When I first joined Steemit, back in June, one of the first things that crossed my mind was:

"Shit, I need more Steem Power!"

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So, I did what the average person did joining around the time I joined, and I bought Steem for 2-3X what it's been worth the past couple days.

The FOMO hit me too fast and it never crossed my mind that it used to be worth as little as 7 cents at one point, and would most certainly take a pretty long, and large dip!

It also didn't cross my mind that MinnowBooster.net was allowing people to lease SP, in both directions. I'm not 100% sure if this service was even available at the time; I do recall seeing one of the first posts saying that Delegation of SP was possible now. However, "back in the day", before MinnowBooster offered their SP Leasing Service, Delegating your SP to somebody was difficult for us programming noobs. MinnowBooster made this easy for us!

For those of you who don't know, you can get the SP you want, temporarily, for a much smaller amount of Steem than would normally be required. Me personally, I've been leasing my SP to OTHER people, not leasing it from MinnowBooster, however, both are very good ideas if you want to progress here on Steemit quickly! I'd like to take a second to thank MinnowBooster and everybody else behind BuildTeam who helped make this service possible (and easy)!

So how do we lease our SP out to people via MinnowBooster? And what are the benefits?

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I'm so glad you asked! There are multiple benefits for both parties concerned.

The person receiving the Leased SP gets a nice boost to their account.

Their upvote is worth more, and they are more likely to get noticed by people because of this.

The person doing the Leasing of their SP ends up getting paid in STEEM (this STEEM is the fee that the other person is paying to "rent" your SP). These payouts are daily, and I recently just started leasing enough of my SP to end up earning ~1 STEEM daily! This is pretty cool, because you're not losing anything, and you're actually making gains by helping out accounts who want the extra boost

As you can see here, I am also receiving a small amount of SBD daily for leasing some SP directly to the @MinnowBooster bot, from the same site. They pay you in SBD, whereas actual users pay you in STEEM, and MinnowBooster.net takes a small cut, which they say is a temporary fee.

The person doing the leasing also gets the curation rewards from the person who is upvoting with their SP.

For example, when I lease my SP out, I look for the most responsible Curators, people who use their voting power responsibly, to upvote quality posts.

So, essentially, by letting people rent your SP from you, via MinnowBooster.net, you get paid in multiple ways: STEEM & STEEMPOWER.

This is huge.

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The reason this is huge, is because this lets people become more influential, more quickly, here on Steemit, while allowing the early investors behind STEEM (I'm using that term vaguely here; Only been here 3 months) to benefit by helping others.

So far, I am very satisfied with Leasing my SP through the MinnowBooster service, even though my Upvote has taken a temporary cut...

Whoa, hold up! You ain't touchin' my upvote!

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If you worship your upvote value on SteemNow.com, it is likely that you don't want to Lease your SP out to somebody, and instead, Lease MORE SP for yourself. When you Lease your SP to somebody, you still OWN those vested shares of Steem (otherwise called STEEMPOWER). You still own them 100%, BUT, somebody else is USING IT, temporarily. Therefore, when you go and check your amount of Vests via a service like SteemitBoard.com, you will see that your amount is NOT decreasing when you Lease your SP out.

However, if you look at your SP from a service like SteemNow.com, you will see that you have a lower amount of usable SP, because somebody else is using it temporarily.

So how do we decide who to Lease our SP to?

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Another great question. Right now, I believe the largest amount of my Leased SP is going to @OriginalWorks, one of my favorite upvote bots, which doubles as a verification bot for original content. I have a lot of respect for this bot; It may be my favorite bot ever (: I make sure I like the account who is going to receive my SP before I confirm the Lease...

Afterall, do you want to Lease your SP to an inactive account, or somebody who spams upvotes on every post and comment?

NOPE!

So get to the important shit, Alex: How do we Lease our SP out to somebody, and start profiting from it?

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You guys are killing it with the questions today! And I get that you're probably anxious to get started (If you feel you have the Extra SP to spare, or in this case, Lease Out).

First, go to www.MinnowBooster.net and go to Open Requests, at the top.

This will show you the list of people who WANT your SP. Do some research by typing their usernames into www.steemd.com or www.steemnow.com to see their Curation tactics (Are they a quality curator, or a shit-post spammer?).

Then, when you choose one, select Fill Order next to their name in the list:

It will say this where it says "Locked..." here. This is a very rare occurrence on MinnowBooster.net, as I have never seen it say this before.

Likely, by the time you visit their site, they will be done with whatever maintenance they are doing; They are likely experiencing a high volume of traffic right now. If it says "Locked" when you visit, just give it some time and check back later!

Then, one you have selected "Fill Order", MinnowBooster.net will ask you for your Username & Password.
I trust these guys with that information; They are very altruistic, reputable, and transparent (with everything but passwords, obviously).

Whoaaaaa, I gotta give them my Steemit Password? Oh heyyyyyyllllll NAW!

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Yeah, in order to Lease your SP to somebody via MinnowBooster.net, you need to sign in with your password.

Please keep in mind that if you have mainly STEEM POWER in your Steemit wallet, you have nothing to worry about. At the very worst, somebody can begin the Power Down process, which takes 7 Days to even do anything. If you don’t check your Steemit account every 7 Days at least, you should!

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have!

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I am still new here, but I feel like I am fairly familiar with how things work in this awesome community we have here on Steemit 😄

I hope you found this interesting, and consider leasing your SP, not only to profit for yourself, but to also help out the smaller fish here! 🐠