Following the recent sale of my flat, I just invested another £1000 into steem, bringing me up to just below ‘Dolphin’ level - steem now represents at least 60% of my overall crypto portfolio, and part of the reason for this is that it offers me a diverse array of means to make a return on my investment.
For the last year, I’ve focused on producing content as the main way to earn steem/ SBD, but recent developments means there’s now a whole load of other ways to make money here, so I figure that now is the time to do a thorough ‘audit’ of ‘income-earning strategies’ available to me on steem.
A further reason for doing a review/ audit is that for the last year I’ve viewed steem as a long-term savings account, powering up everything I’ve earned, but from September I literally want to start using it as an income-tool, and extracting a monthly dollar income out of it: I’m aiming for a mere $100/ month at first, so just a little supplement to main income streams.
What are some of the different strategies available to me?
- Write quality content and chase upvotes ‘organically’.
- Write quality content targeting one of the main whale accounts such as Utopian.
- Curation - Manually upvote my own content
- Curation - ‘Manually’ upvote in return for other people’s upvotes
- Curation - ‘Manually’ upvote what I think are going to be high-payout posts to get maximum curation rewards.
- Delegation - to bid bots
- Delegation - to ‘quality controlled’ self-vote accounts (such as Qurator and Steem Basic Income)
- Delegation to projects such as @steemhunt (actually that’s the only one I can think of for now).
NB - you don’t necessarily have to produce ‘authentic’ or ‘quality’ content to make money on steemit, but personally I can’t see the point in producing crap and trading votes with other people who produce crap, so as far as I’m concerned it goes without saying that part and parcel of nos 1-4 above involves engaging with people and commenting on posts. The community is just a natural part of any authentic (worthwhile/ sustainable) steemit strategy.
Also, these aren’t the only ways of making money on the platform, just a few I’m considering here. You could, for example, become part of @curie and get paid for hunting down quality posts, one of quite a few money making strategies I don’t include here. I’m just here focusing on the main strategies I personally could use fairly easily.
I’ve also ruled out using bid-bots, I just can’t see the point in buying votes.
What could I currently earn per month with a 5K SP investment in each of the above strategies?
Below I simply run through what I could earn with 5000 SP invested ‘all in’ in each of the above strategies. This is all based on the current (12/07) steem and SBD prices which ATW are respectively $1.25 and $1, near enough. I also include details and links to how I calculated each of the above figures.
All figures are also approximate: I’ve just used *30 to work out the monthly figures, and besides, time is short, and I don’t have enough of it to spend all day in front of excel working out figures that fluctuate!
Writing quality content and chasing upvotes ‘organically’
This is pretty much my ‘main’ strategy for making an income - I’ve managed to earn at least $100 a month on average, even in the recent downturn, one or two posts a week usually do OK! NB recent figures don’t reflect my averages, I’ve just had a week off.
Write quality content targeting one of the main whale accounts such as Utopian
I’ve actually just got into using steempress, and am part of a @sndbox project (@steem-times - temporarily on hold due to my moving/ finishing work) and have flirted with @steemhunt posts, I’m also eying up utopian - My steempress posts vote value for the last month (actually really the last two weeks, I joined quite recently) have been worth $40, approximately, based on a quick trawl back through my posts, and in the month before that, my @sndbox votes were worth a similar amount.
Manually upvote my own content
According to steemworld.org my max upvote is $0.36 cents - so depending on how many times I posted a day I could earn from between $10.80 to $100.80/ month depending on whether I posted 1* or 10* a day. I only tend to upvote my own posts, once a day.
Curation - ‘Manually’ upvote in return for other people’s upvotes
This is a cynical strategy in which you ‘vote upwards’, i.e. put in a high auto-vote on someone with a high SP and hope they give you something similar back! I do give some high SP a large % upvote, but only if I like them! I’ve also noticed that there is some mutuality going on, and it’s defo worth something: my regular ‘auto-vote trail is currently only worth just over $1.00 per post (including SBI and qurator) so realistically from $30 to $60 a month depending on whether I post once or twice a day (I know that if I upped it to more than this, many people would take my off auto-vote or just lower their percentage vote value).
Curation - ‘Manually’ upvote what I think are going to be high-payout posts to get maximum curation rewards.
A highly cynical strategy, but TBH one that I do employ - I probably devote about 25% of my voting power to this - mainly high payout Dtubers, because you get even more via their rewards scheme. I couldn’t put an accurate figure on this, but with a 5K vest at max I think this could earn 15SP/ week or 60SP/ month, based on @abh12345’s curation leagues - the top curators win with about 3SP per 1000 SP.
Delegation - to bid bots
Ooh now here we have a touchy subject…. The easy no effort route. Not all bid-bots are equal. The figures below are based on my own returns from a 100 SP ‘tester’ delegation to @smartsteem and @minnowbooster. The results, rounded up are are as follows:
- Smartsteem = 0.6 steem per day per 1000 SP delegated (4.2 sp/ WEEK) = 400 (14.54 SBD/ month). Times by 5 = approx 20 SP and 75 SBD/ month for a 5K SP(you could also use the smartsteem calculator) to work this out
- Minnow Booster = 0.4 steem per day/ 1000 SP delegated (2.8 sp/ WEEK) = so this would be approx 50 SP per month, only 2/3rds the return.
Delegation - to ‘quality controlled’ self-vote accounts (such as Qurator and Steem Basic Income)
The returns for these aren’t quite as large as the above, but they do have higher standards in that they only upvote quality content.
Delegation to projects such as @steemhunt (actually that’s the only one I can think of for now).
Delegating to @steemhunt gets you the same as Minnow Booster, but also plus some tokens.
My 50-50 (ish) investor/ content producer steemit strategy
I’ve hit on the following ‘hybrid strategy’ which allows me to get some (mostly ethical-ish*) passive returns on my investment (with a little ‘max return’ compromise)
Delegation = 2000 SP
I’ve gone with a mixed ethical/ mercenary approach. The last two are charity/ helpy donations respectively.
- Smartsteem = 0.6 steem per day per 1000 SP delegated (4.2 sp/ WEEK) = 500 SP
- Minnow Booster = 0.4 steem per day/ 1000 SP delegated (2.8 sp/ WEEK) = 500 SP
- Qurator = 300 SP, which should take me up to a ‘tier 5 upvote’.
- SteemHunt = 400 SP
- Dollar a Day = 200 SP
- Pay It Forward account = 100 SP
My personal ‘active’ SP = 2600
- Self-Voting once a day = about 10%
- Cynical curation maximisation (but still quality) = about 20% (on auto voter)*
- Auto votes = about another 40%*
- Purely manual = about 30%.
*TBH these are the same - there is enough 'quality' content I like that get's paid well for me to put in large upvotes regularly on certain accounts.
Final thoughts
I’m not a perfect steemian, but a guys gotta earn a living, especially when he’s just quit his job!
*Incidentally, anyone reading this who regularly moralises about ‘manually curating’ rather than investing in bid-bots, can you honestly say all of your non-steem investments are ethical? Are you sure there’s no tobacco, big Pharma, Big Tech or even arms companies somewhere in yer stocks portfolio? It’s all relative!
These strategies are not set in stone, I may actually undelegate from the 'evil' smartsteem in the near future, I certainly won't be putting in more than 10%, it's too much of an ethical compromise, but at those returns, 'fuck it', I'm having at least a little piece of it!
Also, once I grow a bit more I'll probably up by 'charity and project' delegations.
(NB - I haven't actually finished delegating yet, so if yer reading this early on the stats won't match up.)