Well last night marked the end of my first full week here on the steem platform and as I was laying in bed last night I began to reflect on my time here and if it measured up to my hopes and expectations.

All in all, it was a good week. I put out a couple of (what I thought) were decent posts, and got my first payout last night (more coming every day). Did I make a lot? Of course not, but that's a hope, not an expectation.

When I started, I wanted to jump right in an get involved in the community. I felt the best way to do that was to purchase some steem and start upvoting everybody with good content. So let's do that. OK 100 steem converted to SP I'm ready to rock. Wait, what's that? 100% vote is worth $0.00. No that can't be right. Yep. OK time to revisit this. I'm not going to make much of an impact helping people with $0.00 per vote. 

Another 200 SP bought. Surely I'm good to good now. Nope, and I gotta stop calling Shirley before I verify that I'm ready to go (ok ok bad joke). I'm at least worth $0.01 per vote now, but I was hoping (there's that word again) to make more of an impact with my fellow plankton.

Time to get serious. Goodbye last remaining BCH, you were free to me and now I set you free to roam the crypto-sphere. Be good to whoever buys you but I am moving on to STEEM. There we go, over 1K SP now and that will have to do it. There are no more pennies under the cushions to cash out. 

Speaking of pennies, I'm now up to $0.04 a vote. Time to get my feet wet. 

WOW what a mess, posts all over the place, covering sooooo many topics. Some are good, most are garbage. Just one or two words, a picture, sometimes not even that. Oh well guess that's what happens when there's money involved. Time to learn how to filter and search and follow and delve into the mess and wait.... wasn't I supposed to be doing something here? Oh yeah READING.

So I found a few posts I liked, gave them my upvote. Didn't really comment on them since I'm generally shy in the beginning of new things, communities, people. Did some follows to make it easier to find these people again.

Next came my intro post. Had some fun with it and then I watched it.....hello watched pot....and we all know how that goes. Hey look,they have these things called upvote bots. Time to run some experiments. 8 bots later on 2 different posts and I reached the conclusion I began with. These things are definitely NOT worth it for newbies or small users. The returns are miniscule (since you only put in a little, you only get out a little +10% which is still a damn small number). For promoting a post or getting it to trending or just making 10% on a decent size investment they might be fine. But a fraction on pennies is still a fraction.

On to the next adventure. Tried my hand at commenting. Quickly and as expected (again with the topic words, what's up with that) found that simply nice posts and good read, weren't going to cut. To my surprise however, a decent comment (multiple sentences), well thought out and insightful and bringing a different or additional perspective to the original article was well received. And by well received I mean to the tune of $0.05!!!!!

WHHHAAAATTTT???? I earned something from a comment? Who knew? And I earned almost as much as the post I made that took me 3 hours to do? (Seriously that post is still sitting at $0.12 after 6 days as I type this.) Well that's definitely an added bonus.

So I wandered around, posting more and more comments, trying to get to know a few people when I stumbled across something called @steem-ua. Hmm this seems like an interesting project. I'll check it out a little bit via their discord channel.

So I hop in to channel, lurk for a bit, nervously ask a "HELLO I'm a brand new newbie as identified by this completely NEWB question" question. All you moderators and old-timers know the kind I mean. The ones that elicit a deep sigh from you that says, here we go again, explanation #173,282 coming up.

Now here's where the story gets good. Some guy named @meno replies in channel to me and answers. Me, not wanting my newb quotient to destroy the channel, DM's him and peppers him with question after question after question after question after....well you get the idea. @meno certainly did LOL.

He gives me some answers, and better yet some advice and tips. Super friendly guy, extremely helpful and took the time to answer everything. Afterwards I learned he's actually a big-wig in @steem-ua and @helpie channels and is a super busy guy. But none of that ever entered the conversation. He gave me as much time as I needed to feel comfortable with things although I'm sure this meant neglecting other users and dumping work on the UA-guides and scouts (thanks to whoever picked up the slack that night for him btw).

OK now I was hooked and re-invigorated. With some tips and hints and goals from my new bestie @meno, I was off to the races. More comments, more posts, more upvotes, I was hitting all the notes. I joined the @helpie trail, I delegated SP to @steem-ua and others. I was on my way to being part of the community, both in participation and rewards.

I got another big break when I saw I had a mention from someone called @yehey. Hmm what's this about. So I hop on over to the post and to my surprise I saw that this member had found one of my posts, liked it, and actually included me in his daily post about new authors. WOW, that was AWESOME!!!!!! Thanks again @yehey and VOTE YEHEY FOR PRESIDENT errr ummm WITNESS I MEAN.

It's around day 5 at this time, and things are clicking. I've been making "helping fin" and "school's" in session jokes to @meno (yeah thats my sense of humour folks, get used to it), the pennies are starting to add up (next couple of posts are over $0.50 each WOOT) and the momentum just keeps building.

SCREEECCHHHH!!! Yep, you heard it, those are the fishie brakes being applied. What is this?
![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmenN9TG8c4o6cbHidNcHSH2R6NpRBAu7Zeo7JtoeHgoBR/image.png)

A 0???? But but but I've never gotten a 0 for anything before. Surely this has to be a mistake. Shirley said it wasn't though. But she lies, so off to my good buddie @meno as I'm sure he can straighten this out for me. Well I've posted, commented, been commented on, people like @meno follow me (thats gotta be worth at least 0.1 by itself LOL) and as of last night had my first payouts generated. But nope, still a goose egg. That number stares me in the face daily now, mocking me, taunting me, daring me.

And that's the end of my first week. Very good overall and certainly worth sticking around for week 2.

Oh did you happen to catch that last line about the 0 daring me????
WELL

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!!!

Week 2 begins with the ultimate goal of improving that mythical unicorn known as my UA-score. 
Second goal is to organically have a post break $1.00 (I'm not shooting for the moon yet)

Well readers, if you've made it this far I'd like to thank you for your time and if you didn't make it this far

;tldr
@meno is awesome
@yehey is awesome
NEWBIES - join @steem-ua discord channel and get some help/advice. It really does work
Week 1 - a success (in my books)