SteemIt is extremely complicated, even for more experienced users. I've seen a lot of users making mistakes and/or spread incorrect information. To help everyone better understand the platform, i made a list of some of the most common mistakes and misconceptions I've noticed:

Steemit.com

While it is true that steemit.com is a website, it doesn't mean that SteemIt is a website! I know it's confusing, but i'll explain. SteemIt is running on revolutionary new blockchain technology. Steemit.com is what they call a front-end, GUI or client. It's merely communicating with the actual authoritative application, which is the server (in this case the STEEM blockchain). "SteemIt" is the name of the social media platform running on the STEEM blockchain.

Unvoting

I see a lot of people trying to undo their votes. In the current implementation of SteemIt you can never get your voting power back. Once you voted, that voting power is gone. So be sure to think about your votes very carefully!

Upvote rewards

A common mistake i see people make is assuming their vote is solely responsible for the change in rewards. It important to realize that on steemit.com the rewards don't update in real-time. So if you either vote or refresh the page these factors can influence the rewards:

1. All incoming votes/flags that happened between the time you first loaded the page and the time that you voted/flagged or refreshed the page.
2. The STEEM price (on the internal market). Unfortunately i don't have the exact details of this process, but it's very apparent that the rewards change, even without any votes/flags influencing it.
3. Votes and flags on all other content (the details will be explained below in the reward pool section).

Reward amounts

The price in Dollars that is visible on content isn't the price the author will receive. That amount is divided between the author and the curators. While it's theoretically possible that the author will get 100%, in reality authors receive approximately 81% of the visible amount on average (the more popular the author, the higher portion of the rewards usually goes to the author).

Rewards can be paid out either 50% in SBD (STEEM Backed Dollars) and 50% in STEEM POWER or 100% in STEEM POWER, dependent on the choice of the author. In certain cases you will get rewards in STEEM on top of SBD.

Editing your content

Since your data is saved on the blockchain, it's permanent. In fact, every single mutation is permanent. If you edit your content, all previous changes remain in the database forever. Once published, the information can never be removed. SteemIt is completely uncensored!

Voting on old content

In the current implementation of SteemIt, you cannot assign rewards to content older than 6 days and 12 hours. When you upvote content in the last 12 hours of the first 7 days, you will get an error that you can only flag that content. After 7 days you can upvote the content, but it will not cost voting power, nor does it assign rewards to the content, so it's basically identical to a Facebook like at that point.

Reputation

A lot of people think that this variable represents the user's content quality, integrity and popularity. This is not exactly true. Reputation exclusively represents how much rewards a certain user has received, whatever the reasons may have been. In fact, you can even increase your own rating by voting on your own content.

The reputation score is based off of a log10 system, which means that a score of 40 is about 10x better than a score of 30.

Upvoting popular content

A lot of people focus on trending content and upvote content that has already made 100's of Dollars. In reality you will earn smaller curation rewards by doing this! I highly recommend reading my article Curation rewards explained in great detail to completely understand why this is!

The reward pool

Starting with the network's 16th hard fork in December 2016, Steem began creating new tokens at a yearly inflation rate of 9.5%. The inflation rate decreases at a rate of 0.01% every 250,000 blocks, or about 0.5% per year. The inflation will continue decreasing at this pace until the overall inflation rate reaches 0.95%. This will take about 20.5 years from the time hard fork 16 went into effect.

How are the new tokens distributed?
Out of the new tokens that are generated:
75% go to the reward pool, which is split between authors and curators.
15% of the new tokens are awarded to holders of STEEM Power.
The remaining 10% pays for the witnesses to power the blockchain.

After reading the explanation from the FAQ above , you could calculate the daily inflation at the moment. Let's assume the current inflation is approximately 9.3% per year. At the time of writing the current STEEM supply is 250,864,825.923. 9.3% of that is 23,330,428.725. Divided by 365 days that is 63,919. That means today there is approximately 47,940 STEEM in the reward pool (75% of 63,919). At the current STEEM price of approximately $1.75 that is approximately $83,895 per day available in the reward pool to spread around among authors and curators.

Every user has the ability to assign their portion of that $83,895 to users, based on their STEEM POWER. Every user has the ability to distribute 20% of their total voting power on average each day. The way this process works is that the more users actively use their voting power, the smaller your portion of the reward pool is. It's theoretically possible to be the only curator that is curating that day, in that case you have full control over the whole $83,895!

STEEM Backed Dollars are worth $1.00 USD

This is absolutely not true. SBD is traded on the open markets. The current value of SBD is over $1.50!

It takes days to convert SBD or STEEM

This is actually only true when you use the internal conversion system. When you use that system it takes longer to make sure you get the average rate of that period. This is more useful for users that don't trade markets.

If you want to trade immediately, you can freely trade SBD and STEEM on the internal market or external exchanges like Poloniex and Bittrex!

STEEM POWER gives you 9.5% annual interest

This is actually not true. Putting your money in STEEM POWER makes you immune to just STEEM POWER Inflation. As mentioned above the STEEM inflation is currently around 9.3% per year. Only 15% of the created STEEM goes to STEEM POWER holders. So currently you only receive approximately 1.4% more STEEM POWER per year, not 9.3%.

Savings rewards you with interest

This is actually not true. Putting your money into savings is only to prevent potential hackers from withdrawing your funds immediately. That way you have 3 more days to realize you have been breached.

STEEM is a Ponzi-scheme

This is a common misconception. In reality the STEEM currency is a currency with a limited supply, similar to Bitcoin. In theory everyone in the world could use this currency as money and trade it for goods and services. It's irrelevant what the value of STEEM is in Dollars, Euro's, Yen or any other fiat currency.

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