Background: I found and joined SN a few days before Million Sat Madness was announced, so I just barely had time to get used to the daily status quo before it changed. Which also means I probably felt the loss of the daily rewards less because it wasn't like I'd had a huge expectation of daily sats that was now gone. And similarly, while I've swung from anywhere from off the board to #26, I'm in a position where I don't feel pressure to make the top 64; I'm already up thousands from stacking in a little over a week, and even if I don't get a single bonus, that's not going away.

That said, I wanted to share what's worked for me as a newbie here to make me feel more comfortable using the site.

1. If we're interacting, I'm zapping. If you've made a post or a comment that I think is worth replying to, I'm going to do you the courtesy of a zap first. Just seems like a way to acknowledge that you've made content that's engaged me, and if I'm asking you to take the time to read and reply, a few sats seems worthwhile. Obviously, in a back-and-forth conversation, this has diminishing returns (literally) since we've established we're both invested in the topic already, but that's the exception. I guess if I ever feel comfortable enough to flame what I think is an awful statement I probably wouldn't zap that, but flaming in general isn't my jam.

1.5 If we're not interacting, I still may be zapping. This took me a little bit to get -- some posts (especially links) generate thousands in zaps with no comments. If you see something you like and that you want to reward, zap, but don't feel the need to comment just to fill space.

2. Success begets success. When I first started and got a few sats from my intro, I started looking at communities that interested me. While I felt confident commenting in some of the pricier communities (because comments are still cheap), I didn't feel comfortable posting in them, since one post would have cost half my sats. But then I posted to some of the more affordable ones and got sats from those, and that gave me both the confidence and the sats to post to communities where posting cost 100 or more sats.

Having sats to lose also means that having a post not get zapped (or not get zapped enough to justify the cost) doesn't hurt as much. But obviously, even if I'm not in it exclusively for the sats, if I'm not getting any zaps or comments, it's not getting any engagement. No sats and no comments means no dopamine rush from seeing that red dot. But it also tells me what the community (or a subset of it) considers interesting or valuable. If I post a few that get no traction, no big deal. But if I keep doing that, it's a waste of money and it fills the timeline with garbage¹.

Sometimes I get as many sats for a quick link or a comment as I do for a long post. While no engagement at all isn't good, worrying about maximizing my zaps just isn't worth it. I enjoy SN, and I want to keep it that way, so I'm posting things that I want to share, commenting on posts that I want to engage with, and not stressing about best time of day or which territories have the most readers. Doing that would probably net me more sats, but also burn out my enjoyment of the site. I don't want SN to be work; it's the thing I do at work when there's nothing else going on.

I'd long meant to learn Markdown, but had never gotten around to it mainly because most of the places I go online are plaintext or WYSWYG, and I use Word in the fiat mines. So I've never needed to, and no, it's hardly the most complicated thing, but it's fun getting the hang of it; using Markdown to format posts reminds me of being forced to learn basic HTML in the LiveJournal days some 20+ years back.

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but there's only so much work I can avoid this morning. :-)