Most of you probably already have heard of @minnowbooster one way or another.
Maybe you know the upvote-bot or have used it yourself. Maybe you know the Steempower Leasing & Delegating Option. For me - I’ve used the up-vote bot and was so happy with it that I looked into Steempower Leasing.I've done a bit of theorycrafting and created a spreadsheet to calculate if it would be profitable to invest into Steempower Leasing (not delegating - I won’t go into it in this post).
I want to share those revelations with you, while also asking for your help if I did any thought-mistakes.
Alright, first of all a quick introduction into Steem Power Leasing.
What Is Steempower?
Steempower is what decides how much your up-vote is worth.
If you have 100 Steempower then your 100% upvote is worth 0.02$.
If you have 1000 Steempower then your 100% upvote is worth 0.17$.
If you have 10000 Steempower then your 100$ upvote is worth 1.7$
It is however important to mention that the amount of $ is calculated through 1.) the reward pool and 2.) the steem price. Both are changing all the time. Steem price for example went from 1.3 to 1.6 today alone. So those votes are worth more automatically. If the steem price drops - upvotes are worth less.
Additionally - the more people vote on steem - the less your vote is worth and visa versa.
The worth of your up vote determines how big of an influence you have. How much you can shape the attention of a post. Giving a post an upvote of 5$ will easily catapult the post from new category to hot and thus increases the exposure for other Steemians.
It also - and this is what I’ve calculated - increase the amount of curation you get.
For example - if I upvote my own post right after creating I give myself the value of my upvote directly. So if my up vote is worth 1$ - I just gave myself 1$. This also can be used to boost your own post to the hot or trending category yourself.
What Is VotingPower (VP) /VoteStrength? (VS)
The difference between VP and VS is that:
VP tells you how much VP from 0% to 100% you still have. About 20% of VP gets regenerated over 24h. (0.98 ^ 11 ~= 0.80)
VS tells you how strong your Vote is. Think of it as if you are playing a fighting game. And the character you play has light, normal and special attacks. The light attack will take less time and power to cast. The Normal Attack will take more and the special attack will take a lot more but does probably a lot more damage. VS is similar to that.
VS can be changed with a bar around the voting area once you reach a certain amount of SP - I think it is about 500. So don't worry if you don't see it.
When you upvote with 100% VP and 50% VS and 20$ - your upvote is worth 10$.
When you upvote with 50% VP (because you already upvoted a lot) and 100% VS and still 20$ - your upvote is also only 10$.
When you upvote with 100% VP and 100%VS and 20$ - your upvote is then worth 20$.
Voting on your own posts or others
So you should upvote about 11 times every day. The question now is: on what.
You could upvote your own posts and comments - which will bring you a very steady and 100% income of your Vote Worth - but that's not very cool. Or you you can upvote on other content. Either because you like it or because you think that it is a hidden gem and will generate some traffic.
If you vote on your own posts - it doesn't really matter when you vote but earlier is better. However, when you vote on other peoples content - there is a timeline of 30 minutes where in those 30 minutes the reward you get will get more curation reward the nearer it gets to the end. And the nearer it is to the creating of the post - the more of that upvote reward the author himself will get.
When you find good content and you really like it - you could wait for it to reach the 30 minute mark and then upvote it or you could upvote it without thinking about it.
The thing is - the earlier you post on something without many upvotes on it - the more reward you will get. But the earlier from a timeline you upvote it - the less you get. So it is a mindgame to decide when to vote.
What is Leasing?
Leasing means that you rent something for a period of time. For this time you pay a specific amount. You probably heard of it when talking about buying a car - or rather leasing it since it most people rather do the second. The same principle applies to Steempower Leasing - you pay someone a specific amount of Steem (e.g. 4 Steem) for 1 Week of 400 Steempower. At the end of the 1 week you will lose the Steempower but won't get the 4 Steem back also.
Leasing Profit Calculation
Now let me get to my calculation:
(I will use shortcuts - Voting Power (VP), SteemPower (SP), VoteDollar (VD))
First case will be the perfect, not-cheating case where I only up vote myself about 2 times at 100% VP as I create my own posts and 8 times other posts. Perfect as it is very difficult to only vote with 100% on posts you actually like rather than just something that pops up.
My base value to calculate the steem vote-price is about 0.00016645$
Let’s calculate how much I earn with my own steempower. I have currently around 100 VP.
My VD equals 0.017$ = 100 VP * 0.00016645$.
I can vote 2 times every day for myself and 8 times for others. Let’s just say that when I vote for others I get around 70% of the return as if I vote only for myself (if I’m wrong about that - please correct me)
Every Day: 0.134$ = 2 Votes * 0.017$ + (8 Votes *0.017$ * 0.7 PercentValue)
Every Week: 0.938$ = 0.017$ * 7 Days
Every Month: 3.752$ = 0.938$ * 4 Month
So I’ll earn around 4$ every month through upvoting with 100 SteemPower if everything works out.
Now let’s say I want to lease some SP. For this I need to pay 1 STEEM for 75 SP (1 -3 weeks) or 1 STEEM for 150 SP (4-12 weeks).
4+ Weeks is obviously way cheaper and thus I will use this in my calculation. Let’s say I want to get 1500 SP for 4 weeks.
That means: 10 STEEM * 4 = 40 STEEM for 4 weeks.
Currently the price for 1 STEEM is around 1,60$ which means 40 STEEM have a value of 64$. So I need to make at least 64$ to make it even. For this, I will use the same calculation as above.
My VD equals 0.25$ = 1500 VP * 0.00016645.
Every Day: 1.9$ = 2 Votes * 0.017$ + (8 Votes * 0,017$ * 0,7 PercentValue)
Every Week: 13.3$ = 1.9$ * 7 Days
Every Month: 53.2$ = 13.3$ * 4 Month
Through my calculation - I would only make around 77% of my invest as a return. If we would do this calculation with 100% self-voting you would make around 70$ - so 110% of the investment.
Conclusion
Now, free money is free money but in comparison to other crypto investment alternatives - I’m not sure if it is the best way to increase your rewards to lease SteemPower. As you saw in the first example - the return is even lower as the investment.
So as a pure ROI SP Leasing might not be the best thing - however on the positive side: Leasing SP will give you a lot of influence and with this you can change Steemit for the better. Even an upvote with "only" 10 cents sometimes makes a difference for the author and gives him the motivation to continue.
I want to thank the @minnowbooster team - @thecryptodrive, @reggaemuffin, @whaleshares for their amazing work. Maybe you could say one or two words to my theory.
If you think that I did a mistake or rather you have something else which I haven't thought about - please comment under this post because I would actually love to see leasing SP to be profitable.
That’s it for now. Hope you have a great day! :)
-Wolf
Nice guide! Reading through it at the moment.
I have to correct you: if you vote with only 50% vp it only costs you 1% vp not 2%. So if you do more than 10 votes per day, you effectively spread up your vote, but do not forfeit earnings.
Your calculations are looking solid. Steem power leasing is useful if you want to get a standing in the community. Doing it for the ROI will most likely not make you happy. (otherwise no one would lease you SP at that price)
I resteem your post once your voting power explanations are correct 😊 mention me once you fixed it.
Hey reggaemuffin, amazing - thanks for the reply and upvote!
I get what you mean - but maybe I have a thought bug. With VotePower I mean that which gets refreshed 20% in 24 hours. With Vote Strength I mean that which you can regulate once you have a certain amount of SteemPower.
So when I vote with 100% VoteStrength but i have only 80% VotePower I will get less rather than voting with 100% VotePower - right..? :'D
The calculation for how much vp a vote costs is
2% * vp * vsso0.02 * 0.50 * 1.00 = 0.01So voting 100% at 50% vp is the same as voting 50% at 100% vp. So effectively you have up to 11 100% votes per day as
0.98 ^ 11 ~= 0.80Hope that helps. If you have any questions or stuff is unclear, ask me 😊
Edit: so the less vp it costs the less payout it gives. These two are related 1:1 so you always have 10 100% votes worth of money to give out. If you vote more than 10 people it just gets spread a bit more.
There are technical details with rshares and claimed shares and steem price but they are irrelevant for that calculation.
Ah ok I understand. Thank you for the explanation! But just to be sure. The amount of VP that get's reduced is constant 2% or does it get reduced? And if yes - is there a formula too?
That is the formula I posted. 2% is only at 100% vp and vs. Otherwise they are multiplicative factors to it. So almost no vote costs the full 2%.
Okay - I understand. Thanks so much!
I've rewritten a lot of the intro text before the calculation. Are there any more bugs? I knew that I would have to edit a bit but it always amazes me how much of a tunnelvision one has when creating a post.
That is looking good. I like the fighting game analogy, it works really well.
I'd add to your xSP = y$ that steem price and rewards pool change this number all the time. So people should not rely on the accuracy of it. Steem price changed from 1.3 to 1.6 today and that made all votes be worth more automatically. If it drops same thing in reverse happens.
And the more people vote, the less each vote is worth. So if ned decides to vote, you could notice your voting power to drop. If trafalgar stops voting, you may notice your vote to be worth more.
Remember that if you have strong SP you can have stronger influence which generates followers and followers generates upvotes
So if you are not gaining money out of leasing but still gaining your money back
It's a pretty good deal, it's like getting influence for free
That's a good argument and what I tried to tell at the end. ROI wise leasing might not be the profitable but every one starts a t the bottom and sometimes we have to think about other things first rather than how we could maximize our $-gains.
@therealwolf I know this article is old, but I don't know if you can be kind enough to lease me or lend me some Steem power for sometime. Please support a minnow and help me grow on this platform. It's pretty frustrating for my kind along with the bandwidth restrictions.
Thanks for this analysis @therealwolf. I decided a month ago to stop upvoting myself and theorized that I could earn more if I use my upvotes to upvote others. I was thinking of the possibility to lease Steempower for my experiment regarding this. I suspected it wasn't profitable for this purpose at the current prices. Thanks for confirming it.
Simply ROI wise - sp leasing is kind of a null game - maybe a bit risky since you have to me active. However, the reason I leased nearly 3k SP now is because the thought of "more sp = more influence" is right. Giving someone a 50$ upvote is a greater feeling than just a 0,02$ upvote. And I can even use the adjustment of voting strength - so here. You've earned yourself an upvote!
Thank you for this good information. I will try to apply something . Have a nice day !
I was thinking about leasing for SP until i read this, however in my concept and initiative i've found out that i still need it. Thank you very much for such great enlightenment you gave me @therealwolf!
I leased 2000 SP a while back, i may or may not have gotten close to my investment, [i upvoted too early most the time lol] but im glad i was able to give people at least .1 instaed of .001 lol,
Awesome formulas and math btw, =)
Did you see a change of upvotes on your own posts and/or did your followers increase faster than before? So you'd say all in all it was a good investment? :)
Yes, i guess it was
When you say you voted too early - can you describe the mistake? When were you voting, and when do you think you should have voted? I am very unclear about the timing of voting and how it matters.
If you vote within 5 minutes of a post the author gets all your vote power from 5 to 30 minutes it slowly shifts back to you, still after 7 days its 25 / 75 percent, and if you upvote after 30 and tge payout is 5$ and one day later its 200, thats even better for you as you were early, im prolly off about the timing but you read more in the FAQ
This is very good information, thank you.
This post is amazing such good food for thought towards my understanding on at the profit side of steemit. In both the post and the comments. :) Thanks for sharing.
Thanks dreamingirwin, I appreciate your upvote! :)
And I appreciate the added perspective :)
According to your post the pool gets smaller the more people upvote, so seems to me that the upvote bots hurt their own powers as more people use them.
Do you mean voting bots like randowhale, minnowbooster, booster etc? Or people who are just spamming upvotes?
I meant the booster and the whale etc.
A bit confusing but I think I'm getting it... Maybe
Thanks!
I'm sorry - it's a difficult topic to discuss. Hope you get it over time.
Just noticed a typo in your post. You wrote:
If you have 10000 Steempower then your 100$ upvote is worth 1.7$
The typo here is that you have 100$ but it should be 100%. There's a dollar sign where a percent sign should be.
Great post, by the way! I haven't tried leasing Steempower yet, but I may still do it. You know, spread some goodwill here on Steemit.
This post received a 1.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @therealwolf! For more information, click here!
Thank you for your Post... Really helpful Content for a Newbie like me!
This post has received a 26.09 % upvote from @lovejuice thanks to: @therealwolf. They have officially sprayed their dank amps all over your post rewards. GOOD TIMES! Vote for Aggroed!
This post has received a 3.13 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @dreamingirwin.
@therealwolf from where did you get this number? --My base value to calculate the steem vote-price is about 0.00016645$--
I went to https://steemnow.com/upvotecalc.html - put in the highest steempower number which is 10.000.000 and divided that by the $ value of 1659.60$ = this was around 0.00016595. This may not be right, but this was the fastest way for me to get the base value. Where did you get yours?
Thank you for the explanation :)
You didn't take into account that if you have a big SP your articles will be upvoted more often because they will be seen by more people. Also you will not getting only SBD. Your SP will be also increased.
They will be seen by more people because your own upvote is worth more? Or what is your argument? :)
I think he means you are not taking into account the additional increase to your own sp that comes from your work over the month.
With the original sp - you would receive a low amount of curation reward. Now with the higher power level, your new curation reward for the same post would be higher. So over the month, you are increasing your real sp faster than you would have without the delegation.
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STOPI wonder what's your perspective on the various bots. I think the what's the cause of the changes they all seem to be going through.
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STOPCheers mate for this! Helpful for new people to learn and understand!
Wonderful post!! Although I have a confusion about when you said "Let’s just say that when I vote for others I get around 70% of the return as if I vote only for myself (if I’m wrong about that - please correct me)" Are you saying that you get 70% back as curation reward after voting on others' posts? I thought the voter gets back only 25% as curation reward, not 70%
Please explain this part. Thanks!!
Here I am . . .
Comment for wish your upvote
Very interesting calculations but I think you haven't put the curation rewards into account. With 1500 SP you will make about ~0.35 Steem just from curation rewards. More from yourself and less from others. More if it was a post you upvoted early and where many votes followed yours. That doesn't make it profitable either but more interesting.
Wow deeep article. i took a snap of the steem power you get per $. and leasing steem is new to me but very interestng. Thx!
I understood all you said. Roi and everything. But how much sp do you earn after a month ? Which is your own and it will not disappear after 1 month contract.
hi i am following you @therealwolf i ned ur help to promote my account
great stuff. i am learning. thanks to guides like this
I like this guide. i wonder if there is a newer version. Just replying, so easy for me to access later