Paid delegation has been a point of contention here for a while, so I've given it some thought and I'd like to share a few of my conclusions.
When I elected to move my bitcoin holdings into steem there was a flurry of bitcoin hardforks happening.
I had to choose between a currency which had increased 200x since I'd bought it, was really starting to spike and was airdropping new, exotic currencies every couple of months; and an unproven 'giving people free money, ticking off Mark Zuckerberg' model.
The deciding factor was yield. Bitcoin gave me growth, but steem offered growth and yield. For most people, that yield takes the form of curation rewards, which is fantastic, but it's not how I'm wired.
If my earnings came from sitting in judgement over the content I was reading, I wasn't going to be able to just enjoy the content.
Is this good? Will other people like this? Should she have used fewer gifs?
Some people enjoy that, but I'm not one of them. I didn't want to move my money somewhere I had the chance to earn rewards, I wanted genuinely passive, unearned income, otherwise steemit might start feeling like work.
It would have been a mistake; but I came very close to keeping the bitcoin.
The option to delegate out the attached voting power and be paid a monthly fee was the tipping point which convinced me to move it across.
Posting for profit is no longer a priority.
Don't get me wrong, it's still great to see the upvotes come in and the payout figure rise; but unless I land near the top of the trending page, I make substantially more steem each day passively than I ever could from posting content.
That's great news for those trying to establish themselves. We'll find as time goes by, that more and more of the top authors become whales, and start earning passive income from previously earned SP; but with a huge following and heaps of experience, they're likely to keep posting frequently and getting big payouts, leaving less room on the trending page for newcomers.
Those like myself, who have bought most of their stake, can't expect the same payouts, and will be far less inclined to post. I only post when I have something I'd really like to say; and considered declining payouts for a while.
Ultimately I like having some liquid SBD to play around with and still want to attract upvotes for visibility, but it's certainly something I might consider in the future.
My time now is better spent spruiking steemit in groups on other social media sites; encouraging new steemians with supportive comments, and talking to friends and acquaintances in real life.
I'm acting more like an owner, and less like an employee; which gives your hard work a better chance of being noticed.
Groups aren't individuals. What works for a person might not work for a community.
My main customer is 
It's been great to watch as the old and the new bond over their shared distaste for colourful 'because I said so' rectangles. The crypto kids, like myself, getting a gleam in our eye over the coins and bars, while the self-reliant stackers hoard steem power and marvel at the price increases; its a beautiful thing. There are dynamics to groups, however.
When you lease an asset, you know that you're getting the full value of the asset for the full period of the lease.
If a bunch of friends in their early 20's all choose to live together; they're going to split the rent; they're not going to live in a shipping container and all give money to one trusted member, on the condition that he one day buy a nice house with the money, and let them all stay indefinitely. That would be a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. If they're renting as a group, everything is simple. Each only need pay his share of the rent for the period he intends to stay.
New members can arrive any time without unfairly benefitting from any investment made by previous tenants, and anyone can leave any time without leaving anything on the table.
Their relationship with me makes their relationships with each other trustless and carefree.
Paid delegations put an invisible floor under the steem price.
Some aspects of the steem blockchain are difficult to appreciate; as they largely go undetected. The account recovery option is one excellent example. Because it exists, and combines with the powerdown schedule to protect us from scammers/hackers, those bad actors focus their energies elsewhere. We can't know how many of us would have otherwise been taken and for how much, were it not for the account recovery option disincentivising phishing attacks on steemians, so it's easy to overlook it's value.
I have relationships with my customers on the condition that I have steem power. Now there's a 13 week power-down in place, preventing me from panic selling my steem, which is great; but what if I fall in love with something like 
Best to sell and move across, right? Except then what? Six months from now, I've taken my potential gains and moved them back into steempower, but if I want to start delegating again I need to find new customers.
My old ones have found new suppliers, and it could take a long time before I find good, reliable customers who pay on time and don't blatantly upvote every word they write, or use my voting power to jump into flag wars with whales.
These relationships have their own value. That value puts a hard support level under the steem price, making it a blue-chip cryptocurrency.
That may not be apparent yet, but it's already true.
Paid delegation brings new money into the ecosystem, pushing up the price.
It attracts investors who aren't particularly interested in trying to climb the trending page in competition with aspiring authors.
It helps to build communities around shared interests without the need to share money.
It keeps SP holders from selling, keeping that value here.
Some final thoughts on my pricing strategy;
This spike in the SBD price has driven a lot of demand for delegated voting power; many delegators have been able to increase their price and still have long waiting lists.
It would be easy, given the circumstances, to increase my price from 2% per calendar month; but again, relationships have their own value.
I don't know what the future holds, but there's an excellent chance SBD will return to US$1, and an even better chance that steem will hit US$20.
What will happen then? When it's no longer possible to pay leases from earnings, and customers need to top up their wallets with outside fiat in order to meet their monthly payments?
They may choose to end their leases, but I'll be the last one to go. They may even choose to continue wearing a small loss, speculating that circumstances will change again; determined, as I am, to continue to invest in the relationship.
If not; a new customer will get the opportunity to lock in the 2% rate indefinitely.
