When I first arrived here on Steemit, armed with basically... nothing... I read lots and lots of posts about "How to Do Well" and "How to Succeed" here in the community.

The thing I found a little puzzling was how many of these were written by (well-meaning, no doubt) people who had only been on the site for a few weeks, themselves. How would they really know what worked, already?

Now look here!

Others were writen by some of the community's earliest adopters... and were great, except they required more tech savvy than I had, and more influence than most newcomers. Perhaps a testament to the fact that in "the early days" you could accomplish a lot more, a lot faster, than you can today.

Anyway, I have now been here about six months, and have some experience, as well as a pretty typical account balance for an active "Redfish."

What "Redfish" Need MOST, to Grow

Unless you came here with a bunch of money to invest, chances are you're trying to build your presence and reputation from the ground up.

That means that — in order to build your account value — every tiny contribution matters.

Chances also are that most of the people you'll be interacting with will also be fairly recent arrivals on Steemit... and, like you, they don't have a lot of voting power.

I started with just 3SP, when I got here!

"Not much voting power" often means that your vote only adds fractions of a cent, which is a problem and leads us to:

No, it doesn't lead to sleeping in the sink, but wanted to get your attention!

The "Dust Threshold" Dilemma

One of the quirks of Steemit is this thing often referred to as the "dust vote threshold." It basically means that any post — and this is particularly important with votes on comments — with a final payout below $0.02 vanishes into thin air when the post "matures" for payout.

I won't get into whether or not this is "unfair;" it is simply a design created to discourage SPAM and to discourage people from creating new accounts in large numbers and using the 15SP starting delegation from Steemit, Inc. to endlessly upvote themselves and harvest lots of "money for nothing."

Of course, while this does address spam, it also affects lots of newcomers with low SP, who might upvote worthy comments, and yet the vote ends up counting for nothing, because the comment ends up being "worth" $0.008, or something similar.

Enter @dustsweeper!

Dustsweeper is a "subscription service" that searches your posts and gives a small upvote to any comment (usually) or post you have created that has upvotes, but is going to be worth less than $0.02 at payout time. That way, your post is now lifted above the "dust threshold" and those small upvotes someone else gave you are not wasted!

@dustsweeper logo by the talented @charisma777

Dustsweeper is a collaboration between @danielsaori (who also runs a Steem witness) and @davemccoy, both of whom are very active in the area of newcomer support on Steemit.

Dustsweeper is NOT an "upvote bot" in the conventional sense, because using the service is always a breakeven proposition: You in essence pay 2 cents for a 2 cent upvote. Its purpose is purely to make sure other people's votes for your content don't go to waste.

What that does mean is that when you have a comment with a 1 1/2-cent upvote, @dustsweeper votes for 2 cents; the comment is now worth 3 1/2 cents which you collect, rather than the NOTHING you have have gotten without the Dustsweeper vote.

Now, you might not think "fractional cents" are worth much, but if you just collect five a day (rather than have them be lost) that ends up becoming something, pretty quickly.

As I like to point out to people, you can fill a bucket, one drop at a time!

Now that you know, I will get back to my nap!

How to Use @dustsweeper

Using @dustsweeper is incredibly easy:

All you have to do is go to your wallet page, transfer some small amount (I usually send 1-2 Steem) to @dustsweeper, and you're set up!

It generally takes about 2-3 days for your first votes to come in. You'll get a confirmation message back from the Dustsweeper bot, to your wallet, letting you know what your upvote balance is.

Once that happens, you can know for sure that other people's smaller votes on your comments (and posts) will NOT go to waste!

And now, I shall return to my nap!

=^..^=

This post was created using SteemPeak.com, a better way to experience Steemit! Check out @steempeak for more!