This is a post that I am writing to address a couple of questions I see new people asking and making posts or comments about. Apparently, whatever introductory information they saw when they created their account did not explain a couple of things well enough for someone that was new, or perhaps they didn't see them, read them, etc.

Payout

Your payout is based upon a reward pool. Let's call that P for POOL. This reward pool is FIXED in size every day.

When you up vote something it takes your steem power and leverages it towards how much of the reward pool to allocate. Let's call that sp.

Well let's assume you are up voting everything 100%. You cast your vote and the current voting curve appears to actually be 4n, when many of us were hoping for just n. That means your vote is worth 4 times your steem power.

So you vote and now 4sp is allocated to take from that pool. If NO ONE else voted for that day you would get the entire pool.

Yet it isn't just you that votes. A lot of people vote and the more steem power you have the more you can influence where things go.

So one thing that can impact your POTENTIAL rewards is where votes are going. If enough votes go to other places that shifts some of where the reward pool is allocated and your rewards go down, along with pretty much everyone else.

This in itself is pretty fair. Why it was thought we needed 4 times our steem power instead of just a flat steem power I still don't get other than still having some force multiplier for when people have more power. So it is now a linear curve, but it's not 1:1 linear as people might think. 1 steem power is worth 4, 2 steem power is worth 8, 3 is worth 12, etc. 100 steem power is worth 400 steem power in terms of votes.

Now if they did change to linear you'd see how much you can reward people drop to 25% what it is right now. So if you could give someone $1 for a maximum vote right now on straight n instead of 4n that would change to $0.25. Yet it would be directly the same as a person steem power.

Value of Steem

Yet that is only half of the issue. The thing that can dramatically change the potential payout of your post is the value of the steem currency on the market. As steem decreases in value then obviously the potential payout which is based upon the value of steem would have to declinge. If steem increases in value then the opposite is true and your payout will increase.

This is based upon a 30 day average for the value of steem.

Now there is a pretty easy way to watch steem value change. You can pull up your wallet and it will tell you the value of your account based upon Steem Dollars(aka SBD), steem, and your steem power. If that value is also decreasing then that tends to mean the value of steem is decreasing.

This happens frequently. It is like a roller coaster. There are disadvantages and advantages to this.

If steem drops to low values that is a good time to buy more if you believe in steem. You also tend to be rewarded bigger chunks of it from your posts.

Then when it swings up again you get a big grin on your face when you see how much your account is worth.

Back in probably as recently as March steem was as low as $0.10/steem. The highest I'd seen it prior to that was around $4.00/steem in July 2016. Then a couple of months after that it went to actually over $2.00/steem. All I know is that my account went from about $1000 in value for many months of posting to suddenly being worth $40,000. Now for the past few weeks it has been decreasing. The rate it has been decreasing has been far slower than it rose. My account is under $30,000 now.

So yes this change in the value of steem WILL impact your payout.

I only get half of my payout!

So now let's talk about the fact you only get half of your payment as something you can easily move. If you read the white paper on the reasoning behind this you'll see that is largely WHY this project works. People could say $2.00/steem and go "WOW!" and sell it all and crash the entire currency. The steem power mechanism and requiring slower withdrawal of steem power protects the currency from this. If you want to do this just tell your account to power down.

Perhaps look with a different perspective?

Finally, you really need to do your best to QUIT focusing on the quantity. You can go back to facebook, reddit, and other social media platforms and not get paid anything. Look for the positive and the silver lining to keep yourself and the community up beat and optimistic. If you focus on the negative that is going to impact your mood, the enjoyment, and the mood you give to others in the community.

So when your post values are changing due to factors that are beyond your control (unless you are wealthy and want to buy a ton of steem and thus drive it's value up) don't focus on them. Worry about the things that you can do something about.

EDIT: I realize this post is a bit rough. I'm not in the zone today. I can feel it. I kept seeing questions and reactions so I felt the need to write something. I don't feel like my writing here is up to my normal level, but I'm just not feeling it today. So my apologies. I thought I'd try to help anyway.