The Ultimate Guide To Steemit Payouts
A while back, I produced series of FAQ posts on Steemit. Lately, with the huge influx of users, I've been getting quite a few comments on these old posts. Much of the information is outdated, so I thoughts it's time I make some new ones. One of the more popular posts is "Payouts" so that's where I'll start.
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Payouts
When I make a blog post, there's a drop-down menu that says "rewards." The default is 50%/50%, what does this mean?
You can choose between three options for your post payout:
- 50%/50% - Half of your payment will be in Steem Dollars and the other half in Steem Power.
- Power Up 100% - Your entire payout will be in Steem Power.
- Decline Payout - You won't receive a payout.
When will I receive my payout?
All payouts occur exactly 7 days after your post or comment is made.
Why does my future payout keep changing?
Upvotes will increase your payout and flags will decrease your payout. If you haven't received any new upvotes or flags, there are several other reasons why your payout may have changed:
There is a fixed amount of new STEEM created each week to be dispersed to users as rewards in a rolling 7 day period. At any given time, the system is making an estimate of how much you will be paid based on what percentage of Steem Power-adjusted votes your post possesses.
Let's pretend a piece of content is currently worth $5. But then, many other posts suddenly become highly-upvoted. The money to pay those popular posts needs to come from somewhere, so a portion of your post's value is reallocated to these newly-popular posts. Now your post may only be worth $4.50.
Another reason your payout may change is price movements in the 3.5-day moving average of STEEM. If the price of STEEM increases, the value of your post will increase, all else equal.
My post said I was going to get paid $10, why did I only make $7.80?
The dollar figure you see at the bottom of your post or comment is not the amount of your payout. You, as the author, are guaranteed at least 75% of the total. As much as 25% goes to the curators (users who upvoted your post).
In this instance, you received $7.80 and the curators received $2.20.
If I was supposed to receive $7.80, why did I only get paid 3.9 Steem Dollars and 2 Steem Power?
When posting, you chose the default 50/50 payout option, so you received half of your payout in Steem Dollars. Half of $7.80 is $3.90. That is where the 3.9 Steem Dollars came from.
Since you received 2 Steem Power, that means the average price of STEEM over the duration of your post was $1.95. 2 Steem Power * $1.95 = $3.90. That is where the other 50% of your payout went.
How do reward distributions work?
The Steem network separates payouts into two categories, the author reward, and the curation reward:
The author is guaranteed at least 75%. Curators get up to 25%.
Author reward is paid out:
- 50% in Steem Power
- 50% in Steem Dollars, STEEM, or a combination of the two
Curation rewards are paid out:
- 100% in Steem Power
As mentioned above, at the time of posting, authors have the option to be paid 100% in Steem Power or to decline a payout altogether.
What determines how much of the curation reward goes to the author versus curators?
The payout split depends on how long after posting the vote was cast, using a linear function:
- If a post is upvoted the moment of posting, 100% of the curation award goes to the author.
- If a post is upvoted 30 min after posting, 100% of the curation award goes to the curator.
- Between 0 and 30 minutes, each moment that passes, more of the reward goes to the curator.
- At 15 minutes it's a 50/50 split.
- At 3 minutes, 90% goes to the author and 10% to the curator.
- At 27 minutes, 10% goes to the author and 90% to the curator.
I’m upvoting posts at the right time. Why am I not getting meaningful curation awards?
This is a complicated topic, but keeping things more understandable - To receive meaningful curation rewards, you need a combination of:
- Steem Power
- High voting power
- High voting weight
- You must also upvote posts before they become popular and after some time has passed since posting.
Upvoting posts that are already on the trending page isn't going to earn you much in curation rewards. Also, new users with very little Steem Power will be hard pressed to earn any curation rewards, even when voting optimally.
If you want to learn the complex math on the topic, I recommend reading @theoretical's post series on the topic.
Steem rewards users for commenting and upvoting. Why not for sharing?
You can gain curation rewards from resteeming. Not directly, but indirectly. The rewards that you earn will depend on how popular the post becomes after you upvote the post and share it with your followers.
If you find a post that you think will become popular, upvote it, then resteem it to your followers. The resteem will help the post become that much more popular. The result will be a higher curation reward for yourself.
Now that I earned some Steem Dollars, what can I do with them?
You have a few options:
- Visit a Steem marketplace such as https://www.peerhub.com (created by @steemrollin)
- Hang onto them
- Cash them out
- Buy STEEM
- Power Up (Must convert to STEEM before powering up)
Do you need clarification on anything? What do you want to learn next? Let me know in the comments!
can u still get paid if a post recieved upvotes after the initial posting date? or is upvoting old posts useless?
You won't get paid by the Steem blockchain after 7 days, but an upvote will positively effect your reputation score.
what effect does a higher reputation have other than bragging rights?
I am curious, thank you for the information.
I think steemit uses reputation scores to hide poor quality posts.
yeah I want to know how this works.. Like say you make the post and its so dope it gets listed on the serps but its after a week. Say im a whale and find it after a week from a search engine and I upvote it.. Do I get a payout from that whale upvote or after 7 days is the article oayour void. If its void then thats some booty.
You won't get paid for the upvote that occurs after 7 days, but your reputation score will be positively effected.
So, there is no rewards in circulation when older posts are voted, right?
That's correct, rewards are unaffected.
Does it affect your voting power, though, when you upvote old posts, or can you go around and upvote millions of old posts at full power without it diluting your ability to vote on new content?
Yes, it does cost voting power.
If it does cost voting power - where then does the reward go that have been created?
What if an 8 day old post gets a new comment. Does upvoting the new comment in an old post result in curation reward?
It will result in a 25% curation reward for the user who voted that comment, and a reward for the person who wrote the comment.
Does the comment have its own reward window? Is it separate from the reward window for the post (that already ended)?
Yes, the reward window is separate at it pays out 7 days after the comment is made.
Now I understand a lot more about the curation reward process. Previously, it deterred me from voting and commenting on posts older than 7 days.
Have you got an answer for this question? I have been wondering this myself.
There are no direct rewards after the 7 days. But you can get followers, comments or post links to refferal programms.
Exactly, that is what I was searching for hours and I tried to upvote the posts, but for 7 days or more old posts nothing is changed in rewards. This is an essential aspect of steemit that I think it is better for newcomers to know.
You are totally right, I have certainly upvoted some things that havent counted. When now we can right messages and then maybe the upvote would ount
Very well written. Bookmarked for my newbie coworkers. I had difficulty explaing curation in correlation to popularity and timing. Some where I read it's better to upvote before there are thirty upvotes.
Thank you. While it's true that voting before others will give you more curation rewards than the people who vote after you, don't listen to that "thirty upvotes" number you heard. It's a pretty useless number. Who voted before you is much more important.
The curation system is designed to reward you for discovering great posts before they become popular, and disincentive voting for posts just because you know they'll become popular.
Good to know! It seemed like a weird number to check for.
Clear and concise. Many thanks. Looking forward to others in the series. There are going to be others right?
Thanks for checking it out! Yes, there will be more.
I was looking for something like this. thank you for sharing!
I'm glad you found it helpful!
I wanted to resteem this because it's a very useful topic, but I can't find the button. Did you by any chance disable that option on here? Great informational post.
Resteem option automatically disappears after the post is 7 days old
As far as I know, you can't disable that button. Maybe the resteem button disappears when the post gets to a certain age?
Possibly so. I checked again and it's definitely not there. Bummer because this is very useful information! I keep coming back to it. :)
Resteem disappears after 7 days
Hi @shenanigator. Great blog, thanks so much for writing it. I have one question regarding curation rewards. You only described the split between 0-30 minutes, but what happens after 30?
After 30 minutes, 100% of the curation rewards go to the curator. None go to the author. Although, it's looking like this 30-minute window will be changed in the next Steem Hard Fork. It's changing to 15 minutes if I remember right.
Thanks for your reply @shenanigator. I look forward to exploring your older content to find more nuggets of information. I learned the most from your blog than many blogs combined. Keep you the great work. You are appreciated.
BRILLIANT! Thank you for this, I have a friend who has also just joined and we were so confused about the 50/50 thing. We'll both be going 100% from now on, thank you again !
Before choosing 100%, check this out...
For this example, let's assume STEEM is Trading at an average price of $2.00.
If you earn $10 on a post and you choose "Power Up 100%," you'll receive 5 Steem Power.
Now, instead of "Power Up 100%," you choose a 50/50 payout:
You'll receive 2.5 Steem Power and 5 Steem Dollars.
If you go to steemdollar.com, you'll see that a Steem Dollar is worth $1.71 (price changes all the time). This means you can sell your 5 Steem Dollars on an exchange for $8.55. With your $8.55, you could buy 4.275 Steem Power. By choosing 50/50 instead of 100% SP, you got 6.775 Steem Power instead of 5 Steem Power.
The lesson here is this: Any time Steem Dollars are trading above $1.00, choose 50/50 payout and sell your Steem Dollars on an exchange.
Thank you! Until I read this, I thought I understood everything I needed to about payouts and the interplay of SP, STEEM and SBD. I was wrong:)
You're welcome!
Hi @shenanigator, If you earn $10 why is the earnings ''2.5 Steem Power and 5 Steem Dollars'' and not ''5 Steem Power and 5 Steem Dollars''? Thanks
Because in that example steem was valued at $2.00 and he was describing 50/50 reward selection - 50% steem power and 50% steem dollars.
The steem power you would recieve gets cut in half in this example because its valued at twice as much as steem dollars. If it was valued at $1 you would have recieved the 5/5 but at $2 you get half as much.
Steem dollars are valued at $1 so you would get the full 5.
This can be verified on your wallet page.
STEEM DOLLARS
Tokens worth about $1.00 of STEEM, currently collecting 0% APR
You would only get 5 Steem Power if a single STEEM was worth $1. In my example, Steem was priced at $2. If the Steem price were $5, you'd only get 1 Steem Power. A $0.10 Steem price would result in you getting 50 Steem Power.
I underrstood this a little before reading this comment, but you made it so clear. Thanks so much, mate!
Wow! This made things so much clearer! Thanks so much for this article.
If I were to resteem this article, do you get any benefit from it, if so what?
Also, do I get any added benefit from it (Reputation?), beyond helping my followers understand the steemit platform, of course..?
How does a higher reputation number help, exactly?
Thanks so much for your help, by the way...
Since it is past the 7-day payout window, I can't earn anymore on this post. But I may earn some followers from your resteem, which might benefit me in the future.
Not really.
Users might be more likely to read a post if it's written by someone with a higher reputation.
Also, if I flag you, since my reputation is higher than yours, my flag will negatively effect your reputation. However, if you flag me, my reputation is unaffected since your reputation is lower than mine.
Lastly, the higher your reputation, the more you affect others' reputation with your upvotes. For example, if we both have 100k SP and upvote a newbie, my vote is going to have more effect on their reputation than your vote because my reputation is higher.
There's a possibility that at some point in the future the protocol will be changed to have reputation play more or less of a role.
alrighty its starting to make some sense lol
Haha, I'm glad it helped you out.
This is a must read for everybody. Clearly written and nice examples. Got my upvote!!
I appreciate the support!