Hey Amelia!

For the consistent point:
By "consistently" I just meant authors who post every day, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. When looking at the ten authors I followed I saw (a) One author who posted pretty much every day and managed to increase their rewards in line with the reward pool (b) Three authors who posted every day and whose rewards increased but at a much more moderate level (c) Six authors who posted infrequently and whose rewards fell away over time.

That section needs a full study to itself really with a lot more data. But it did give an idea of what might be happening to the original commentor who asked the question. And could help to set people's expectations of the change in their earnings when the Steem price rises.

For the 'dollar' amounts:
It's misrepresented. The system always considers one SBD to be one $USD. I'll try and give you the full run down:

If the Steemit number shows $10 post payout (easier to work with than 2.69!) then broadly:

• Curators get 25%ish - so $2.50, and they get it in Steem Power so it will be converted to say 0.50 SP (if 1 Steem = $5 according to the 3.5 day median average of the witness price feeds).
• As this is a Utopian post it has a reward-split - the Utopian beneficiary gets 25% of the Author payout. So this would be $10 * (1-25%) * 25% = $1.88 and again (I think) this would be translated to Steem Power (although I need to check as obviously missing a trick here).
• As the author I would get the remainder: $5.62.
• As I have a 50/50 payout scheduled I get half in Steem Power ($5.62 x 50% = $2.81 so 0.56 Steem Power) - this should be worth broadly USD$2.81 at the time of payout (a little more or less if the market value for Steem is different from the median of the witness price feeds).
• The other half is in SBD, with SBD always considered by the system to be worth $1. So I get SBD 2.81. If SBD is worth $5 then this is worth USD$14.06.
• So in total as author I get a value of USD$16.88 from a $10 pending payout.
• For Steemit or busy.org posts there are no beneficiaries and you end up at $USD 22.50 for the author from a $10 pending payout (easiest way to get to this is starting with the SBD conversion rate: (5 * 50% + 1 * 50%) * 0.75 = 2.25 per dollar payout)