Thank you very much and you are doing very well in your 3 days (Hint: I can tell by your 47 reputation score in case you haven't gotten to my Reputation article yet) ;)

Its very nice to meet you and I'm glad you commented, now we are connected and to me that's the best thing about the comments I make (I meet new people).  I am happy to have your here on steemit and I will be available to answer any question you may have at any time about anything.  I'm certainly not an expert, but if I don't know the answer I'll try to find it.

Welcome aboard @alaynaclair and stay in touch :)

You're welcome @aniwah :) I'm very glad you told me!  If you need me to help you with anything, I'd like that!

Thank you very much my friend... I'm happy to help and I'm glad you let me know you're paying attention.  I'm sorry it took so late to reply, the system has been down a lot all day for the ones with low bandwidth.  But that's ok, I'm catching up to you now ;) ... Stay in touch and lets keep growing together.

Thank you very much for taking the time to tell me that @carlgnash... I always value input from people more experienced than me.  Its a nice thing to do also, it gives validation to the message and adds to the impact.  Thanks again!

You are always welcome to "bother me" lol... I welcome the opportunity to help you @carolfung (my Mom's name is Carol so that's got to make you a nice person) ;)

I have written about 10 articles about topics that are going to be coming up soon for you and I too was lost a bit in the very beginning.  The good thing is that time moves very fast in steemville and you will be teaching others within weeks :) ... If you want to go through my blog I have about 10 articles and at your stage (day 2) you should only read what you are interested in at this moment (otherwise it will go in one ear and out the other).. The biggest thing seriously is to ask me anything, I don't mind helping and no question is to stupid.  I understand that everyone has a different background, skills, interests, and motivations; so just ask me any time and I will always be happy to help you...

And btw, you are doing well for day 2... You already have a reputation score of 34, which is up from 25 in just 2 days... Impressive!!!  

And second btw, you naturally are doing something right now that will serve you well, and that is engaging the author (me) with a good well thought out and sincere comment.  Authors like that and will upvote you if they feel they bond with you.  So just to show you how that works, I am upvoting you right now (its only 0.01, but its something for just being engaging and honest) ;) ... 

Also I am now also following you because I feel a connection by your question and the impression you gave me.  That is another benefit of engaging the authors.  (Hint: one more thing, most of the people that comment on my page are the same as you, so you might want to follow them to make more connections and learn who the good people are).

Ok, sorry to be so long, but I wanted to welcome you and I did like the way you asked your questions..  I promise I won't be as long winded in the future, and my fingers aren't even crossed behind my back :)

I hope you stay in touch and of course visit me regularly and often... And I will also look at your posts and get to know your work too! Welcome to steemit!!!

Thank you for letting me know Carlos... I'm glad you stopped by and read it.  And of course, you're welcome and I'm always happy to help you.  We are connected and we are both 2017 Classmates
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmedTCzghYZtN1MztRDZfkqGoom22TvsGAr1DupdiRNVrA/image.png)

The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @davemccoy to be original material and upvoted it! 
<center>![ezgif.com-resize.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaBi37A5oTnQ9NBLH8YU4jpvhhmFauyvgg3YRrEJwskM9/ezgif.com-resize.gif)</center> 

To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!

I'm glad you like this @ezmonator and I'm glad she connected us too.  I know you have @looksfarwoman to give you guidance, but if I can help with anything let me know!  

ps I'm upvoting you so that you realize that making lots of sincere comments to other authors posts is a great way to make friends, build a following of your own, and also to make a little money.  Its the best way to succeed, so keep engaging!

I'm glad you found it helpful @fidelmboro :) ... And thank you for the compliments and your observations!  I also want you to pass this kind of information along to your friends and followers in your words too.  We can all be the vibrant people you said I was, and I am convinced you can be a vibrant person helping others out too!  Thanks again and may God bless you too my friend :)

I'll try to help you with this answer, so just tell me if you need further help.

Upvoting something does help you to earn currency, but it is not yours until they pay you in your wallet.

So you are asking about 2 separate things.  Upvoting is just one way to earn money as a "curator", the other way to earn money is being an "author" of both posts and comments.  

So I'm going to upvote you right now to make this explanation real to you. I just voted you $0.01.  Now what that means is that steemit will pay out a total of $0.01 in 7 days.  You as the author will get at least 75% of that and I as the curator can get as much at 25% of that vote.  In 7 days, they will pay that out and it will be paid 1/2 in SBD (or 0.005 total SBD between the two of us) and the other half in US$ equivalent of STEEM... You will know what happens as you start getting these payments and they are automatic after 7 days.  

Now you wallet is simply where they store up... They are an accumulation of all the things you have earned so far (but remember it takes 7 days for anything to show up).    What you are seeing with the .001 STEEM is what they gave you when you opened the account.  

Finally SP is it, its the one to own ultimately (remember though it will change in price a lot)... Its what you want to have because its what give you earnings from just your votes.  Right now you don't get much for your votes, but as you get bigger your votes get bigger an therefore your earnings get better.  I am working on putting together what you can do with your SBD, but I am either using @bumper or converting it into more SP (depending on the conversion price being favorable to me or not).

I think you can never overthink anything ;).. It takes some brain cells to wrap your mind around this.  I would say that you shouldn't get frustrated, because while it is simple once you understand it, it is very hard to grasp in the beginning.  So giving it some thinking is a good thing.

Just ask me questions you have at any time, but if you want to learn it, I promise you that I can teach it to you. :)

So true @helder-coelho!  And you are welcome and thank you for telling me it helps. Have a good weekend and stay in touch!

You're certainly welcome and there are more in the past and still more coming... You are welcome to stop by and check it out (and you don't have to upvote me, I really just want people to learn how it works).  

I see you're new too, so welcome here @itsonigirl :) ... I will go check out your blog and I am now following you too ;)  So have fun and stay in touch, its a great place to be!

Two major exchanges trade SBD and STEEM - bittrex.com and poloniex.com.   As of the time of my typing this bittrex.com has frozen new account creation because of surge in demand / server overload, but poloniex.com is still accepting new members.  In either case, you will have to jump through lots of hoops to include a picture of you holding your ID, hand writing out a statement saying you are signing up with date and signature, and giving up your first born son.  One of those things may not be accurate :)  The basic process is to transfer your SBD or STEEM to the exchange you have an account in, than trade it for a currency like bitcoin that is easier to turn into fiat currency.  With bitcoin for example you can get a bitpay card which is a Visa debit card that you can load with bitcoin - the market price for bitcoin at the time you load the card is how much money you have to spend.  Feel free to reply if you have questions :)

I have not been down that road, hopefully someone who sees this will respond and we can both learn together.  I believe you set up with an exchange to do that and here is the link in the faq's that give the info they have, but with over 200 different exchanges I'm sure there are many firms to do this.

https://steemit.com/faq.html#How_can_I_withdraw_my_STEEM_or_SBD_coins

How can I withdraw my STEEM or SBD coins?

STEEM and SBD tokens are readily tradable to bitcoin, which is readily tradable to the local currency of your choice. There is a link to "Sell" your STEEM and SBD tokens in your wallet, which uses the BlockTrades interface.

There are several guides that have been posted by users in the community for using various external exchanges to withdraw STEEM and SBD tokens. Please read the disclaimer before using any of these guides to withdraw your coins. The users, guides, and exchanges listed in the guides are not endorsed by Steemit, Inc. Use the guides below at your own risk.

It is recommended that you withdraw a small amount first, to verify it works before withdrawing a larger amount.
Sell Steem Dollars via Poloniex

https://steemit.com/steemit/@ash/steemit-how-to-sell-steem-dollars-via-poloniex-newbie-friendly
Withdraw Steem Dollars to a Bitcoin address

https://steemit.com/steem-help/@piedpiper/how-to-withdraw-your-steem-dollars-in-less-that-a-minute
Convert Steem Dollars to a country’s currency and withdraw to a bank account

https://steemit.com/tutorial/@beanz/how-to-get-my-usdteemit-money-into-my-bank-account
Convert STEEM to many other cryptocurrencies via ShapeShift

https://steemit.com/steemit/@shapeshiftio/official-announcement-shapeshift-has-added-steem-to-the-exchange

Its coming very soon... I had to get the basics down first so that I didn't make the article explaining that too long.  Thanks for telling me what you like, its good to know what people are interested in learning more about.  Also to give you a quicky on that topic.  It is just a currency that is how we get paid for our posts/curation... When you see the little pennies, that is the amount you will be paid out at the rate of 1/2 SBD and 1/2 of the dollar value of STEEM.  This took me awhile to figure out their formula, but now I can figure it... So as of today if you get a .01 its not just a US$ penny... If you want to know before my article comes out just ask.

And as for the utility, I've used my SBD for two purposes.. 1) using services like @bumper that will grow it your value through compounding quickly and 2) converting my SBDs directly into STEEM (and then powering them up into SP)... Because of the big move in STEEM, I'm focusing more on #1 right now and not on #2... But a week ago I was get more than 2 1/2 STEEM for each SBD and I was very happy with that.  Again I will also be covering this topic soon too... If you have any more questions, jlmk!  Thanks for the feedback too, its appreciated @jbriggs

yes you are right... I wrote it wrong, I'm going to fix that... thanks for the heads up @jentz44 :)

Love the update function, lol... I have fixed many such mistakes.  Thanks a lot for the catch, hopefully it didn't confuse too many  before I change it!

Awesome @katiepals... I am so glad it helped you.  I know you are going to be good, I have been to your pages several times and like how you're doing.  If I can help you with anything, please let me know.  We're teammates and it does good for each of us when we all do good together.  Cheers and stay in touch.

You sell though an exchange, I'm not sure why they have the buy and sell buttons on that page, but it might have to do with once you are linked to an exchange account (I haven't got that far yet) :)

If you tell me which one you want to sell (STEEM or SBD) I'll try to find what exchanges you can go through.  But it is liquid, I see the volume every day... 

And if there is any knowledgeable steemers reading this thread, I welcome the input to both myself and @kevinkarron

Awesome that you are passing along information from @plushzilla I hope to speak to him tomorrow... And thanks for taking the time to let me know you think this is useful (especially since you already know it)... That's cool... :)

hahaha... you're stuck with me forever now, that's what happens when I meet so many fun people like you in such a short time.

yes on your last question.

since you said your objective is to keep the money here and grow it.  I'm going to give you my strategy (because I am also doing the same).

When I get STEEM I always power it up.  (it is still worth the exact same in SP as it is in STEEM) ... The reason to "power it up" is to let it add to your voting power (the higher your SP, the more your votes will count)  

So getting more SP is the goal to grow the most.

Second point,  you want your Steem dollars or SBD (held in either regular or savings) to help you earn more of whichever currency is the cheapest and to grow your balances.  You want to "make them work" for you in essence.  You don't want them in savings and you don't want to leave them idle. HINT: this is why I have been moving you all along (you are just at the head of the class) ;)

So since you want your SBD to be used for the purpose of getting 1) more SBD (think interest or investment) or 2) more SP; then you will need to understand what are the ways to grow those 2 balances.

I have identified 2 primary and successful ways to do that.  I am not going to tell you tonight because I want the point above to sink in.  It is hard to grasp in the beginning, but once you get it you will become a machine making money.  So let that sink in and let me know tomorrow if you're ready for stage 2 of this conversation. (and if not, that's ok ask me again more questions because I really want you to understand this concept because it will really light you up here)

So to sum up... 

you are right to power up the steem you get.
you will want to move your savings back to SBD (I think you moved SBD to savings not SP)
and yes SP is just STEEM that has been "locked up" in the system for 13 weeks.

Get this down and you will be a very happy blonde :)

This is a better view:

ok they hit it... here is how you track it in the future to make sure:

###### 1 watch your feed in the account operatons section www.steemworld.org/@looksfarwoman

They only keep the activity during a day (which is on Eastern Standard Time in the US...

##### 2 when you watch the feed and see the upvote from @bumper then just open it up and you will see the amount of the upvote (see example)

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQkC31mbGxUdYxxsMvaKxb1jFXHQDALQfzzKps6ypiaeh/image.png)

### Now to the economics:

First I must point out that they can only take between 0.10 and 0.50 for total upvote (right now) because of the limits of their SP.  You sent in 0.60 so they could only hit it like it was 0.50, the computer doesn't recognize the higher number.

Second, the one from bumper was only 1.47 as you can see above... However they guarantee 3x your investment in upvote, so you will see that they used @seyiodus to make up the .03 difference.  In my case because I send in 10 at a time, they would just add it to another post.

So you got a total upvote of $1.50 for an investment of really 0.50 SBD (the 0.60 was too much to send and don't send more than they can handle).

Now you wait until the post is paid out.  And your upvote returns back to you in the form of payback in both SBD and STEEM.

### value of SBD and STEEM can fluctuate

Sometimes the value of STEEM goes up and sometimes it goes down and you should know that your "upvote of $1.50" can change based on that.  I haven't had any major deviation except for yesterday when there was a big drop in the value of STEEM.  Most of the time it may be 1.45 or something like that, but yesterday it took a nasty hit and it dropped all the way down to 1.25 on one of mine.  Just be aware that it has been a good thing overall because by doing it consistently, I get the averages and its been far more good ones than bad.  I even factor in slippage and only the really bad drops still was very close to breakeven.  @bumper is by far the best I've seen and you know what the upvote will be vs. many of the others.

### Calculation of return estimate and how the economics work

First if you remember this post ["What's An Upvote Worth? - How To Calculate What An Upvote Means In SP and SBD Payouts"](https://steemit.com/steemit/@davemccoy/quick-tip-what-s-an-upvote-worth-how-to-calculate-what-an-upvote-means-in-sp-and-sbd-payouts) you will remember I showed you how to estimate the return.  Now remember this is just an estimate because the prices of steem and sbd do fluctuate and they can affect the value you receive until the last minute... But it is pretty close to being accurate and sometimes it comes out better than I expected too.

Applying the formula the numbers work out like this:

at a $1.50 upvote you should receive 

.5625 PLUS .0937 SP for your .50 investment.  While this doesn't seem like a lot, it adds up and would be over a 10% return on your idle SBD.

Here's the explanation of that.  You have your SBD just sitting in your account right now.  If you use @bumper to upvote your post (3 days old or LESS), then you will use your 0.50 SBD for 4 to 7 days and then you will get paid back when your post hits the 7 day mark.  In the example what that means is you get back your 0.50 and you get an extra 0.0625 of SBD and .0937 SP for your effort (which is minimal once you get a system down).  If you can do this 5 times a day, then you would get an additional .3 of SBD a day and almost .50 of SP too (again using the example)

This adds up.  It is putting your idle SBD to work and is a very low risk way of getting more SBD or SP.  Now there is some risk (as mentioned above, but the worst I did so far which was one of them yesterday was still roughly breakeven)... And I have now submitted hundreds to get the data for you all.

### My Experience And What I Have Learned To Make It Easy

###### As I said, I have averaged about a 10% total return on my idle SBD and that is over roughly a 100 that I have been paid on.  It has to be tracked all the way to the end payout to get this number.

###### I have developed a spreadsheet where I simply post my amount invested and the link and I number it. (See photo)  And of course each time I submit I just add it to the list to make sure @bumper doesn't miss it.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXs2V13DAS9MuX5qz2VTbc3HameQ5uAHws87Ak1yWWp5W/image.png)

***I learned to look for the upvote in the www.steemworld.org account operation feed for the actual upvote given (Note: the reason I point this out is to 1. make sure your post was upvoted and 2. to evaluate and make sure you are getting adequate upvote values.  This is especially true if you use other upvote services, I've found many don't come close to a 3x upvote that @bumper provides)***

***Finally I have learned to also use www.steemword.org to also follow the feed of my actual pay out of my post.  (Note: this is important to make sure I understand my returns and keep track so that I can evaluate what makes the most sense for my SBD)  (See Photo)

OK that's it for now... I am using my reply to you to put all my thoughts and explanations down, so that is why it is so long.  I will edit it and figure out how to simplify it so that I can post it to my blog later on tonight.  This is a long way of saying, you can wait to read it until you get the final version if you like ;) lol

### Tracking

Thank you very much @meepsy, I definitely appreciate you telling me that!