Exactly one month ago when I first started on Steemit, I was given a blank canvas on which to craft my profile page, a FAQ page which might as well have been written in hieroglyphics and a shiny number 25 next to my username.   

After anxiously waiting a day to be accepted into Steemit, I thought I had hit the jackpot. I hadn't even written a single comment and I was already starting from Level 25? I was jumping for joy and high-fiving imaginary friends until my eyes landed on the Trending page and spotted several users with reputation scores over Level 70! Although I was karate-chopped back to reality pretty quickly, I had nonetheless realized that it would require a lot of hard work to get to the top of the mountain.   

But the journey to the highest reputation score would be worth more than anything else. Why? Because your reputation score is the single most important factor in determining your success on Steemit!   

Let's do some math!   

  

Before we get into some arithmetic and algebra, I need to tell you that your reputation score comes in two flavors – a simplified score and a raw score. The simplified score is the whole number score you usually see next to your name. It is also available as a decimal score on sites such as steemd.com and steemwhales.com. Your reputation score is also represented as a raw score – this number is usually on the order of billions and trillions, which are generally called Reputation Points or REP. The REP is the number used by the Steem blockchain and if you have ever played around with steem.cool, you will be able to see how many REP are needed to get to the next reputation score. 

Now, let’s see how we can use the equation for reputation score – which you can find in the Steem whitepaper – to both calculate your simplified score and use your simplified score to calculate how many REP are needed to get to the next level.   

Starting with your REP, you must:   

1. Compute log(REP) 
2. Subtract 9 
3. Multiply by 9 
4. And add 25 
5. Round the result down to the nearest whole number and you have your simplified score!   

As a new user to Steemit, you start out with 1 billion REP. Thus by using the above formula, your starting reputation score is 25. The math checks out!   

Now what if you already know your simplified score and wish to figure out how many REP are needed to get to the next level? Well, we will have to use the converse of the above formula and calculate the REP for Level 50.3 (my current level) and the REP for Level 51 (the next level) and subtract the two results.   

By the way, here’s the formula to get from the simplified score to the raw score or REP:   

1. Subtract 25 from the simplified score 
2. Divide by 9 
3. Add 9 
4. Raise 10 to the power equal to the result of the last step (e.g. 10^n)

Using this formula, we get a REP of 647,308,203,701 for Level 50.3 and a REP of 774,263,682,681 for Level 51.  

When we subtract the two REP values, we determine that the REP needed to get from Level 50.3 to Level 51 is 126,955,478,980.   

If my math made your eyes glaze over, you can always use steem.cool to approximately determine the amount of REP needed to get to the next level!   

Only upvotes from higher-ranked users increase your reputation score   

  

Okay, so we know the relationship between REP and reputation score – but how does that help us at all? What if we want to know what actions – posting, commenting, curating or upvotes – are needed to get to the next reputation score? How does that factor into the equation?   

An excellent question which I can answer pretty easily – only upvotes from higher ranked users can raise your REP and thus help you get to the next level! Not the number of times you post nor the amount of Steem Power (SP) that you have in your account. Only the number of higher-ranked upvotes matter for your Reputation Score!   

You’ll notice that I mention “higher-ranked upvotes” because only upvotes coming from users with either a higher reputation score or greater SP will change your REP and get you closer to the next level. Thus, if you are at level 50 and you get 100 upvotes from newbies all at Level 25, your REP wouldn’t budge at all. It will take upvotes from higher-ranked Steemians to increase your REP, billions at a time!   

Moreover, if you get a 100% vote from a higher-ranked Steemian, you will get to the next level much faster because this will earn you even more REP; depending on the rank and the amount of SP held by the voter, one vote could easily signify an increase of 50-100 billion REP!    

Reputation depends only on your content not on the money in your bank!   

  

Regardless of how much Steem Power you have in your wallet, that won’t make any difference to your reputation score. Your reputation score will only depend on the number of upvotes you get from higher-ranked users. Thus, your money has nothing to do with your reputation. Only your blood, sweat and tears determines how high you rise in reputation at Steemit. Depending only on the quality of your content, other users, preferably higher-ranked users, will read your content and decorate it continuously with more upvotes.    

However, here is an interesting tidbit. Do you remember when I said that only upvotes from higher ranked users increase your REP and thus advance your reputation score? These higher ranked users will often have more Steem Power and thus the weight of their upvote will significantly increase your REP.   

Hence, the amount of Steem Power in YOUR wallet doesn’t increase your reputation score – the amount of Steem Power held by YOUR VOTERS directly increases your reputation score!   

Downvotes can zap your reputation into oblivion   

  

Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows due to certain folks in our community that continue to plagiarize entire articles from the Web and often times from other Steemians in order to get cheap upvotes. For these punks, Steemit has a downvoting system which allows you to identify whoever is plagiarizing, spamming, promoting hate speech or abusing other users and downvote their post.    

Since your reputation score is also a function of the amount of downvotes you have accumulated, if you get enough downvotes on your posts, your reputation score can actually drop. There are some users that have been flagged so many times for plagiarism and abuse that their reputation scores have nosedived into single digits and their posts are now invisible. No one can comment or even see their posts now – basically, these guys are finished!   

Moreover, Steemians can also enlist the help of Steemcleaners and Cheetah in order to report users that are spamming their links all over the platform as well as constantly plagiarizing. If these repeat offenders are caught and punished, their reputation scores are actually shishkabobed into negative values! BOOM ROASTED!

Keep an eye on your reputation and you'll go far!   

 

Take a look at the users with the highest reputation scores on Steemit and notice what they all have in common – they all have enormous amounts of Steem Power! These users are being rewarded for devoting a significant amount of hours each day to produce high-quality content useful and informative for all. It’s no surprise that it is reputation score alone that helps you earn the most rewards on Steemit.    

Sure if you already hit the crypto lottery and invested all of your funds initially into Steem Power, you will have a lot of money in your wallet. But if you don’t create any posts, your reputation score will stay frozen at 25. Heck, it might even fall to single digits if you choose to do naughty things on Steemit – it doesn’t matter how rich you are!   

Keep this in mind as you contemplate the overall importance of reputation score: A rich person can very easily become poor, but the hardest working person will always be the richest!   

So keep building that reputation and who knows? One day, you might just be the first Steemian to get to Level 100!   

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Until next time, keep acing life!