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They say that in the school of experience, lessons come after the test! It cannot be more true for most newbies who join steemit. We mostly start with that morale and excitement, and overlook some basics that must be known prior to any undertaking.

After getting battered, and making no headway, that is when we comeback, and start to take those lessons. But of course by then, time has been wasted, effort unrewarded.

Now a little over one month old here, I know this because it is a path I walked, and that I am still walking.

Fortunately for me, whereas I am still getting the hang of things, I am quickly acclimatizing, thanks to the support of several wonderful friends and groups.

I cannot, but do my own small part to encourage somebody out there whom I know is going through the same thoughts and entertaining the same intentions as I previously did.

A very important thing every newbie needs to understand is that Steemit has some unwritten etiquette and procedures that you need to follow, in order to progress and which, if you should overly breach, could indeed cause you to regress. And if you are not careful, all together force you to call it quits.

To Quit or not to Quit?

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I know that feeling of quitting. Honest to say, it was a thought I played with. And do you know why? For so many reasons, which cramped up together, came down to ‘making a point!”

Yes. I was posting original work, products of so many hours toil. And what was the reward reading? 0.00$ and thereabouts! Compare it to the shit posts earning hundreds of Dollars, I am not sure if I was angry or frustrated, or even both, but I decided I would make a point. I would quit.

That feeling no doubt sounds familiar to every newbie. And that resolution to make a point by quitting this damn Steemit could be playing on your mind. That is ok. But you know the funny thing?

Nobody will lose sleep over you quitting! Indeed, nobody might even notice it.

And the reason is simple. You quit, it is your loss!

Steemit has so much to offer financially and socially. Besides being the first, and as yet, only platform of its kind, with the membership it already has, Steemit is already a success. You are not joining to make it a success; you are joining to share in its success.

Overall, the newbie that you are certainly adds value to it by joining, but in no way do you take away from it any value by quitting the following day!

If anything, at that moment when you are quitting, somebody somewhere is joining to balance away your numerical glitch! It is true.

There are several concerted promotional projects being run both online and offline. Hundreds are daily sighing up, and of these, the majority remain and add up to the steemit community.

At the technical level, with the lessons of experience, Steemit is also being improved every now and then. So the steemit experience can only get better, and more rewarding.

Hardly yet 3 years old, and with an active member ship of thousands, as a newbie joining today, you are one of the earliest members of steemit, you don’t want to look back many years from today with regret for having quit.

What is to be done?

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At any rate therefore, however hard your start to steemit life is, the only intelligent thing is to work around ways and means to succeed not playing the victim and looking for excuses to quit!

It is in these ways and means to succeed, that I hopefully plan to help you starting today and going forward.

To better grasp those means and ways, you need to above else appreciate that irrespective of our motives for joining (we all have/had), steemit has its own unwritten but practiced norms.

The good news is that several wonderful steemians have written very valuable posts already to cover basically all aspects of the steemit behavior it takes for you to succeed.

At only a little over 30 days, reputation 50.6, and over 200 friends I have, I believe done as fairly as anybody would wish to.

I am frequently asked by newbies how come I made it that high, and that fast. My answer is always the same: I am effective at the basics!

What are the basics?

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I. Post original and quality content, and consistently

II. Visit other peoples blogs and engage through value adding comments

III. Belong to your interest area discords and chat rooms, and network

Resource to read

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I have gathered a few resource articles that I believe come handy to whoever wishes to effectively perform the basics above.

They answer such questions as how to write a quality post, which by the way involves the legit use of images, and text formatting for convenient reading.

They also tell of the do’s and don’ts you should pay attention to, if you wish to grow your reputation around here, and with it, earn.

Generally, they are a selection of resources any newbie should find useful. And answer most of the question on challenges frequently encountered. You can of course look up your own as there are frankly several others out there, but I hope these help for quick reference.

For emphasis, the first of these resources is the Steemit FAQ. Have you read it?

FAQ’s	Author
1. https://steemit.com/faq.html 2. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rt2Uon6wL-83InlWaV1VfdRr0QSsLFGqnCRvBR_5tx4/edit#heading=h.bfatydwgktd0	Steemit.com
Reputation
1. https://www.steemit.com/steemit/@stellabelle/how-i-achieved-the-1-reputation-ranking-on-steemit-and-how-you-can-improve-yours	@stellabelle
2. https://steemit.com/steemit/@mitneb/reputation-score-a-little-advice-from-the-trenches	@mitneb
3. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@ebitularmbert/steemit-s-2017-five-5-bad-habits-you-should-avoid-in-2018-to-save-your-reputation	@ebitularmbert
4. https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/newcomers-minnows-and-spammers-this-post-will-save-your-reputation
Keeping your account safe
1. https://steemit.com/steemit/@holger80/how-to-keep-your-steemit-account-safe	@holger80
Making a quality post
1. https://steemit.com/steemit/@alvinauh/ideas-on-writing-a-quality-post-on-steemit	@alvinauh
2. https://steemit.com/steemit/@ethandsmith/polishing-your-posts-tips-for-creating-high-quality-readable-and-engaging-articles-for-your-blog	@ethandsmith
Editing your post
1. https://steemit.com/markdown/@gmuxx/a-beginner-s-guide-to-markdown	@gmuxx
2. https://steemit.com/markdown/@gmuxx/muxxy-s-formatting-tips-shrink-images#	@gmuxx
3. https://steemit.com/curation/@shadowspub/how-i-manually-curate-and-an-announcement-that-pays	@shadowspub
4. https://steemit.com/blog/@doctorcrypto/free-text-dividers-for-you-to-use-in-your-blog-posts	@doctorcrypto
Correct/legitimate use of images
1. https://steemit.com/steem-help/@mindover/don-t-plagiarize-images-here-are-13-free-and-legal-ways-to-find-high-quality-photos-you-can-use-on-steemit
Making Comments
1. https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@fuhreresu/up-your-game-using-comments	@fuhreresu
2. https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/a-complete-guide-for-newcomers-and-minnows-to-avoid-a-possible-spam-and-to-write-good-comments	@miti
Bandwidth
1. https://steemit.com/steemit/@rkrijgsman/the-bandwidth-problem-on-steemit	@rkrijgsman
2. https://steemit.com/steem-help/@alphacore/how-to-use-less-bandwidth-on-steemit-to-avoid-the-bandwidth-limitation-problem	@alphacore
Correct use of tags
1. https://steemit.com/promo-steem/@raymondbruce/minnow-school-use-of-tags	@raymondbruce
Getting Quality followers
1. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@okusarobert/is-your-reputation-still-at-25-or-thereabout-do-you-have-only-few-followers-this-post-will-help-them-grow	@okusarobert
2. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@shayne/steemit-new-user-tips-introduceyourself-introduction-post	@shayne
General
1. https://steemit.com/steem/@jerrybanfield/steem-guide-january-2018	@jerrybanfield
2. https://steemit.com/community/@raj808/steemit-do-s-and-don-ts-my-journey-to-1000-followers#@exxodus/re-raj808-steemit-do-s-and-don-ts-my-journey-to-1000-followers-20180305t220330682z	@raj808
3. https://steemit.com/teammalaysia/@jun04035/the-ultimate-guide-for-absolute-beginners-part-1	@jun04035
4. https://steemit.com/teammalaysia/@jun04035/the-ultimate-guide-for-absolute-beginners-part-2	@jun04035
5. https://steemit.com/steemit/@moderndayhippie/cool-steemit-tricks
Feeling discouraged? Motivation
1. https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@sharoonyasir/a-letter-to-the-newbie-steemians	@sharoonyasir
2. https://steemit.com/promo-steem/@warpedpoetic/leave-steemit-now	@warpedpoetic
3. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@lilyraabe/tips-for-your-first-7-days-on-steemit-from-an-artist

To further simplify your steemit experience, here are some web pages that are useful as a beginner.

Steemit Webpages to help you with the steemit experience
Site/page	Use
https://steemd.com/	This site is used to keep track of your voting power and other stats. You do not want to run out of voting power, and you only get so much per day. I keep my voting power around 80% for example
https://steemnow.com/	This site like https://steemd.com/ is handy for tracking yours and other peoples voting power, and upvotes on your posts
https://steem.makerwannabe.com/	This site will tell you who follows you, who unfollows you, and who mutes you. It is great for meeting new people too. I regularly check it to see who has followed me to see if I should follow them back
https://steemit.chat/	This site is the official chat webpage for Steemit. There are Discord channels too, but I usually stick to the official site. Come in to network and meet new friends. You can directly message people there too, so it makes it easier to communicate with your closest friends
http://steemtools.com/	This site is a comprehensive list of valuable tools
https://steemocean.com/	You want to study the voter behavior of member of steemit? This is where to go
https://tineye.com/	Unsure if your photo or another person’s photo is plagiarized? Check out webpage
https://helloacm.com/tools/steemit/delegators/	This helps you find out who delegates to you or another person steem power

Effectively performing those basics and following the recommendations above, will without doubt give you a strong claim to success in the platform.

Final thoughts?

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To cap it all however, I wish to reiterate that:-

Steemit is not just about the block chain and money. Granted, it is an incentivized public content sharing platform, which means money is a fundamental part of it. But that is only one half of it, the lesser, I might add. The other half, the most important, is that it is also a social media platform.

What this means is that Steemit is not just a market place where you come to sell the best content, and expect, or indeed demand that you are paid the highest deserved reward. If that were the case, then you would just about retain the right to ascribe your content’s worth, and to name the reward you should be given for it. You would indeed make a lot sense adding a take-it-or-leave-it note to the footer of your every post!

But of course you don’t, instead your content’s worth, and indeed, the reward given, is left to the nous and actually the whims of the rest of the community. Sometimes deservedly, and other times undeservedly, that community rewards you, other times, it doesn’t even notice you!

This being true only implies that at the heart of Steemit, is the community. It is, i will finally conclude, ultimately about people and relationships, both online and offline.

That is the rule. Anything else is the exception.

Let your primary goal be to become part of that community, and to fit into it as an accepted rather than ostracized member.

Call for help

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Are there any specific guides you know of that are worth recommending? Kindly drop the links in the comments so I can update this post with them.

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mitneb