Crap, haha, Jed is literally one of my best friends on steemit, like family to me- in fact steemit friendships develop in dog years which is a pretty cool feature of this place that should have been mentioned in this post, lol, but let's say I am the Tigger to his Rabbit.

There are indeed some flaws in this place, but as I recently said in a post- if it was easy to get it to work seamlessly then there would already be a hundred competitors.

Jed if you read this comment, I challenge you to name ten people who are doing as well as you that have been here only a couple months let alone most people, (traf doesn't count, nor does anyone's alt accounts) sheesh you really are a Rabbit sometimes haha!

It's a social platform, so be social- thoughtful, useful, original, positive comments are key. The few word commenters on repeat are getting nowhere but ignored or even flagged. Find people you relate to and connect with and be consistent.
Popular posts with a ton of comments on them...it's best to do what you just did here and connect with other commenters, likely the post author is already overwhelmed and the best you can expect is a response to your comment (and most times not even that until you gain some rep) that will probably not result in them visiting your post unless it's a magic moment and you struck a chord in them that resonates huge.

Hm, it's been a long while since I've done a tips for newbies post...haha, actually my one year anniversary is approaching, I'll likely do something along those lines as part of that celebration.

But in all seriousness, if you want to do well here you have to put in serious time and effort in the beginning, I did and it has resulted in -above all a group of invaluable, irreplaceable friends from all over the globe. If making lots of money is your primary goal, then you're a lot more likely to be disappointed, but if you want to meet interesting people from all over the world, if you love creating whatever it is you happen to create and consider the money as a bonus then you won't regret any of your time spent, I definitely don't, and actually you're more likely to attract that money to you.

Hope you give it a chance :)

(I love you Rab--err @jedau ;)