the money in the payout amount on each post fluctuates because it is tied to the overall Steem cryptocurrency blockchain which fluctuates in value.
people with small accounts whose votes only count for a penny, maybe up to 10-14 cents of "potential payout" have a hard time voting on a lot of posts because your voting power drops each time you vote. so, if you are only able to upvote something for a penny, like me, and you vote more than 10 times a day, you lose 20% of your voting power. If I were to keep voting anyway, my vote would no longer count for a penny because my voting power would become too low. As is right now, my voting power is below 75. My vote is no longer worth a penny. If I vote it is still moral support I guess, but my steemit penny has no monetary value to the author. When a person with hundreds of thousands of steem power upvotes comments, their votes are NOT worth a Steemit penny. Their votes could be worth a hundred or more dollars. So, lets say 100 people comment on a post like this (not spammers but good commenters, such as you and me, and the person posting has enough steem power to upvote a total of $200 worth, they could use that vote to upvote EACH COMMENT $2. That is why people are sort of upset. Instead of spreading the wealth to other members of steemit, the earnings, like for instance the $1800 earned on this post, are not being used even in a small way to support community participation, which is SUPPOSED to be a fundamental principle of steemit.
It is seen as bad taste to upvote your own post. I do and do not agree. Sometimes when a little account, called plankton or minnows, post good content, they earn very little. Cents. If they upvote themselves, they burn through one of their daily votes lowering their their voting power, but they earn so little to me its not a horrible thing. When people who have steem power high enough for a single $200 upvote, upvote themselves, they earn an addition $200 steemit dollars (combo of SBD and Steem) by barely even using voting power. That is what people consider reward pool rape. Paying yourself large amounts of money, then not distributing the wealth by supporting good quality content from posts or comments.
This is what I have come to understand from the just over two months I have been here. I hope that helped.
PLEASE DONT FLAG ME. I DID NOT ATTACK TO TAKE SIDES WITH ANYONE. I am neutral. There are two sides to this feud and I am not on either side. Just trying to help some newbs understand better how steemit works. { :
Thank you for clarifying. Your write up helped me a lot. I didn't understand about the Voting power and right now I'm at about 60% voting power. My account is a tiny little account with only 20ish Steem Power, Hopefully it will grow, I have a lot of faith long term on this plattform and I can already see that it is being used for good, however, some people that are up to no good seem to have a lot of power, hopefully that is a problem that gets fixed as the community grows.
Yes, I understand how you feel. What is helping me keep focus is basically paying attention to people and initiatives which are doing good, and trying to ignore the drama. Sometimes, though, the drama is pretty widespread and hard to completely avoid. Anyway, just try to focus on your goals here, and ESPECIALLY networking with likeminded people. Becoming friends and good acquaintances with people here is essential, in my opinion. if you are not already, you should consider joining the Peace Abundance & liberty Discord chat server to begin interacting with other people and making friends. If you go to @minnowsupport and look at their posts, you will find a discord link (I believe) to the chat room. I also have it listed at the bottom of all of my posts. Not trying to shill my posts, but I do have the invite link there if you have a hard time finding it other places.
@phedizzle I dont agree. This is not communism. Those who have steempower worked for it. It’s the same as having a large bank balance. You can keep the interest for yourself, or give it to whoever you please. You don’t have to spread it around, you can give it all to one person if you want.
If you would like to try being a dolphin or a whale for a week or more, you can lease as much steempower as you want through minnowbooster. It will only cost you a few dollars. For example, I could lease 9999 steempower for a one-off cost of just 166 steem or less. That’s a lot of bang for your buck.
If you vote it well, you will get back more than the cost of the lease.
So now you have invested your own money to lease steempower, who will you vote for?
Will you spread it around hundreds or thousands of blogs or will you vote for the two or three best ones?
Answer: It’s your choice. It’s your money. Do as you please. You can even just vote own blogs or comments if you want.