Many people look at it and instantly think that it's low.

Here's why and how it works...

I'm going to warn you now that I HAVE to include a little bit of math here to fully explain how author rewards for posts are paid out. But please don't worry, this is all very short and basic, just bear with me.

Q: How are my posts rewards paid out to me? I looked in my author rewards and it seemed low.

We'll use the same example for this, where a post pays out to you showing $40.

50/50 Payout Rewards

The 50/50 payout means that you'll receive 50% of what you get as Steem Power and 50% as Steem Dollars. Now to figure how much of these you get we start by subtracting out the 25% for curators from the total.

The 25% curator cut is:

$40 * .25 = $10

So what you get is:

$40 - $10 = $30

Now to figure out how much Steem Power you get:

$30 / 2 = $15 (since half of the $30 is going towards Steem Power)

Now, Steem Power is based on the 3.5 day average price of Steem. For easy example, say this price is $5 per Steem. So in this example you would get:

$15 / ($5/Steem) = 3 Steem Power

Lastly, we just need to figure out how many Steem Dollars you get. It's important to note here that Steemit pays you Steem Dollars as if they were equal to $1 US...even when they are selling for more than that. (A bit over $5 US at the time of writing this.)

So the Steem Dollars you'll get in this example will be:

$15 * 1 Steem Dollar = 15 Steem Dollars

So what you'll see in your author rewards is:

15 SBD, and 3 STEEM POWER for "The name of the post."

Even though this example would really make you $75 for your Steem Dollars with them selling for $5 right now. So in reality you earned $75 (from SBD) and $15 (from SP) for a total of $90! This is why you make more by setting rewards to 50/50 instead of 100% Power Up!

100% Power Up Rewards

We'll again use the $40 payout example. We take of the 25% cut for curators:

The 25% curator cut is:

$40 * .25 = $10

So what you get is:

$40 - $10 = $30

Now to figure out how much Steem Power you get: But this time, all $30 will be going towards the Steem Power.

Steem Power is based on the 3.5 day average price of Steem. For easy example, say this price is $5 per Steem. So in this example you would get:

$30 / ($5/Steem) = 6 Steem Power

...and That's It!

So this same $40 post ended up giving you $90 (in SBD and SP) with the 50/50 rewards and $30 (in SP) with the 100% Power Up option. Choose Wisely!

A few final details to note...

25% is the Maximum percentage that can be given to curators. However, this percentage can be less.
Simply using the current Steem price is only an estimate for the 3.5 day average price. So major price swings over the last few days can make your calculations come out a little high or low. Just so there's no surprises when things don't come out exact for you.
To see the current price of Steem ---> CLICK HERE
To see the current price of Steem Dollars ---> CLICK HERE
- There are many places you can check the prices. This is just one.