Thanks to steempayout.com, now I finally understand a little bit better how the Payout Distribution works, and why a post always pays less than it shows just before the upvoting closes.
STEEMPAYOUT.COM
developed by @saulius
This last week, I've stumbled upon this great app by @saulius, and finally, I got the answers I needed regarding those missing details of the payout. For example, you're looking at your post and how it is going and just before closing and it says you're gonna get 500$, and then the payout occurs and it shows that you only got 400$ as a payout.
How much is your Steem post really worth?
And to know this, you just have to copy an URL from a post, paste it and press Calculate
then you'll be showed some important details regarding the payout.
The app visually presents what makes the payout and what portion of the earnings goes to the author and curators. It's also easy to check how much Steem Power and Steem Dollars everyone gets.
And right from the start, there it was, my missing link and it was so obvious. I forgot the Payout Distribution for the Curators!
On each post, it's guaranteed for the author the minimum of 75% of all the money and the remaining percentage will be to pay the curators.
This made me connect the dot's regarding last week's update regarding the timing of the upvotes and the measures that have been taken to "fight" the bots that were upvoting almost instantly any new post.
The 30-minute "anti-bot window" after a post has been published. If you don't know, this is how it works:
This details can be confirmed using steempayout.com and it's possible to check each post you had that were most profitable, meaning that a lot of the upvotes, occurred withing this 30-minute frame, boosting that way the authors earning above that 75% minimum payout.
For example, check the image below and you'll notice that on that post, only 14% went to the curators of the post and the other 9% returned to the author (me) giving a total profit on that post of 86%.
Another cool feature that we can found at steempayout.com is the automatic conversion of the Steem Dollars (SBD) earn on the post to Dollars (USD).