I have picked 5 random whales and analyzed their weekly and yearly earnings on Steemit.
What is a whale?
A whale is a Steemian (a user on Steemit) who has an effective Steem Power (Steem Power +/- delegated Steem) of 50,000 (50K) or higher. (*)
(*) The definition of a whale is actually a bit more complicated and depends on another unit called VEST. This would be a topic for another article ;)
Background
It is very important when talking about earnings that whales have invested a lot into Steemit (energy, time and/or money) and so while their absolute numbers earned may seem high and provoke envy, it is more important to look at their relative earnings in percent of their investment to get a fairer evaluation.
Some of the following whales (not all) have been quoted in a recent controversial discussion about the reward curve as negative examples of whales misusing the system (sometimes negatively referred to as "reward pool rape"). I do not totally agree with this position, because these whales have (a) invested a lot (b) have thousands of followers and (c) give back a lot to the community by upvoting and resteeming others. But in this post I do not want to argue about that (because this leads to such a controversial and negative discussion), but rather look at their earnings just of curiosity and to give some perspective.
Methodology
Remember, one of my previous Steemit Secrets was, that there is no privacy on Steemit whatsoever. So everybody can check how much Steem a Steemian has and even look at their weekly earnings. I took the weekly earnings as reported on the profile page under Rewards and multiplied the numbers by 52 to get a rough extrapolation of the yearly earnings. Please note, that the numbers are not 100% accurate because some weeks can be higher than others depending on activity and actual post/curation rewards. I also count 1 SBD as 1 USD to make the numbers comparable. I convert SBD back to Steem by multiplying the Estimated Authors Reward times 2. Actual earnings are higher because of high SBD/USD price, but I wanted to look at pure Steem in this calculation and exclude the absurdly high SBD price. Also assuming paid reward is set to 50/50.
Estimated weekly earnings in Steem = Estimated Curation Reward + (Estimated Authors Reward * 2)
Estimated yearly earnings in Steem = Estimated weekly earnings * 52
Yearly ROI = Est. yearly earnings / effective Steem Power
How much do five randomly selected whales earn on Steemit?
@lichtblick
Steem Power
50,389.089
Weekly Earnings Curation
29.474
Weekly Earnings Author
163.846
Weekly Earnings
193.32
Yearly Earnings
10,052.64
Return on Investment (ROI)
19.95%
@grumpycat
Steem Power
283,467.529
Weekly Earnings Curation
131.558
Weekly Earnings Author
770.018
Weekly Earnings
901.576
Yearly Earnings
46,881.95
Return on Investment (ROI)
16.54%
@adsactly
Steem Power
639,452.317
Weekly Earnings Curation
145.098
Weekly Earnings Author
1,023.316
Weekly Earnings
1,168.414
Yearly Earnings
60,757.53
Return on Investment (ROI)
9.5%
@transistor
Steem Power
297,171.047
Weekly Earnings Curation
257.547
Weekly Earnings Author
31.508
Weekly Earnings
289.055
Yearly Earnings
15,030.86
Return on Investment (ROI)
5.06%
@sean-king
Steem Power
169,323.300
Weekly Earnings Curation
91.181
Weekly Earnings Author
14.478
Weekly Earnings
105.659
Yearly Earnings
5,494.27
Return on Investment (ROI)
3.24%
Conclusion
These 5 randomly selected whales make a yearly ROI between 3.24% and 19.95% of their invested Steem Power. Considering that the yearly inflation of Steem is currently about 9% (the inflation is the source of the reward pool and used to pay the rewards, witnesses, and interest on SP), these numbers do not look overly concerning to me. It is actually much easier for a minnow to make a 100% ROI than for a whale.
Very interesting! Thank you <3
It's cool that everything is transparent on the blockchain even the earnings of whales 😉
awesome Report
thank you
Thx, steemit is very exciting 😋
Your evrey post are helpfull
Thx, it is interesting thinking about steemit all day long 😋
Great job! I thought their ROI would be higher.
ROI in USD is however higher because of the absurdly high SBD, and rising Steem price of course. But high SBD helps everybody on Steemit, not only the whales 😊
Upvote and resteem.
good information.
Oh thx a lot for the resteem 😊
u always share something Really Informative keep sharing like this u are always good @vikisecrets
Thx, I was inspired by a recent discussion about the reward curve and thought it might be interesting to look deeper into the topic 😉
yeah exactly keep sharing like this u are doing great @vikisecrets
there is still room for improvement in my account
haha, as a matter of fact regardless of how much you earn there will always be somebody earning more 😆
nice analysis.
nothing can be hidden on steemit.
Yes that's interesting, the blockchain is extremely transparent and unforgiving 😆
blockchain to the future 😉
Being a whale would be great :)
Yes it would, maybe someday you will 😉
But I guess that this would be a fulltime job. Is this your aim?
It's almost a fulltime job already 😆
This is nice but i do not think your calculation is right
The investment part is really hard to know as there are many ways to get SP and as long the users is not using money from his own i will not call it investment
but nice idea
thx, it's not 100% accurate and only an estimation, investment meaning here investment of Steem into Steem Power, does not really matter how it was acquired (energy, time, and/or money) 😉
I want to be a whale...
Maybe someday you will 👍
Do you think it's still profitable invest to Steem Power? I am care about it, about future)
If you believe in the future and growth of the platform, which I do, then absolutely :)
In mainang deine mtilogie Sher richtig, danke.
As a result of classification, we earn
I could understand.
What do you mean as "a result of classification"?