❓Answering Common Questions: My post earnings went down! Where's my money going? 💵

in #steem-help8 years ago (edited)


With the price of Steem dipping down a few days ago, many people are noticing the Estimated Payouts drop down a bit. Let's answer a few questions to get a better idea as to why this is happening, why it's nothing that should scare you and setting proper expectations of active post payouts.

Q: Why are my post payouts going down? I'm not seeing any flags!

The dollar (or other currency) value you see with your active posts are only estimations. Instead of using up to the second information, these use a 3.5 day average of the Steem price. The reason we're seeing our active post values drop right now is because of the drop of the Steem and Bitcoin prices from a few days ago. Since then, it has rebounded from some of that. So we will be seeing the estimates on your posts go up during that period.

Remember that technically our posts are being allocated Steem. Since Steem doesn't directly trade with the US dollar, it's value is based off the Steem to Bitcoin rate AND the Bitcoin to US Dollar rate. Both of these prices effect the actual dollar value we're seeing.

Q: When does the payout get locked in?

You will likely see fluctuations of your post value (outside of votes) throughout the 7 days it's active. When the payout hits, the (3.5 day average) price of Steem at that moment is used to calculate what goes into your wallet.

Q: Should I be worries about this?

No, don't let the price fluctuations bother you. While I understand the feeling of seeing those payout estimates go down...we also get the benefit of those increasing while prices are going up. They do balance out in the end!

Q: Is there any benefit to the price going down?

When the Steem price is down, you earn more Steem on payouts. The benefit here is that when the price rises again, all of those "extra" Steem you just earned will be worth more too.
Example: So if you have a post paying $10 as Steem Power(SP), you'd get 10 SP when Steem costs $1, but if it were only at $0.50, you would get 20 SP.

Q: Does this effect posts that are paid out and unclaimed?

The short answer is no. When that post paid out, it used the 3.5 day average Steem price at the time of payout. So how much Steem/SD you got was locked in to that specific time. However, the actual dollar value of the Steem/SD does continue to fluctuate with the market.

Q: Does the price of Steem effect what's already in my wallet?

The amount of Steem and Steem Power you have is unaffected by the actual price of Steem. However, the estimated account value so many of us look at uses the 3.5 day average of the Steem Price in it's calculation.

Q: But isn't that my money being taken away? [A quick word on expectations.]

Until a post is actually paid out, it's earnings are only POTENTIAL...not set in stone. Sure, nobody likes to see the estimated payout go down, but remember it's not actually yours yet. It could all be wiped out by a powerful flag on it too.

Don't get stuck in the trap of being scared or offended when your posts estimated price goes down from simple price fluctuations. Instead, use it as a learning experience to be more comfortable with the inner workings of Steemit. This will also let you see the upswings that benefit you easier, so you can know that it does balance out.

Feel free to ask me anything. I'm here to Help!


Previous Helpful Posts for Newbies

❓Answering Common Questions: Why am I not getting votes? What can I do about it? 📷

❓Answering Common Questions: Where does the money come from? 💵

❓Answering Common Questions: Should I use 100% Steem Power or 50%/50% Payouts for my Post❓

❓Answering Common Questions: Reputation and Flags! What's this Number by my Name? #️⃣️

❓Answering Common Questions: Steem, Steem Power, Steem Dollars and What Should I do with them? 💲

What's this Slider Bar and Vote Power Percentage? What's the Difference?

Why Newbies Should be Excited about the next Hardfork

Answering Common Questions about Voting and Curation

Don't Miss the Show! Follow the Steemit Talk Podcast (STP) Account

New STP Website!!

Are you new to Steemit and Looking for Answers? - Try https://www.steemithelp.net.


Image Sources:
Money Digitizing

Sort:  

thanks....promoted.

You're very welcome!
And thank you so much for the promotion! :D

Your steemit radar strikes again! Any question I see floating out there among the users, poof - there is a sykochica post with the answers. Good stuff!

I like to keep my radar state of the art, hehe.
Thank you!

Thanks sykochia. I am new here and this helped me understand things a bit more.

On a different note, I came up with this idea on how we can grow the network via SEO. I'd love to get your opinion and feedback on it.

Do you think it's worth my time to push this? Would you do it? Does it seem like a fun post to make? And would you reward others for doing this? Thank you!

Hiyas and welcome! I'm glad to be helpful.

I think the inbound link campaign would be interesting. I would figure they'd help on the SEO end and not really costing anything. So all in all I'd be for giving it a shot.

It'd also be a good grassroot marketing campaign which had fallen out of vogue for a while. With all the new signups and their excitement, I'd say this is a good time to give it a try.

I can offer some upvotes (even though I don't give a ton of money with it.) Since we have limited votes..I'd say top 3, maybe top 5 a day. Could also offer SD earned on the post for it as prizes too.

I did want to mention that while I do like the idea, things like this have been hit or miss, especially for newer users. Don't get to bothered if it doesn't get notice right away. (But people seem to jump on options to get them extra post rewards and/or prizes.)

Awesome @sykochica! Thank you very much for the feedback. I'm going to keep this idea on the radar by putting out some recurring posts covering the sites SEO, and any growth we might see over time.

If you have any incoming links to Steem and make a links post of your own (similar to this -https://steemit.com/steemit/@trevorlyman/my-incoming-links-post) I'll be happy to resteem it to help spread the word!

Thanks again! :)

Thank you! I'll let you know if I end up doing one myself.
I resteemed your post on it..try to get it spread a bit for you.

Thank you so much! :D :D :D I hope the idea catches on! I hope you enjoy the upcoming content on the sites SEO, there really is a lot we can do and it will benefit ALL of us!

Love your arcticle. What do you mean that we only have 3-5 up votes a day? I've been noticing that sometimes my upvotes have no impact whatsoever and other times it could add up to .50 cents. Thank you for your insight!

Thank you!
The website will let us vote however many times we want without really stopping us. But we have a statistic called vote power percentage that goes down each time we vote. The lower the vote power percentage, the less money we can give with our vote as well as less potential earnings from curation rewards.

However, this vote power percentage regenerates over time. The way it's set up is to refill the equivalent of 40 full (100% on the slider bar) votes every 24 hours. So while there isn't a hard limit (where the site doesn't let you vote anymore) but instead a soft limit that gives time for our vote power to recharge back up.

Seeing that you don't have a lot of Steem Power right now, I suspect that there were other votes that went in with yours to bring it up that much. But there are things that can change how much you do give per vote such as, your vote power percentage, the price of steem and how much other people have voted.

Thank you that explains it well! So it's to be more mindful of your upvotes?

When you a smaller user (pretty low Steem Power) it's not as big of a deal. But the more SP you hold, the better it is (in my opinion) to be mindful of voting.

I try to keep mine at least at 75% or higher.

Ok that's helpful. I did follow you. Really good info on you blog.

@sykochica I have sincerely found your post material to the very BEST of the best in helping me to understand and be a better Steemit community member! Keep Up the great work! U.R.O.C.K. !!
steem cake.jpg

Thank you! I rather pride myself on being able to break aspects of Steem down into an easier to understand form. It's a double bonus that these are fun for me, lol!

Thanks for doing this, I thought about a similar post, but never did it. :) Well done.

Hehe, you're definitely welcome. I'd seen a lot of people curious what was going on with it, asking if they'd been flagged, etc.

Hopefully this can ease some minds and calm some nerves. At least a little bit, lol.

I like this... except this particular item I'd re-write... only because it requires the reader to come to their own conclusion of the benefit.

We make it easier for readers if we just go ahead and state the obvious;

When the Steem price is down, it lets you get more Steem on payouts. So if you have a post paying $10 as SP, you'd get 10 SP when Steem costs $1, but if it were only at $0.50 you would get 20 SP.

When the Steem price is down, you earn more Steem on payouts. The benefit here is that when steem price rises again, all of those "extra" steem you just earned will be worth more too....

Example: So if you have a post paying $10 as SP, you'd get 10 SP when Steem costs $1, but if it were only at $0.50 you would get 20 SP

Good point. Thank you!
I made the edit. :)

Good stuff. great to see and have you back @sykochica! :)

Thank you and thank you! :D
I'm so glad to be back around again! Also been really happy seeing your stuff take off on here recently!

Thanks for Your detailed explanation. It helps adapt our platform. Understand about how things work around here. You do a great job!

Thank you! I really have a good time making these, as well as all the interaction through comments.

Always feel free to ask questions if they come to mind. :)

This post just answered by questions so i have been wondering for the pas few days why my earnings have been going down, and thought i was the only one facing the problem, Great post i will share this post with my audience thanks @sykochica.

I'm glad it was helpful! Hopefully, reducing the stress I'm sure that caused.

Thanks for sharing it! :D

Cool, I was wondering if I'd been flagged.. but I didn't see any indication of it. So I wondered if the block chain had termites. Lol. Or gremlins. Now I understand it's the fluctuations.
Darn it, now i have to return the gremlin spray. Ah well.

Happy to help out!

And you could hold on to the gremlin spray. You never know when those little buggers to show up! Lol

"Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world." - Archimedes

Although I have not commented much on your excellent tutorial articles, they have all been resteemed, shared and promoted in my own feed to spread the knowledge bliss among my handful of followers. }:)

One more time my dear @sykochica, ¡Upvoted & Resteemed! :)

Thank you!
I do really appreciated you reading and the resteems! :D

My post earnings went down.

They were already down before earning, How could I notice them when they were less than 1$.

When the Steem price is down, it lets you get more Steem on payouts.

Atleast something is good.

use it as a learning experience to be more comfortable with the inner workings of Steemit.

I always think steemit as a learning experience, as you earn only when you learn.

I second that. There's a lot of good information on Steemit. It doesn't all have to be about making money. That said, money will always be important.

Money is the motivation; The goal is to make ourselves better.

I see money as security. If I have some, I don't worry as much.

That makes the two of us.

They were already down before earning, How could I notice them when they were less than 1$.

You can see $0.80 goto $0.40..lol. I still get you're point though.

If things still stay rough for you, I can find some time to look over your blog to see if I can think of ways to help.

That would be good, but I was just kidding, I would like to work my way out myself, Life is hard and It doesn't get easy until you work on it to make it. Anyways appreciate your concern.

Wow this was a great post @sykochica I love how you broke it down and answered a lot of questions lingering on my mind and others. I booked marked this one! Thanks :)

You're welcome! I love being helpful. I'm still paying it forward from when I was new. :)

Thank you. Yes you do pay it forward, I think we all should take a chapter out of your book! :)

thanks gee, i could remember the panic created when everyone saw $0.00 after the hard fork, . . .not a funny stuff in my opinion,

spot on on the potential payout, really many don't understand that until you payout, the money isn't yet yours.

followed.

Yea, that was a pretty rough month for everybody here. That was like a 98% reduction overnight..this is nothing! Lol

Thank you!

Well said, great post not only for newbies - I understand these points quite well but struggle with other things on e.g. what to do with liquid SBD and Steem currently - sleepless nights at the moment!

Thank you for this post. It clarifies a lot. :)
I ll follow you, and you check out both of my blogs if you like it!
Best,
@velimir

You're very welcome and I'm happy to help!

I took a look at your stuff...GREAT content! And congrats on getting those great payouts early on!

Thank you very much :-))

I was wondering about this very topic thank you for clarifying it for me. Great post Thank you !!!

Very interesting, a lot of new informations for me. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, that clears a few things up!

Thank you for outlining this to me, i was just wondering why my payout were going down, but now i got the answer

You're very welcome! I'm glad it was helpful.

Some of these questions I always had. I recently stumble upon your post and profile.

Is there any benefit to the price going down?

It's kinda interesting, if it goes down we get our payout and then when the price goes up, we still have more Steem dollar. I have seen lots of your other Q&A posts. Good one. @sykochica

Thank you for reading!

Amazing how finding a little silver lining can make a situation less stressful. :)

Of course, I do read every post of yours. and, it helped me immensely. I'm sure, more to come and I'm waiting for that @sykochica

THANS for the STEEM (help).
Support to be supported.
1 By 1.

Little by little.... I'm learning about steem. Keep up these info-post. I need them!!!! 👍

Exactly! Start posting, talking with people and just pick up a couple new bits on how it works along the way.

I've got some more of these planned, at least a half dozen. But it might be slightly less frequent with my new job starting tomorrow.

Happy to help!

Thanks for this, helps me as a new user to understand Steemit a bit better. Upvoted and following you.

Thank you! Happy to have helped out. :)

Thank you for this informative post, this is helpful for newbies like me. :)

You're very welcome! I love being helpful.

Feel free to ask questions anytime. :)

Good Explanation. :)
Thanks for the links in the post. It helped me a lot and I am sure it will be helpful for other new users like me. Keep it up.

Good faq @sykochica

You have been PROMOTED FREE for using the "faq" TAG (hashtag)

https://steemit.com/promoted/faq

Thank you! I was actually looking for this for a while and finally you explained it.
I've been on Steem for a few days but I am happy to bring my little financial knowledge to the community. Cheers !

Thanks for this post. As STEEM price is going down considerably, I kept wondering why my payout amount is going down on its own and at the same time my net account worth is also diminishing. But your post clarifies. Wonderful post. Thanks a lot.

Yes, thank you very much, that was really helpful.

I noticed my estimate payout fell from $7.40 -> $7.20 despite there being a rise in the Steem Dollar value. Any idea why this happened?

Open payouts are based only off the price of Steem...which had dropped in value. Steem Dollar value doesn't have any effect on pending payouts.

hi thanks for writing this blog. i have cleared so many questions. promoted as well.

just tell me one thing when my estimated price goes down why my SBD and Sp goes high ?

when my estimated price goes down why my SBD and Sp goes high ?

I don't quite understand the question, sorry. The SBD and SP in where?

I was a little scared when my tiny little bit earning went down. Thanks for clearing my doubts. I am following you now. Hope you make such helpful posts in future too.