For newbies to the platform, it may still be a mystery as to why do these rewards keep on changing. For a long time, I myself didn’t know the complete reasons why this was happening with my payouts as well. So the natural way to find out was a google search. Then it dawned upon me that I should give the Steemit FAQs a try. This should ideally help me figure out why this was happening. Lo and behold! I was right, this is indeed the best way to find that out. Yet I doubt how many Steemians would have read the complete FAQ's. I found my answer under the Economics section of FAQ's
I found that Steemit rewards can change because of a variety of reasons. Here I ll use the FAQ as a source:
Why do the earnings for my post go up or down?
The amount that is shown next to a post is a "Potential Payout". This is an estimated value of how much money the post will make based on the votes that have occurred so far. Depending on various factors, this value can go up or down until the payout window closes:
- If a post receives more upvotes, the potential payout of the post can go up.
- If a post receives more downvotes, the potential payout of the post can go down.
- If other posts receive more upvotes, the potential payout of the post can go down.
- If other posts receive more downvotes, the potential payout of the post can go up.
- If upvotes are removed from a post, the potential payout of the post can go down.
- If downvotes are removed from a post, the potential payout of the post can go up.
- If the price of STEEM goes up, the potential payout of all posts can go up.
- If the price of STEEM goes down, the potential payout of all posts can go down.
** Source: Steemit FAQ's
To summarise, I suggest that everyone who is a serious Steemian should consider reading the complete FAQ section. I bet it will answer a lot of our unanswered questions