I'm leasing a total of 1,747 STEEM Power (SP) for 4 weeks from 
© Olivier Le Moal | Bigstockphoto.com
609 SP in 14 months
After 14 months in the blockchain, I've managed to slowly grow my account from redfish to minnow, and accumulate a total of 609.538 SP. I got this through a combination of posting, commenting, curating, and powering up small amounts here and there.
Not bad. However, while slow and steady might win the race, the same might not always be true when it comes to growing your Steem Account.
My 'actual' working SP
It turns out, I don't really have 609.54 SP working for my account. Instead, because a large chunk of my SP is delegated to other accounts, 351.52 SP to be exact, I am actually working with less than half of my owned SP!
Breaking it down, I have 150.90 SP delegated to 
That leaves me with only 258.02 SP to curate posts and upvote my readers. According to the SteemNow.com Upvote Calculator that amount of SP translates to just $0.0060 worth of upvotes at 100% voting weight and 100% voting power.
So, inasmuch as I am happy to be a minnow with more than 609 SP to my name, that's not really the case. I'm still functioning like a redfish with half the SP needed to reach the next milestone.
I don't regret my outgoing delegations, though. The 75 SBI Shares I receive for delegating to Steem Basic Income, in particular, is a good source of upvotes for my posts. Nonetheless, the result is that I am still left with less than half of my owned SP to work with.
Leasing SP in the market
To remedy the situation, I've decided to spend some of my STEEM to lease SP through the MinnowBooster.net and DLease.io.
I have some 35 STEEM from exchanging DEC Tokens that I originally planned to use to power-up my account. However, I realized that I will get a bigger impact and faster results with my 35 STEEM if I leased the SP, instead.
MinnowBoster.net
MinnowBooster is described as the "Swiss Army Knife" for the Steem Blockchain, offering a range of tools for Steem users, including an SP leasing market. Using this leasing market, I made my first SP lease request.
The process was pretty easy, I just had to fill out the request form below:
I wrote my (1) username receiving the delegation, (2) how much SP I wanted to lease, (3) the number of weeks I want to lease, and (4) how many SP you want per STEEM per week.
The form will automatically calculate the Annual Percentage Rate (APR), which identifies how profitable the lease will be for the delegator and how much STEEM is required to complete the lease.
In my case, I had to pay 20 STEEM to lease 1,000 SP for 4 weeks. It's APR was approximated at 19.9%, which was one of the highest at the time. I might have gotten more for it, but I didn't want to risk not getting the lease filled, so I tried to be competitive with my rates.
Once I was satisfied with the form, I signed in using Keychain to send my payment. I had to wait for a while, but the request was filled 4.5 hours later.
DLease.io
For my second lease, I tried DLease.io. It turns out, this uses the same lease market as MinnowBooster. It's a professional grade "digital asset leasing platform" run by 
It's pretty much the same process as MinnowBooster, just using a slightly different 3-page form, unlike MinnowBooster's one pager.
First, you have to write the username of the individual getting the delegation and the individual paying for it.
On the next page, you fill up the lease information. These are (1) how much SP you want to lease, (2) how much you are willing to pay per week, and (3) how many weeks you want to lease the SP for.
This part differs with MinnoBooster, because while MinnowBooster asks how much SP you want per STEEM per week, here you are just asked how much you want to pay for the total SP per week. It's a simpler question, so I like this better. The form will then calculate your APR and how much STEEM you need to send to complete the request.
Finally, the last page of the form verifies the lease details and asks you to sign-in using SteemConnect or Keychain to make the payment and finish the request.
Here, I paid 14.8 STEEM to lease 747 SP for 4 weeks, for an APR for approximately 19.6%. Again, to avoid not getting my request filled, I tried to be competitive with my rates. My request was filled in under 2 hours.
I find making a lease request easier in DLease.io than at MinnowBooster. The website is clean and simple, and the form is easier to complete. Other than that, you can manage leases made at DLease on MinnowBooster and vice versa.
Other ways to lease SP
There are other places for leasing SP. However, because MinnowBooster and DLease use a peer-to-peer market, the pricing is more flexible and competitive here than elsewhere.
Leasing SP vs Powering-Up
The rationale is that by leasing SP, I will get a much bigger (though temporary) boost to my account compared to powering-up and, as a result, grow my account faster.
Higher upvotes
The 35 STEEM, if powered-up would have left me with a working SP of just 293.02 (609.54 own SP - 351.52 outgoing delegations + 35.0 powered-up SP). That gives just $0.0068 worth of upvotes at 100% voting weight and voting power. It's barely better than if I hadn't powered up.
However, by using the 35 STEEM to lease SP, instead, I end up with a working SP of 2,005.53 (609.54 own SP - 351.52 outgoing delegations + 1,747.51 leased SP). This gives me $0.0468 worth of upvotes at 100% voting weight and 100% voting power.
That's a 688% higher value of upvotes with the lease than the power-up!
Better engagement within the blockchain
The higher upvote weight means that I can now reward users who write interesting posts and comments better than before. The higher SP will allow me to cast more upvotes per day since my upvotes will still have value even at lower voting weights and voting power. Both things should result in better engagement for my own posts and comments. And if I get a new follower or two as a result of the higher SP, all the better.
What to do over the next four weeks
I'm not getting carried away. I know that the higher SP is only temporary. And, like Cinderella, my leased SP will go back to its owner after four weeks. In the mean time, I'll be doing my best to get the most out of my higher SP by manually upvoting others' posts, upvoting replies to my comments and posts, voting members of the Steem Vote Club, and yes, I'll be following a curation trail or two, too.
It will be great if I can earn enough curation rewards to get an ROI on what I spent. I'm not banking on that, though. It will be enough to experience how it's like to have 2,000 SP over the next four weeks. And if everything goes well, maybe I'll be both renewing the lease and powering-up SP at the end of this process.
And herein comes the bounty...
Bounty:
How can I make the most out of my SP lease? What suggestions do you have to make sure I get the most of my lease?