Sine the last post about basic features of the Steemit platform was so well received, I decided to continue. Today, we're going to talk about another topic which is extremely popular: how (and why) do you get paid?
For What Am I Getting Paid In The Steemit Platform?
You can get paid for writing articles, comments and for upvoting (curating) other articles or comments.
If I Write Something And Nobody Votes It, Am I Still Getting Paid?
Nope. It means nobody found your content worthy of attention. You get rewards only when somebody upvotes your content.
In What Currency Am I Getting Paid? I See A "$" Sign Near My Rewards Number
You're getting paid in a combination of 2 currencies and 2 types of storage. Let me explain:
the currencies are:
-- STEEM, which is a currency produced by the Steem blockchain, the same way the Bitcoin blockchain produces Bitcoin
-- Steem Backed Dollars (SBD), which is a smart contract on the Steem blockchain, intended at creating a peg between the USD and the Steem. In other words, SBD is "1USD worth of STEEM". That means one SBD should always worth one US Dollar. Lately, the peg was broken, because SBD is in high demand, so right now one SBD trades at around $2.
the storages are:
-- liquid currencies: your Steem and SBD balances are liquid, meaning you can transfer and transact them immediately
-- vested currencies, namely Steem Power. Think of Steem Power like some sort of a deposit which blocks your Steem in a special account, from which you can take it back only by powering down (see below).
You see the "$" sign because the conversion is done automatically by the platform.
What Is Powering Down?
Powering down is a process of withdrawing your Steem Power from the vesting storage to your liquid storage, in 13 equal weekly payments. So if you have 13,000 Steem Power and start powering down, you will get, each week, into your Steem wallet, 1000 Steem, for 13 weeks in a row.
Why Is It This Steem Power Good For?
Steem Power influences the power of votes in the Steem Platform. When you vote an article or a comment, you take a specific part of the reward pool and allocate it to that content, based on how much Steem Power you have.
Is That All?
Nope, when you vote, you're also eligible for a curation reward. The rewards a post receives are split into author rewards (going to the author of the post) and curation rewards (going to the voters and distributed based on the amount of Steem Power they have at the moment of voting).
How New Steem Is Generated?
By inflation. Just like any other token minted by a blockchain, Steem has a fixed inflation rate which "prints" (or generates) new coins every day. This inflation is the reward pool.
How Is The Reward Pool Organized? Everything Is For Writers?
Nope. Only 75% is for writers (and curators). 15% is distributed to witnesses, for maintaining the network, and 10% is allocated as interest for the Steem Power holders.
How Big Is The Reward Pool?
Roughly, every day around 43,000 Steem are allocated to the authors. When Steem was trading at $0.16, that meant a total of $6,880 / day. Now, when Steem trades at $2.3, that means $98,900 (almost $100k / day).
How Long Does It Take To Cash Out For A Post?
Around 7 days. During this time window, your post is "open" meaning it can accumulate or lose rewards based on the upvotes/ downvotes it receives.
Are the Rewards Displayed Guaranteed?
Since during the 7 days window everybody can upvote / downvote your post, nothing is set in stone. No reward is guaranteed until the blockchain actually is disbursing the rewards in your wallet.
What Are Minnows, Dolphins and Whales?
These are names (specific not only to the Steemit platform, but common in other blockchains as well) designating the worth of a specific account. At the current values, a minnow will be somebody holding a few hundreds dollars worth of Steem, a dolphin will be somebody holding anything between thousands and tens of thousands dollars worth of Steem and whales within hundreds of thousands and millions dollars worth of Steem.
How Much Does It Costs To Transfer STEEM From One Account To Another?
Zero. There are no transfer fees between Steem accounts.
How Long Does It Takes From A Transfer To Clear?
It's instant.
Is Writing The Only Way To Get Steem / SBD?
Nope. Steem / SBD are traded on popular exchanges like Poloniex and Bittrex. But it might be cheaper to get them by writing. If you write good content, and other people are upvoting you, obviously.
Other posts in this series:
For the Steemit ecosystem I created a free tool for checking your potential rewards at steem.supply.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Thank you for sharing this. I found it very helpful. I am still new to Steemit and learning its little nuances.
Hello my friend, can you help and upvote my post with my son, on 4-th it's her birthday and I want to give a little gift.
https://steemit.com/family/@cobran/my-boy
Thanks!
Thank you very much for your detailed information for newbie. Many friend in my following list had resteem your post today! You make me understand more about steemit and how it is work! Looking forward to see your new posts!
Thanks, glad it's useful :)
Hello my friend, can you help and upvote my post with my son, on 4-th it's her birthday and I want to give a little gift.
https://steemit.com/family/@cobran/my-boy
Thanks!
New to this...two days, but any advice re steempower gratefully accepted . I have upvoted you, if you like my posts and videos, I will be posting lots of awesome videos -please UPVOTE ME.
This is, by far, the best explanation of Steemit that I have seen! Outstanding work. RESTEEMED.
☆☆☆☆☆😎
Thanks, glad it's helpful :)
You're welcome.
Hello my friend, can you help and upvote my post with my son, on 4-th it's her birthday and I want to give a little gift.
https://steemit.com/family/@cobran/my-boy
Thanks!
Excellent explanation! this information should be on the welcome page before/after signups for newbies to understand....
Glad you find this useful.
Hello my friend, can you help and upvote my post with my son, on 4-th it's her birthday and I want to give a little gift.
https://steemit.com/family/@cobran/my-boy
Thanks!
New to this...two days, but any advice re steempower gratefully accepted . I have upvoted you, if you like my posts and videos, I will be posting lots of awesome videos -please UPVOTE ME.
Very well written piece. Very beneficial for information on Steem and what everything means. Thanks a lot.
You're welcome!
any advice re steempower gratefully accepted . I have upvoted you, if you like my posts and videos, I will be posting lots of awesome videos -please UPVOTE ME.
Nice article @dragosroua. One question though. Isn't it so that interest is now zero? It says so on the wallet page
For SBD interest is zero. Steem Power still receives interest, AFAIK, but it's very small.
Ah ok! Most of our capital gains comes from the steem price increase i guess, so interest isn't that important then..
Yes. Interest to SP is just a little bit of incentive to hold it, apart from what you get in curation.
Ah i do have a question about that though. I now have 50 SP (up from 8 a week ago) and still have another 50 in the week waiting list.
Still curation offers me 0. Can you give me an approximation of when that will change?
EDIT: you might want to consider doing a newbie faq on rewards. Like when does your upvote go to 1 cent and when does curation start doing stuff etc etc
For curation, you need to have at least 100 SP, otherwise the rewards received for curation will be so small that will get lost just by rounding.
Upvoted!
Lol... I also asked the same question the first time I heard about steemit.
I just post an artice today:
https://steemit.com/steem/@ygern/where-is-the-money-on-the-stemmit-platform-actually-from-let-me-try-to-answer-this-question
maybe related to this question too. :)
I love how you explain this in detail @dragosroua , gonna share this to my newyly-signed up friends , upcoming joiners and to the large group in facebook we've created for steemit. Thank you and more power!! :-))
Thanks, glad you found this useful!
This is very helpful. Could you elaborate on the USD peg mechanism in a follow up post?
Thanks for the suggestion, wrote it down and queued a post on that.
Very useful. I collevt some SBD in my wallet..hehe
Very useful information for all the important points. Cleared up few of my doubts, thanks!
you're welcome :)
very good.
Earlier you mentioned something about
assignment of someone to vote for witnesses
I've been thinking about that.
could you expand?
are you available?
You can proxy your witness voting power to an account. Basically, you trust that account to be good enough and make wise decision and empower the owner with your SP. You can do that on the voting witness page.
So once you proxied your SP to somebody else, every time he or she votes for a witness, you will vote too.
empower the owner with my SP.
ONLY for witness voting?
I can see why this might make some evil whales unhappy.
:)
ok...you got my proxy.
Thanks :)
Kick some whale ass...you and I agree on more things than we disagree on...
Thank you! You just cleared up some doubts in my head!
Upvoting does not deplete my account-correct? What about resteeming? Is there a cost? Steem savings in the wallet....is that a good thing to put steem into? Is there a way to save posts in folders for later? A lot of great stuff here to read/watch.
Upvoting doesn't deplete your account, just your ability to "allocate" from the reward pool. If you vote too much your capacity to "allocate" from the reward pool is be drained. Currently, this is happening after 40 votes / day. From HardFork 19, this will happen after 10 votes / day. Resteeming has no influence over your voting power or account. Savings is just what it is, a savings account, it will protect your funds if your account gets hacked, as there is a 3 days period after the funds are available form there. Read for later is not yet implemented.
Thanks dragosroua.
New to this...two days, but any advice re steempower gratefully accepted . I have upvoted you, if you like my posts and videos, I will be posting lots of awesome videos -please UPVOTE ME.
Awesome information especially beneficial for newbies but even long time users can solidify their knowledge by reading this post. Upvoted!
New to this...two days, but any advice re steempower gratefully accepted . I have upvoted you, if you like my posts and videos, I will be posting lots of awesome videos -please UPVOTE ME.
Very informative FAQ. Nicely written.
Have upvoted and followed you. ☺️
Glad you found this useful. Thank you.
This is an excellent explanation of the process/system.
Good explainations for newbies!
Resteemed.
Hey thank you. Really clear and concise. I'm new and learning/taking it all in. I've tried curating music but it seems like not many people are interested haha. But its only been about a week. Thanks to your post I have a better understanding of the payments behind this amazing site.
It's a learning curve, indeed. Things are changing continuously and, if you want to make it here (whatever that means to you) you have to understand what those people want and deliver exactly that. Like in any other business.
Thanks for the help. Gon follow you. Look forward to more posts.
Thank you so much for this, it is very well explained to people or minnows like me. Still find out new things everyday but this was so well done.
Thank you!
Thank you so so much for this post. This was such a pleasure to read it. You explained it without any turns and curls. Some people explain it using words to impress but one can't really understand everything. Upvoted. Followed
Thank you, glad it's useful.
This is excellent for newcomers! One point that I just didn't know about for a while was that when you start the 13 week power down, you are also able to stop the power down. Not sure if that is clear to newcomers anywhere or not.
Good point, yes, you can start and restart the process as many times as you want.
Thank you for this post. Very helpful. Does it matter how often you redeem your rewards?
Nope, but I'd do it as often as I can, just to be sure.
Short but clear! Even some of the users including me aren't 100% sure how this platform works. Thx for your explanation!
You're welcome!
Thank for sharing, for someone new to Steem, your post has helped answered a lot of questions for me. I look forward to getting started and involved in this community.
I seem to be catching up with your very educative articles. I am a newbie and intend to follow you, hoping to learn from an outstanding witness. Thanks for sharing
Good old post 👌🤗
THANK YOU
Nice article! I have upvoted your post, can you help me to upvote my post too? Thanks
Thanks. Nope, I can't help you with that. But you just gave me an idea about a new FAQ: Steemit netiquette: do's and dont's in the Steemit ecosystem: how to burn your followership or how to build a consistent network.
@dragosroua I like the article bbut I think your article on netiquette as it applies to Steem could be even a MORE valuable read for new comers. I'm not sure it will stop begging but it might help people realize that content is up voted just for that, The Content.
I hear you :)
I look forward to this post.
There you go: https://steemit.com/steem/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-netiquette-how-to-avoid-being-a-steem-douche
Great post. This topic is comprehensively tackled and I think you deserve commendation.
Very good, very good!
Those are valuable and important informative information.
Good job @dragosroua!
Excellent! Thanks for the short answers!
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the first half of Jun 08. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $34.22 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jun 08 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Hi. I just post an artice today:
https://steemit.com/steem/@ygern/where-is-the-money-on-the-stemmit-platform-actually-from-let-me-try-to-answer-this-question
maybe related to this question too. :)
Thank you its a very helpful post full with information.
i found this helpfull for me as a nubie, do you know where i can find any information related to wallet and how to withdraw ?
Thanks, that cleared a lot of confusion. Very consise and to the point.
I've noticed a lot of "sir" people here. Is that a thing? Are you all related in some way? The first one I noticed was @sircork
Nope, my nickname isn't supposed to be read as Sir Evention, more as one word, and if you read it backwards, you'll be mindfucked. It's just a random cool sounding nickname I made long time ago and I still like it :)
NO! It never is, Si? Rev ent ion.
This is excellent information. Thank you.
all helps - i am fairly new and finding my niche here - i hope to post good content and be useful in growing the network.
Once a post has cashed out after 7 days, if it receives more upvotes later, will it cash out again?
Another question: If you power up, that's instant. If you power down, it takes 13 weeks, but you don't have to power down all the way, right? You can just power down some of your funds... and you can set a new amount to power down a second time within that 13 weeks? Can you stop a power down once the process has begun?
When you start powering down, you will receive 1/13 of the amount you have when you start to power down, not more, not less, every week, until that amount is depleted. If you acquire more SP during this time it won't count towards that quota. You can stop the process anytime.
I see. So you can't power down an amount in any increment less than 1/13th of your total SP, correct?
Yes, but I made an official proposal for that a few days ago, check it out here: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1521. If you want to support it, leave a comment there, it will show that there is real demand for it.
Do you know the answer to my other question about what happens if a post receives more upvotes after 7 days?
Thank you for the post. Very helpful. What's the rate of inflation of the steem? If an account hold lots of steem power and does not vote, it will likely to lose money over time, is it correct?
Nope, that account will actually receive a bit of interest for SP, but it's very low, under 1% per year, if I'm not wrong.
Thank you for the reply. Looks like the inflation rate is 9.5% now. More than other currencies.
Thank you for sharing info followed newbie here added to my knowledge ;-)
Thank you , what I really don't understand is the profitability in the form of moneycreation.
I really don't get how this can be profitable , creating ( inflation ) of new Steem or SBD only has an effect on the marketcap. Marketcap is getting diluted and those new coins are rewards (no income of Steem) Hammering Steem price constantly imho. Is their really no other way of income here ? Apps paying for use blockchain or something like that ? I am very new in this cryptocurrency market , but this strategy isn't profitable. And sorry for saying , but this entire Steem and certainly SteemPower (SP)-system feels like a Ponzi-Scheme (PS). As I see it right now only new Steem buyers and holders can drive price up as long as the are bigger than inflation , which off course can happen when there are many new members. This is really simple thinking , but please correct me if I completly misunderstand this concept. By the way , great posts. Thx
Thank you. This article took almost all my doubts away about steemit platform.
wow, just saw this now, well exlained. Thanks
Is there a fixed limit for the amount of total STEEM that will ever exist?
This post is really useful
So, you mentioned that upvotes within 7 days of the post go towards boosting the value of the post, now that I found this post 2 months later, when I upvote it, is it a wasted vote?
Great article by the way!