I made an application to join the Earth Nation Steemit Guild. It is a community of users that support each other catering to minnows right up to whales.
It's free to join. Every week you are given Guild Credits to use to upboost your post (for free if you are a minnow). If you have a few dollars to spare you can pay to have them upvote your post and get x 2.5 - 3 return on your post.
The credits expire every week and a fresh set is renewed to the account. It means if you don't use your credits in one week you lose them. This is attractive to me because it encourages me to keep on writing, being consistent about it. If you read one of previous posts where I decided to stop being very cautious about my activities here and just write, you will get what I mean.
You can post in any category you wish but as is usually recommended across steemit, the content must be original (no plagarism), citing references where necessary and must be of good quality.
You're free to post what you like as long as it's conscious based, thought-emotion provoking, solution thinking, new paradigm, following creative trends, or spiritual. -- Earth Nation Steemit Guild Terms of Service: 2018-01-30
There is also some learning material at their basecamp that can help a new user learn more about steem and how to be successful on the platform.
This is a great service especially for the minnows because 1. you get to be a part of a community of people that you can follow and support and who will do the same for you. 2. you get a system that pushes you to be consistent in your daily posting and participation on Steemit which can lead to increased rewards.
The only thing I dislike about this system is that I give up most my votes to the Guild. I have only one to use for myself every 24 hours. This is like giving up my curation power.... yes I don't have a lot of voting power and so I get little rewards, but it feels good to see some SP and SBD roll in for something I upvoted even if it's 0.006 SP. But on the flip side I can quit hunting about looking for good stuff to upvote and concentrate on authoring posts and earning from them. 6 of 1 and 1/2 dozen of the other??? Not sure. I'm exploring.
If you are a minnow just starting out I would recommend checking it out and applying to become a member of this guild.
Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-enjoying-music-concert-325521/