earn you a little STEEM every day for doing very little.

SteemMonsters is a better game but will cost you $10 for a StarterPack.

This game is evolving, and you can play in tournaments for free and gain more cards everyday (for free) once you have the initial pack.

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There are also seasons which are 15 days in length in which you can gain even more free cards. These can be sold on the marketplace for STEEM.

Leave meaningful comments.

Like self-voting, this has been stated a million times before. If you leave a comment on anothers' post, ensure it adds something to the topic. ‘Nice post', ‘thanks', ‘that was interesting' will likely be ignored or even get you flagged.

Some authors don’t take kindly to this behaviour as see it as ‘fishing for votes'. If you do this on my posts, you will be ignored.

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@katharsisdrill is a talented STEEM artists and what he produced (above) sums this up well.

I hope he doesn't mind me using his image, or referring to his post from the dark ages which is still very relevant.

Resteems

Use them sparingly. I have un-followed other Steemians in the past because they are serial resteemers!

I want to see my followers’ content and while a few resteems are always good, I don’t want 20 of them being stuck on my feed every day.

Bid-Bots

This is another very touchy subject, especially as I have started to use @ocdb recently. Most bid-bot owners are businesses. They offer advertising to promote your content at a price. This is what new people see when they first start.

Trending shows posts with incredible rewards. Most are paid votes, not organic ones. You send the bot owner 100 STEEM and you get a vote that is worth approximately the same value that is a potential reward. Most of the time, your reward will be LESS than what you paid for the vote.

This is because when you factor in the curation rewards, you are only gaining 75% of that potential reward plus a percentage of the curation if you self-voted.

While bid-bots have a place, I strongly advise you to avoid them as a newbie. I do use @ocdb as it gives a return of MORE than the price you pay for the vote.

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@ocdb is not like the others as it is a non-profit bot designed to reward established authors.

You can read more about this here as it is a topic in itself.

The worst thing you can do is produce content of little substance and pay $50-$100 to a bid bot.

While it may look impressive that your article is topping ‘Trending’, it will soon be noticed, and you WILL get flagged for abuse (if what you are producing is deemed to be spam, junk, single photographs etc..)

While I may seem to be a hypocrite, I am not against bid-bots (though I truly wish NONE of them existed), but don’t be tempted by them as a new blogger.

@ocdb may recognise you in time and then you will have the option to profit using one, and not gamble.

Ensure what you write adds value

If it doesn’t it could be considered as SPAM. Not all I write is deadly serious stuff, and it can be about daily activities such as what happened at work, why my dog is at the vet, or why a huge pimple has appeared on my arse.

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All this can be considered Non-SPAM and is standard blogger material. SPAM can be many things.

A picture with no words or a slogan that is 10 words long that means nothing to anyone are two examples.

If you are aware of this, you can avoid it. You don’t need to write huge long rambling things like what you read now but be aware of the differences.

That’s it for now. I hope all this helps as much as the last one. Happy blogging!