What To Do with my STEEM Income?

I believe that the best way to play SteemIt is to buy a big block of tokens during dips and to start powering down curation rewards after the purchase.

I dislike how some voices on SteemIt stigmatize powering down because powering down is a necessary part of the curation process. The platform needs curators. People who buy STEEM to curate should be planning a power down strategy. It is the only way to realize the gain from curation

In contrast, the system gives half of one's author rewards in unstaked form.

Personally, I like to power-up 100% of my author rewards.

Quite frankly, I realize that I am lucky to get any votes. Since I want to be a good netizen, I want to vest all of my author rewards.

My ideal strategy for playing SteemIt is the reverse of the algorithm.

Anyway, I took advantage of the recent dip in the price of STEEM to put my money where my mouth is. Last month I bought 5000 STEEM. I now have 6182 STEEM which is worth about $480. My upvote value is little bit above $0.02 per post.

The super fun stat is that I have 10,054,988 VESTS which means that I am a dolphin.

How Much Do I Earn?

Curation rewards vary depending on voting style. SteemWorld indicates that the base value of my upvote is worth about 0.074 SP. I get 70 votes a week which means I should make 5.14 SP a week ... assuming that I make few mistakes.

Last week I started to power down 5 SP a week.

I managed to front run some whales last week. My actual earning was 12 SP.

I don't know if I will do that every week. My plan is to adjust my power down every four weeks.

My Account Will Continue to Growth with Author Rewards

I power up my author rewards. This will increase my curation rewards

It looks like I am receiving somewhere between 0.0008 and 0.0016 SP a week for each vested STEEM.

If I received 1 STEEM POWER for this post, then I would see my weekly curation rewards increase by that amount.

I know that this is marginal ... but it is something.

What Should I Do With My 5 STEEM?

Now for the fun part of my post. I powered down 5 STEEM this morning. This leads to an interesting question: what should I do with it?

The fact that I have a steady flow of spending money changes my view of the platform.

I eventually want my 5 STEEM to end up in my bank account. But there isn't a law against playing with it on the way to the bank.

When I was buying STEEM on Hive-Engine last week, I noticed that the exchange suffered a lack of liquidity.

There was low volume on the STEEM:HIVE. Many days saw fewer than a dozen shares trade hand. Even worse there was a huge gap between the BUY and ASK price.

So, I've decided to use my first power down to simply play the margin gap on hive engine.

The fact that I will be using the money should have a positive impact on the platform. The very act of trading the coins on an open market will improve liquidity.

NOTE: Speaking of liquidity. The STEEM:HIVE deisel pool has $9,468 in liquity. It processed $3,254 in transactions last week. It is a better path than the exchange for large volumes.

If you are thinking of using Hive Engine to trade steem; it is wise to check the swap price before entering an order on the exchange.

Note, I invested 143 STEEM in the STEEM:LTC pool. This pool is nice if you are wanting a path from steem into the crypto world at large.

The Picture & Conclusion

I asked Night Cafe for this post about how active traders improve the liquidity of the platform.

I encourage others to adopt the strategy of powering up author rewards and powering down curation rewards. I think that this is the best way for small accounts to support the platform.

There should be no stigma for powering down small amounts of STEEM. Small weekly power downs provide the nice steady flow of STEEM into the general market while assuring that my account continues to slowly grow.

It is a wonderful feeling to actually have an income on this platform. We should never vilify curators for powering down as it is the only way for curators to realize their profits.