Being on steemit for about a week now I feel very excited. I like the diversity of posts here and I value the oppportunity to support author by upvoting their posts. Unfortunately, as a newbie I do not have that much Steam Power in order to move the dollar counter under such posts. That dissapoints me a bit.
Quick google search revealed that there are few ways to tacke this problem. Apparently steem allows to "borrow" steam power from other users. The other problem is that you need to find a user that wants to borrow you some SP. Fortunately, there are bots that are able to lend you some SP in exchange for STEEM. One of such bots is 
The other problem is that user interface is not super newbie friendly. I can see the lease requests, active leases and a diagram below that shows the SP/Steem ratio but I struggle to figure out meaningful values for my own lease request.
(diagram is taken from minnowbooster.net)
To get a better understanding I plotted some graphs (as of 02/04/18) that show the average SP/Steem ratios and APRs for newly created leases. This should give you and me an idea about the "market price" for leasing SP at
Graphs show that the price of Steem is about 100 SP (per Steem) for 3 and 4 week leases, while for 1 and 2 weeks the price of Steem is much lower at around 60 - 80 SP per Steem. This can be partialy explained by a coling down period of 7 days that hits the lender after the lease is over. So if you borrow for a short period of 1 - 2 weeks you have to pay premium.
For 3 and 4 weeks the colling down period is less damaging in relative terms. Both markets hover around 100 SP/Steem. This is what you should aim for when filling the lease form. (if you do it for a 3 - 4 weeks lease) At the same time the APR graph shows that you should aim at the region of 35 - 40% with your request if you want it to be filled reasonably quickly.
Disclamer: Please be aware that the information in this post may be incorrect. I have this blog to keep track of my notes (that might or might not be related to Steemit) as a learner. You should do your own research if you want to avoid mistakes that might be caused by this post.
