Steem Savings vs VoteBots vs Leased Delegations - 5 Ways to Increase Your STEEM

You are probably already aware that Steemit allows you to place both SBD and STEEM into a special savings account on your wallet page where it can accrue interest.

Steemit savings offers an APR of 10% which is a fairly decent return, but considering that STEEM and SBD can be used to lease delegated SP, and bid on votebots, is there a better way to earn with our capital?

---

Steemit Savings - Weekly Investment: 10 STEEM

Years Saved	STEEM Balance	Interest Per Annum	Interest Per Week
1	520	52	1
2	1092	109.2	2.1
3	1721.2	172.12	3.31
4	2413.32	241.332	4.641
5	3174.652	317.465	6.1051

Conclusion: Good returns if you have a few thousand STEEM to invest, or if you can save a small amount regularly over a long period. If you are saving a small amount each week, it's going to be a while before you any substantial returns for your efforts.

---

Votebots (SmartSteem) - Investment: 10 STEEM

An investment of 10 STEEM returns a vote of about $12.00 SBD, which would be paid out as follows:

$12.00 x 0.75 = a total payout of $9.00 after curation, paid as 50% SBD and 50% SP.

Calculating the SBD portion is simple: $9.00 / 2 = $4.5 SBD Reward

To calculate the SP portion we need to use the current USD to STEEM exchange rate:

$4.5 USD / 6.40569 STEEM Price USD = 0.702 SP Reward

Lets exchange the SBD portion of our rewards to STEEM on the Internal Market:

$4.50 SBD / 0.897757 = 5.012 STEEM

Conclusion: Given that we spent 10 STEEM to gain a return of 5.012 STEEM and 0.702 SP, this is clearly not a viable method.

I have noticed that SmartSteem returns a much better vote value when you bid with SBD, so lets try that next.

---

Votebots (SmartSteem) - Investment: 10 SBD

An investment of 10 SBD returns a vote of about $24.00 SBD, which would be paid out as follows:

$24.00 x 0.75 = a total payout of $18.00 after curation, paid as $9 SBD and 1.405 SP.

Lets exchange the SBD portion of our rewards to STEEM on the Internal Market:

$9.00 SBD / 0.897757 = 10.024 STEEM

Conclusion: if we had simply exchanged the 10 SBD stake to STEEM on the internal market we would have yielded 11.138 STEEM. By using the Vote bot we yielded 11.409 if you include the SP portion of non-liquid STEEM.

---

Leased Delegation (Curation) - Investment: 10 STEEM

10 STEEM will allow us to lease a delegation of around 970 SP, although in practice you will probably have trouble finding anyone willing to fill a one week delegation.

According to @abh12345's Curation League, last weeks top curator @credo earned 5.343223 per 1000 SP. The SP vs SBD composition of this figure is not disclosed, but even if it were 100% SBD, it would only equate to 5.951 STEEM.

Conclusion: I really wanted organic curation to be the most profitable way to earn STEEM, because it's the best option for supporting the platform, but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.

---

Leased Delegation (Self Voting) - Investment: 10 STEEM

The delegation of 970 SP will increase our vote value is by $0.46, so lets calculate how much STEEM we could earn if we were to upvote our own comments 10 times a day with a vote value of $0.46, to account for Voting Power, I will diminish the vote value by $0.01 every three votes:

$0.46 * 3 + $0.45 * 3 + $0.44 * 3 + $0.43 = $4.48 per day

$4.48 * 7 = $31.36 per week

$31.36 * 0.75 / 2 = $11.76 SBD Reward

$11.76 USD / 6.40569 STEEM Price USD = 1.835 SP Reward

Lets exchange the SBD portion of our rewards to STEEM on the Internal Market:

$11.76 SBD / 0.897757 = 13.099 STEEM

Delegation and self voting yielded a 30.99% return on investment. Whilst self voting can be considered anti social by some, it is clearly a very effective way of earning STEEM.

You would need to have 1611.48 STEEM in your savings account to earn 3.099 STEEM per week, yet you can attain the same interest each week with a stake of just 10 STEEM if you are willing to sacrifice your votes.

Is this indicative of a broken system? Let me know what you think in the comments below.