Voting Power VS Steem Power

So I have realised yesterday with the help of @indigoocean that there is something that I have not done in a while. (I hope this clarifies the issue a bit)

A "clarify the concept" post:

so today I am going to attempt to explain to you all the difference between

STEEM POWER and VOTING POWER

I have been vaguely aware that a lot of people who are new Steemians do not always have a grasp of the inner mechanics of how all this works. Its like a car: you do not really need to know how it works to be able to drive it.
I made it a point to try and learn a bit of the mechanics when I first started because this was really interesting to me but I guess we are now moving into a phase where we get people here that just want to blog and make some extra income, nothing more.

So for those that want to know a little bit more and understand why somethings happen to them in certain cases. This is also very non technical, I am by no means a blockchain expert but I have picked up a bit of knowledge along the way.

STEEM POWER:

basically this is the amount of "shares" you have in the network that allow you to vote. The more "shares" the bigger the vote. So I have now 1,009.683 STEEM that are (in)Vested in the steem blockchain. This is my Steem Power and this SP represents a vote of 0,17.
If the sale price of STEEM goes up then so does the value of my vote (and your post)

The picture you see here is a screenshot from https://steemworld.org/@felander (made by

@steemchiller ) which I use a lot and it shows you a different view of my account. If you want to see yours then just replace

@felander with your username.

The Voting values you see on the side is the voting bar that you get from 500 sp on steemit.com (but I think its from the beginning on busy.org) This allows me to split up my 0,17 cent vote into smaller parts and cast half a vote or 10% of a vote. So voting at 100% voting value gives me 0,17

and that is where the other part comes into play:

VOTING POWER

If there would be no voting power there is nothing to prevent me to vote 1000x per day and give away 0,17 * 1000. So the creators of this blockchain (@ned and @dan) came up with a limitation to that.
They have created a system that gives you an unlimited supply of votes but you cannot use them all at the same time. The votes replenish slowly at a rate of 20% per day or 2% per 2,4 hours (this is also the reason the bidbots vote every 2,4 hours)

So there is a drop every 2 hours, you can empty your bucket all at once or drop by drop so it stays almost full.
So the more voting power you use the less your vote will be worth. So if you vote at 100% (voting value) you will lose 2% voting power per vote. That means if you vote 50 times in a short period of time you will have 0% voting power and will not be able to vote anymore. Then you have to wait till you have some voting power back.
This is also the reason to be sparse with your votes. You have the option to vote for:

yourself (post and comment)
others that write spam and random comments
good content posts
people you like or admire

the options is yours...

Personally I upvote

my own posts at 100%
people that interact on my post with thoughtful answers (between 5% - 50%)
people who's posts I like (between 10%-100%)

This leaves me on certain days that I my voting power has replenished to 100% and then there are potential votes that just go to waste. That's where for me the Smartsteem option (made by @therealwolf) is amazing . It allows me to vote for people that produce decent to amazing content and get a bit of profit in return.

if you want a bit more info on smartsteem then please check this post
https://steemit.com/smartsteem/@felander/smartsteem-preventing-abuse-and-generating-profit-for-you

I this helped make things a bit clearer for you all and if you have any questions just let me know in the comments and if you think I could make something clearer do not hesitate to make a suggestion.