A Quick Tip on Steemd for Beginners and Non-Techies

**How to View Your Voting Strength on the D-site**


![Strength](http://i.imgsafe.org/7f88cc10fd.jpg)


**If You're Like Me, You May Not Understand the Voting Too Well**

Some of us are not technically inclined. We are the ones who often wonder how the voting actually works on Steemit. This site is getting better every day and the developers are working magic with each new change. The wallet is much more functional than it looked a couple of weeks ago, and all these post viewing options are revolutionizing our user experience.  

Yet with voting, we still don’t have much information. Posts display the estimated payment associated with the post, (shared by the author with its voters and commenters), but we never see any “You just made 17 cents!” notification when we click an upvote button. Nor does there seem to be any running total of our upvote earnings that we can see on Steemit. 

You probably know that we each have about 20 upvotes to give out each day. When we vote more often than that, each of our votes counts for less. Have you ever seen the payment listed on a post and the next time you look, it’s gone down instead of up? This can happen because someone who voted for it just made some more votes elsewhere and drained his or her voting strength. The vote on your post is not worth as much as it was when the person cast it. 

Also, if you’re like me, you’re enjoying Steemit’s quality blog posts so much that you might *forget* how many times you’ve voted today. “Did I vote 10 times already or was it 15? I’d better slow down. I don’t want to go over 20.” Wouldn’t it be nice to have a voting tracker that tells us how many times we’ve voted and many more we have left before our power diminishes? 

Are we left to wonder about voting until July 4 or until the developers add some more juicy features to Steemit? **Yes and no.** “Yes” in that some of these features do not exist. I am sure the developers have plenty of other things on their plates, and we are seeing new innovations to the site almost daily. As dynamic and changing as the voting power can be, they probably will add some better vote tracking tools for us at some point.  

By “no”, I mean that you already have access to more information on voting power than you might know about! If you have not yet seen the www.steemd.com site, then please check it out. And thank @roadscape for his hard work on it. 

**Find Your Voting Power**

One feature on Steemd.com that you should get to know is Voting Power. Try this. Type www.steemd.com into your browser to visit the site. Then use your mouse to place the cursor at the end of that address, de-selecting it. Write a / and then your Steemit @account name at the end and press Enter. 

Mine, for example, looks like this: https://steemd.com/@donkeypong. Simply replace my name with yours and you’ll have the right address. 

**Edit: As some commenters below have pointed out, the www. prefix does not work for everyone. If that does not work for you, remove the "www." The site would be http://steemd.com.**

**Double Edit: @roadscape fixed it. The "www" redirects there, too. Use either address.**

At the top, it will show you your STEEM and Vests, which is helpful. Also it shows a recent list of any action involving your name on Steemit. If somebody upvoted one of your posts or just replied to you, for example, you’ll see that listed here instantly.   

On the left side, there is a narrow column with a ton of information in it. The part I want to point out to you is about 10 lines down. It’s called Voting Power. Keep an eye on it. It changes. Though I’m not sure quite what the number indicates (as I’d need some relative numbers to provide enough context), your number will increase slightly over time if you are saving up your votes. That’s a nice way to have a bigger impact when you cast your upvotes. 

Similarly, this Voting Power number can decrease after you expend a number of your votes. That’s probably where it’s most useful: as a warning to stop or slow down before your votes lose their impact. And remember, your voting power is calculating what you have done over the most recent 24 hour period.  

I hope you’ll find this feature useful, as I have. It’s important that we use our votes effectively as we try to recruit and encourage more new posters to join us, thereby driving up Steemit’s values in both social and monetary terms. 

Now get out there and STEEM somebody! In a good way.