"Tips are small amounts of SBD or STEEM that are send to other steem users. Sending a tip is a great way to reward a steem author, especially if your upvote is very small." Better yet,

"Tips don't drain your voting power!

0.05 SBD/STEEM may not seem much but every steem author can have many subscribers - in this situation he will receive combined reward from all subscribers. The nice thing is that the subscription rewards are sent instantly after the new post has been created so there is no need to wait 7 days for post reward.
The obvious downside, when comparing to upvotes, is that you need to pay the subscription reward from your funds."

But I'm still trying to figure out how many Steemians I can "subscribe" to and "tip." And I haven't done this yet:
please feel free to ask in the comments or join the discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/NDh35gx :)