It seems obvious but it probably isn't.
When you start out, you only have a small amount of voting power.
You need to vote 20 times each day on brand new posts, that will do well!
How you determine this is called Curation of 'Proof of Brain'.
So you need to use your brain, to read new posts.
Identify which have demonstrated mental efforts.
How much time did you put into this post?
12:24 is the time right now. And as I compose this I am
not merely intending to fill space but to clearly articulate an idea.

You should think very carefully about how you vote!
Sometimes vote weight support of 100% is well deserved.
Sometimes a vote weight of 10% may be a better distribution.
Whales have a lot of Voting power, and their upvotes are big!
Dolphins have over 5000 SP and Minnows have over 500 SP.

A new Steemit user is a Plankton.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQma3wBacj19uza8jH9PHffyZjzJZC2UPew58jsZUmrrZEJ/image.png)

# Scale your voting %
to give out votes at 100% , 50%, 30%, 25%, 10% or 1% if you are low voting power. Use a site like steemnow or steemstats to track how many upvotes you have made, and what your voting weight is currently at. If you fall too low, you will not be able to cast an upvote or make a post. You need to POWER UP your Steemit account with more STEEM, or exchange STEEM DOLLARS on the internal market for STEEM and then power that up. The more Steem Power you have the more you will potentially be able to earn, if you are consistently using your Steemit account. If you do not sign in and are not active, your account may not do much.

These are just a few things I wanted to talk about. I hope it helps you a bit!