Steem Basic Income - Profitable?
Recently, I gave away two memberships to @steembasicincome as a part of #newbieresteemday to help support newer members to Steemit. It's a program that I heard about shortly after starting and I used some of my first rewards to get a membership.
For those of you who don't know, @steembasicincome is a group that gives you a small upvote on all of your posts (1 per day, I think) in exchange for a membership fee that helps grow the SP of the account. It's not a "get rich quick" scheme, but it can be beneficial in the medium-term to long-term. How long? Let's find out!
Enrollment
There's no way to actually buy a membership for yourself. You purchase one for someone else and you're given a share in addition. So you pick a friend or a newbie (or a newbie who's a friend) and send 1 Steem to @steembasicincome with their name in the subject line. For this example I'll pick on @beeyou who was one of our winners from the contest.
Sometimes it can take a few days, but a short time later the person you nominated gets a confirmation in their wallet. As the sender, you do NOT get a confirmation. You'll have to check their account.
Factors to Consider
The math included is approximate as the value of each share is slightly different for everyone since there are other factors that can influence how much of a vote you get. For instance, if you upvote @steembasicincome posts, you get bonus points for supporting the group. So although I can't get a pinpoint number for you, we can get close.
As mentioned above the cost is 1 Steem. The price of Steem at the time I write this is $4.44. Your cost is $4.44. Pretty straightforward.
You can get more than one vote per day if you post more than one article per day, but the amount per vote is throttled down to compensate. Therefore, we'll just use one post per day for illustration porpoises.
Illustration Dolphins since free pictures of Illustration Porpoises were in short supply
The Financials
When I first started with the program, I was getting votes of approximately $0.01 per post, so I used that number for the calculations as I wasn't upvoting @steembasicincome at the time. Therefore, that should be a fairly close approximation of the least amount you should receive.
If you post once per day, you get a monthly income of $0.68 after you subtract the amount given to curators and you multiply by the price of SBD. Divide the $4.44 by $0.68 and you get 6.53 months to make your money back.
But, wait, there's MORE!
Look at the bottom line: Breakeven (two shares). It says 3.27 months! That's because your money is also helping a friend. So although you might not be getting all of that money, someone else is benefiting too. You're building community! If you want to build community even more you could even work out a deal where you and your friend sponsor each other, so you each get two shares. Then your personal break even would be 3.27 months.
Checking my Math
Have you ever started to write an article and found out part way through that you were a little off?
I talked with the good folks over at @steembasicincome and my math isn't too far off for the educated approximations. They said they "target an effective SP per share that would recuperate the cost of each enrollment within 180 days." So it's even faster than I projected. And would put the recuperation time at 3 months if you and a friend enroll each other.
Conclusion
source
Anyone who is planning on making a substantial impact on Steemit will need much longer than 3 months to accomplish it. If you're planning on getting ahead, even if it's just in small ways, then plan long-term.
Find a friend. Get a membership. Reap rewards for years to come.
EDIT: @steembasicincome was kind enough to give us a little more exact info. Please see the following.
What are your current strategies for increasing post rewards?
Are there any topics/math you would like me to review?
Thanks for reading. If you found value in this post, please consider upvoting and/or resteeming.
Leave me your thoughts in the comments below!
These are just my opinions. Use at your own risk. Do your own research.
This is great. I hadn’t heard of this yet. What’s the best way to find a sponsor?
A number of people, including myself, run contests to give away @steembasicincome share. Not to self-promote too much, but seeing how I'm not that popular yet I'm not getting a lot of action on my contest so you can probably just win a share by showing up and following the instructions.
That's great to hear you're sponsoring a contest too! It's extremely helpful when someone if first starting out to get a membership because sometimes you don't get many votes. Even psychologically the SBI vote can mean a lot.
Glad it was helpful! I think the best way to find a sponsor is to be one. You will get your money back, after all. You can choose someone who has helped or inspired you and sponsor them for a membership. You might reach out to them and see if they would want to do a sponsor-swap.
Does that mean we can sponsor people who have already been sponsored?
Yes! You can sponsor people as many times as you would like. :)
Awesome, good to know!
This is a great idea too!
The best way to find a sponsor is to make friends ;)
We do have some members that are doing contests right now, and we try to spot those and resteem them. Check the feed on our page: @steembasicincome.
Sorry, @jennshaggy, not trying to imply that you don't have friends. I should use my own account instead of the official account when I'm feeling snarky.
I just sponsored you myself.
That's very nice of you to sponsor her, Joseph! Thank you!
Thanks for the write-up! I think the 0.01 per day is rounded down from a little more, but it definitely sounds like we're in line with the 180 day target. It's hard to be precise with the prices of STEEM and SBD constantly changing.
Also, members do get a verification transaction the first time they enroll, even if they are the sponsoring member, not the sponsoree. You just don't keep getting notifications every time.
We do provide a full member list with share counts once a week (comes out tomorrow) so you can keep checking the accuracy of your share count.
Good stuff! I edited the article to include this info.
very good article. so we can have 5 or 10 memberships for each person then? did I get it right?
I am the "Tag-Lifter" and you have been resteemed because you tagged your post #newbieresteemday
(source)
You have been resteemed as part of #newbieresteemday ... I made today my #newbieresteemday, and invite you and others to do the same. To learn more: Come Join Us!!! (Newbie Resteem Initiative)
Yes! As far as I know you can get memberships for as many people as you want (which would also get you more shares).
That's right. @sneakyninja is a daily curation journal (The Daily Sneak) and sponsors every featured author. So lots of people have 1 or 2 shares from that, and @sneakyninja has over 200 (split between pool 1 and pool 2).
cool thanks for the info
thank you for a great explanation!
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by themanwithnoname from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Lol, thanks for picking on me. Thanks again for putting together the contest that I was lucky enough to win. I think steembasicincome is great for newbies as they are starting out. It's a continuous stream of income that newbies dearly need. Even now, I'm still happy when I see my first vote come in, and it's from none other than steembasicincome.
I don't have time yet to host a contest to pay it forward yet, but did discuss with Dave on ways we could use steembasicincome to help both newbies and members of our initative
Hey, I think you were a great pick for it. The randomizer must have plans for you. Having even that little boost helps a lot at the start.
He's been talking with me as well and I think there are some cool things we can do.
I've been following this project since the start as the idea got me excited. I really like the concept of being able to sponsor shares to others and do see good intentions by this project.
After doing my own basic math though, I believe it's not scalable unless there comes some serious outside sponsoring that does not require any shares in the program. Once the initial 90 day lease runs out, any new member that joins will see a far lower return on their 1 steem investment as they have to carry the "dead weight" of older members.
I would love for someone to show me wrong on this though...
They've been going for 3 months now and are still going strong. Yes, older members don't provide additional revenue from entrance fees, but SBI puts out weekly updates and a few other posts that it encourages members to upvote. If you upvote consistently, you can get more shares. The upvote money can be used to help fund the project. Also, some members don't post every day, so don't pull from the VP. Other members go inactive and aren't posting at all.
Good questions!
Can you send more than 1 STEEM for more shares?
As far as I know you can send as much as you want. You list the names of the people you want to sponsor and I think they divide the shares evenly among them. So if you send 4 Steem and 2 names, they'd each get 2 shares.
Aye, you're right - both you and your "partner" receive share with each STEEM send :)
Thanks again @themanwithnoname. There's so much to learn here, it's like a full time job! Problem is I only have 1 Steem! Will have to wait a while.
It takes time. When I first started it was difficult to wait for the rewards to come in. It takes time to build a following. As soon as you have 1 Steem you can sponsor someone and get your first share. Or you can convert your SBD to Steem. Do you know how to do that?
Ah @themanwithnoname I've realised it takes time ... something I have very little of! But as I learn more, I think I'll progress quicker. I saw a comment somewhere about how to convert SBD to Steem, I'll look it up. Thanks for replying :)
Not sure if you found your answer yet, but I put together a guide if you're interested. https://steemit.com/steemit/@themanwithnoname/converting-sbd-to-steem-guide-for-newbies
Awesome thanks for the link!
Also, because you inspired me to write the tutorial, I used the Steem that I got from converting the SBD to sponsor you for a @steembasicincome membership. You should get the confirmation from them within a day or so.
I hope this helps you on your journey. :)
Oh my gosh I'm amazed at your generosity! @themanwithnoname, you are awesome, and I am humbled. Thank you.
You're welcome! I think you're a great addition to this community and I'm excited to see the heights to which you'll soar. :)
Yeah, I have plans to sponsor Manny more through this program. @steembasicincome 's objective is to institusionalize a UBI for all Steemians, so everyone should help bring in new members
I'm glad you like the program too! Thanks for the support. :)
That's nice but what is not clear to me is this. Must the people be in the discord group chat and how many times does @steembasicincome post a day
They upvote your posts. So when you make a new post, you get an upvote from them. No stress, just post and it happens automatically.
Which of the steem is used for sponsoring someone. IS IT STEEM DOLLAR OR STEEM? sorry for my question because i dont have any steem yet but steem dollars
STEEM but it's very easy to exchange:
https://steemit.com/steem/@josephsavage/your-steemit-market-a-guide-to-trading-between-sbd-and-steem
Ok thanks.
I want to ask a question about voter train.
When i add a person to a voter's train. What is the best delay to to be used to get more profits 10 minutes or two minutes or which?
I'm not sure about voter trains. That's another topic that I haven't delved into yet. Sorry.