A couple of months back I decided when my account got to around 100 Steem Power I would investigate delegation (the more I learn I think 150SP might be a better aim), its pros and cons and whether it is an option for me (and other plankton!).

What is delegation?

Delegation is essentially letting another Steemian/bot borrow your Steem Power. ‘When a user is delegated Steem Power - their bandwidth, content votes, and curation rewards are calculated as if it were their own Steem Power’ (Steemit FAQ). This can give users more influence on Steem and can help them generate larger upvotes.

A common misconception is that delegating Steem Power is giving it away. This is simply not true - you are only leasing it to someone else, and you still own it, and can claim it back at any time subject to a 7 day ‘cool down’ period. Users cannot power down any Steem Power that has been delegated to them as it still belongs to the original owner.

As Steem Power is needed for bandwidth (to generate ‘transactions’ such as upvoting, posting and resteeming), new accounts are delegated 15 Steem Power by Steemit so they have a stable account to post etc on Steemit. As their account earns Steem Power this undelegated until they have 15 Steem Power of their own.

IMPORTANT - If you are considering delegating then it is VERY IMPORTANT to keep enough SP in your account for daily transactions (upvoting, posting, commenting and resteeming), and to avoid the bandwidth errors - this seems to be around 30SP

Why delegate?

So why would you want to delegate away that SP you have been working so hard to accumulate?

There are a couple of major reasons to delegate your SP:

• To support a community you are a part of
• To gain some passive income

For me, I want to delegate to give back to the community, as I believe that giving back and helping community initiatives is the best way for Steem to grow and be sustainable long term. We all know that getting started and getting any kind of traction is difficult, and I want to give back (even a small ammount) to initiatives that have community values, are interested in helping new/undervalued Steemians and have helped me in some way or another.

That cuts out a large majority of the upvote bots, who are often just out for profit - and it seems delegating to these would generate the best returns (in terms of passive income).

Interesting projects to consider delegating to

Community run bots - So for me this is @teamnz and @anzub - these are run by New Zealanders/Australians who have created a great and supportive community on Discord, and have also allowed me to use these bots, which have been a wonderful help getting myself started on Steemit. If I was to delegate to these bots I wouldn’t expect anything in return - I feel they have already been supportive enough and this would be my way of giving back to the community.

Curation bots - there are more and more of these manual curation bots out there - the largest is @curie, but I have also come across @asapers recently. The idea behind these bots is they have manual curators on the lookout for under-rated content and then upvote it with their bot. These bots/initiatives are focussed on highlighting quality content, and I believe that is a healthy thing for the future of Steemit.

@minnowsupport - Another great initiative - Minnow support have a great discord channel with loads of helpful and friendly Steemians (if you haven't joined then you probably should!). On top of this they also have a bot that members can use to gain an upvote on one of their recent posts.

@steembasicincome - Another great initiative which I believe in - you can ‘nominate’ Steemians to be part of the Steem Basic Income programme where they will receive upvotes on their posts in return. Every 20SP you delegate to SBI you receive a free share.

Conclusion

Delegating Steem Power is essentially letting others borrow it to increase their influence on Steem. There are many different initiatives here on Steem to consider delegating to, and this depends on what your long term goals on here are. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

Reference - Steemit FAQ