900 Followers and the Reward Pool

Yes, it's about that time again. Time to celebrate another milestone: 900 Followers, the big 1-0-0-0 is in my sights now. It's also time to reflect about some of the things that I learned during my time on Steemit.

When I started with Steemit there were 3 things that I wanted to accomplish.

1. Get a Rep of 60(Almost there!)
2. Gather a following of a 1000 (just a 100 more!)
3. Become a Dolphin (Mission completed!)

To accomplish this I had to do a lot of work but it was worth it. Committing to the Steemit platform is fun and very satisfying. I learned a lot about Steem and other cryptocurrency and more importantly I am more and more understanding why things are designed a certain way on the platform.

When you start out on Steemit like I did, you are basically focused on one thing only....creating content but as you become more familiar with the platform you start to discover the other aspects of Steemit and why they are important. Stuff like curating, networking supporting the community, projects and much more.

There is one thing that I never fully grasped that I want to discuss in my 900 followers post.

Whenever I try to explain Steemit to my friends, family or colleagues, one of the most asked questions is if you are using your own money/Steem when you upvote someone else. Of course the answer is no.. but the follow up question always is: But where does the money come from?
This is actually a very good question....

For reasons I can't explain it didn't hit me how important this part of Steemit is. I don't mean the you-get-money-for-upvotes part but the Reward pool and how it is distributed.

So everybody on Steemit is busy writing posts, drawing, writing stories, posting pictures etc, basically creating content. Now, this content has value. Artistic value but also value for the Steemit site.
As you can see in my previous post Steemit Statistics I concluded that the content created on Steem is drawing a large number of people to the site. More people means more Steemians, which means more income, which means more money.

This added value is used to create a reward pool (which in itself also draws more people to Steemit). The idea is to reward the creators and curators for their efforts but how do you accomplish this?
Well this is where the creators of Steemit did something brilliant. They let the Steemians divide the rewards among themselves.
Those who are most invested in Steemit (translated: those who have the most Steem Power) get the most influence on how the rewards are divided.
This is done by giving every Steemian voting values relative to their Steem Power. So a lot of Steem Power equals big votes.

So basically my voting power which now at a 100% is worth $2.53 means that Steemit has given me $25.30 (10x2.53) from the reward pool that I can distribute among my fellow Steemians on a daily basis.

Like I said, I never thought much about the reward pool and the distribution of the rewards. But when you do the math and realize that someone is handing you a bag of money to share among your fellow creators, it puts things in a different perspective.

So use your votes wisely, it is not your money you are distributing but the rewards that we as a community have earned.

Thanks to all those who have taken the time and effort to read my posts and hit that follow button.