Hey @motoengineer - maybe I can answer your question with these two posts...
The first is me announcing to my 800+ followers that I just leased 4000 SP from @minnowbooster, and I will be using it to currate the posts of my (so called) followers. The second post is more or less two weeks later.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@drdave/where-do-i-go-from-here-90-days-on-steemit
The short answer (at least for me) is NO - leasing SP has done nothing to really:
help you grow your account, get more followers, support authors and artists you follow with more significant upvote values, as well as give higher visibility to content you deem worthy.
... let me rephrase that "NO" a little - perhaps the lease has added to the people who are in my followers list, but it has not at all increased the people who are actually following my posts. In fact I have yet to see anyone new from my last two weeks of steady "curating", who has done anything to increase the value of my posts. I have a very small following (maybe 6 or 7 people) who have continuously given me support, and as of yet that has not changed.
As far as making a profit from the SP lease, all I can say is there's no chance at all of that happening. Maybe if I spend the next two weeks chasing whales and bots, I could possibly break even. But I would argue the whales and bots cause much of the problems minnows have to overcome. (but that's a whole topic in itself)
I want to touch on something you mentioned in your comment to @littleboy regarding selfvoting. I do upvote my own posts and some of the comments I write. Usually only if someone else gave it an upvote first, then I will give myself one - not as a money grab but more often than not, to bump it up the list for more visibility. With that being said, there are times when I write a 50 or 100+ word comment that gets no other votes, where you bet your ass I give myself something for it.
When I spent the money to do this (leaseSP) it was for the purpose of doing exactly what @minnowbooster intended, to help me "grow" and possibly do better overall. Unfortunately with my own personal experience - that has not been the case. There could be a thousand different reasons, or no reason at all - maybe people just don't like me or the shit I write about, who knows. One thing I can say with absolute confidence - I probably would have quit Steemit long ago if it wasn't for the things @minnowbooster did to help me along the way...
With that i'm gonna say - go check out my latest posts and UPVOTE... :)
i'm going to upvote your reply because litterally, this is the one of most "connected" comment i've ever had on steem. I'm in the office and its 913PM right now and i want to get the $(@*$ out of here, but i've got stuff to add!! so i will write it on my train ride home! But in case I need to voice, it THANK YOU for being a real live human being and replying!!!
alright there werent any trains, so i had to take a cab home! I read both links you gave me. You are a good writer in the sense that its easy to read what you are trying to convey.
Now onto the meat of it all. I do agree with you that leasing SP will NOT lead to what you quoted. Because your SP won't really get your content higher on the list. I look at leasing SP like having a huge credit line and not being able to use it. Sure you can flash it at people and say, "look at me! I have a lot of credit!!!" the reality is that it does no good unless you use it in some way.
For example, leasing SP to create a votebot puts your money to work, making it a good buisness model. weather or not it is good for steemit is up for debate. but you are geting a real world ROI.
This is why i question leasing SP unless you have a plan to put that SP to work for you. Also why i dont blame someone for upvoting themselves with leased SP. But to me, it is not a good business plan, because your ROI is so poor.
Now if you were to say, you were going to lease SP and then use it to pay people for content (this is the opposite of people putting content in hopes of being paid), then you are modeling a business that essentially guarantees pay for content, like NYT would for a salaried writer.
Its all in how you use the SP, and I want to know what are some successful uses of SP that is not a bot, or used for self upvoting.
Personally, I have been working countless hours of OT this year. ALL OF MY OT MONEY GOES TO CRYPTOCURRENCY. I use the bots to push my content up, and because its up there, I make the money ontop of what I pay the bots. Lately, i've been writing about things that quite literally no one else knows about unless its in the industry. The downside is that people upvote it for curation, not to read it. But I still write because my writing is getting better each day, and I end up writing better memos for work ( and I can do it much faster because of writing for steemit).
Eventually steemit content will saturate the internet, and eventually 1% of all content on the internet will be on steemit. and eventually that 1% will be a fucking GOLD mine of information. So I want to make sure my content is on record for future viewing.
That is at least, my approach.
Thank you @motoengineer and @drdave for the interesting discussion.
I agree with both of you that leasing SP is NOT good for personal gain, even if you upvote your own posts at full power everyday of the leasing time.
If you have enough Steem to spare and you want to be helpful to other minnows, then that is altogether another use of SP, that has no benefit to oneself.
For @drdave (and @motoengineer if you want), I am a curator for @qurator group. If you have good contents you want to share across a decent section of steemians and get upvoted for it, please consider joining.
You can find more details about the group in this post.
It is made by minnows for minnows.
We also value SP delegation or sponsorship for both @qurator and @qustodian. This way you can benefit from a delegated/leased SP
Hope to see you there soon :)
P.S: I will copy/paste this comment as a reply for @drdave to see. So I apologize for spamming you a bit :P