Steemit offers an amazing opportunity to earn blockchain based money. Posting, commenting and upvoting is something, almost everyone can take part in and profit from. But some don't have the time it needs to work the Steemit environment. Therefore, in this post I will show you how you can earn money with Steemit even if you are too busy to blog and curate on the platform:

I am talking about Steem Power delegations to upvote bots which pay back dividends to the delegator.

The big questions are: Is it profitable and if so, how much can you get out and how does this delegation thing work at all, how is it done?

The @minnowbooster, one of several upvote bots open to public delegations. It even has its own website.

Upvote Bots Examined

To my knowledge there are at least four upvote bots that also take delegations from random users: @minnowsupport, @minnowbooster, @smartsteem and @boomerang. I am sure, there are other bots with comparable offers and several of the mentioned ones also offers other services like the renting and leasing of Steem Power. But for this post, I will only use data from the @boomerang bot, because I delegated Steem Power to it in the past and therefore know the specifics.

The dividends are paid out by the @boomerang bot nine times every day with every upvote round it conducts. The payouts are in both Steem and Steem Dollar (SBD), while other bots only have payouts once per day and only pay out SBD or Steem but not both.

The modality of how you can become a delegator receiving dividends works the same in all cases. All you have to do is to delegate Steem Power to the respective bot and then the dividend payments start automatically. How you can delegate Steem Power and what you have to consider when delegating is explained below.

Overall, I assume that all bots offer comparable payouts and dividends which is why I think my results will be representative although I only looked at payouts by @boomerang.

@boomerang takes delegations and then it makes boom in your wallet - a bit at least

The Profitability Of Steem Power Delegations

For this post I randomly picked out the transfers which the @boomerang bot made on January 8th 2018, a Monday. I selected only cases in which users received 9 Steem and 4 SBD payments which is the full payment schedule by the bot per day.

In total, I counted 50 users with delegations between 300 and 47,000 Steem Power and the total amount delegated by them was about 289,000 Steem Power. The payouts of January 8th were about 507 SBD and 116 Steem. Quite a lot. You can download the list with all dividend payments for that day that I looked at here as an ODS file.

These are the results:

• SBD: The average dividend per day is 0.0019 SBD per 1 Steem Power delegated and almost all delegators received the same ratio.
• Steem: The average dividend per day is 0.0004 Steem per 1 Steem Power delegated, but with a wide spread of ratios of basically zero to 0.001 Steem. I guess, the dividend in Steem depends on the duration you are already a delegator.
• Assuming constant SBD payments for a whole year, you can expect a profit of about 65%. If you permanently reinvest the SBD dividends, you can even double up your initial investment within a year (a 1:1 SBD to Steem ratio provided).
• If you assume constant Steem payments every day as well, you can expect a profit of about 15% and if you permanently reinvest the Steem, you can get out about 30% of your initial investment.

Taking both Steem and SBD as one, you can expect a return on your investment of 80%-130% within one year.

That is very, very much and this makes a delegation in fact not just a convenient option to earn passive money if you don't have time to be on Steemit, but also makes it a viable option for active Steemians.

Astonishingly, delegations to upvote bots can easily feed you from a certain point onwards. All you need is around 5,000 Steem Power and you can put up your feet for good (or until the crypto business dies..). This threshold is surprisingly low, if you think of it.

But before you start seeing Dollar signs everywhere, please be aware that not just crypto and Steemit, but also @boomerang is a speculative endeavor and the daily payments depend on requested upvotes. It's a risky business in a risky environment in a risky market. This means triple risk and that must be met with according returns to justify the investment.

Big graphics and big plans for th @minnowsupport. Also with its own website.

How Do I Delegate Steem Power?

If you think now, "Hey, that is something for me!" but you're not sure how to delegate, you can read this opus with a lot of extra information by @timcliff as it is also recommended by @boomerang. But in case, you are ok with the quick version that just tells you what to do, read on:

1. You need to register your Steemit account on Steemconnect.
2. Then you need this URL:

https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=USERNAME&delegatee=UPVOTEBOT&vesting_shares=XXX SP

1. In this URL, you have to replace the three words in caps and bold:

• USERNAME -> replace it with your username (without the @)

• UPVOTEBOT -> here you have to fit in the name of the bot you wish to delegate to (also without the @)

• XXX -> the amount of Steem Power you want to delegate (the space between the amount and SP at the end belongs there)

  Let me give you an example in which I (@doodlebear) delegate 500 Steem Power to the @boomerang bot:

https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=doodlebear&delegatee=boomerang&vesting_shares=500 SP

Here are some aspects you have to consider when delegating:

• If you want to change the amount, simply use the above URL and send it with the new amount. The rest will be done automatically.
• If you want to de-delegate, use the above URL as well, but send 0 (zero) SP.
• After de-delegating your Steem Power, it takes one week until you can use it again.
• You can look up your delegations on Steemworld and the duration until you can use it on Steemd.
• You can only delegate Steem that is powered up to Steem Power and it is not possible to convert or transfer delegated Steem Power.

One more thing: This is no financial advice, but a mere explanation. If you listen to me, delegate your Steem Power and lose money, it's your own fault.

The @smartsteem bot as an extrenal website with additional services, too.

In Case You Are Reading This - @boomerang, @minnowbooster Et. Al. - Here Is some Advice For You:

• One dividend payment per day is enough, more just clogs up the system and the transfer list in the wallet
• You should offer the direct reinvestment of the dividends.
• There are plenty of users with lots of Steem/Steem Power lying around on their account without using it for upvotes like @lukewearechange (this id**t has 20,000 SP rotting on his account!). You should approach users like him and make them an offer to delegate their Steem Power to you. It would be better for them, for you and for Steemit as a whole.

This advice was for free, but if you like, feel free to reward this post with an upvote;-)

What is your opinion about this? Will this become all our pension plan or is there a catch to it? Do you already have an active delegation? Let me know in the comments!!