Various reasons.
The obvious is that you earn some STEEM/SBD for it.
Some people would call it "passive income", but I tend to strongly disagree with that term and not believe in such a thing.
If it looks like passive income, I think usually it's just that you already paid for the revenue potential and/or there are risks involved. Like take stocks for example: Often people think of their dividends as "passive income", but really the dividend stream was factored into the price of the stock when you bid on it.
(If the goose lays golden eggs, then people will pay a lot for the goose and it's priced higher than if it didn't lay eggs. You're buying the ability to have that revenue stream.)
If there was no dividend, you'd have been able to own a share for less money. And whether you'll ultimately lay enough eggs for it to be profitable isn't a certainty and is just a different form of speculating on the goose.
Any time it could be thought of as "passive income", I bet there's some risk or tradeoff that counterbalances it and makes it potentially a -EV endeavor.
So you're just speculating on the set of risks. And the "revenue" is just a way of visualizing it or structuring how you cash out.
As it relates to STEEM and delegating, there's no guarantee that the price of STEEM won't go down or to 0. So you can have a stake in STEEM and passively earn more, but being able to do that is built in to the current price, and maybe you'd have been better off selling earlier or not buying.
It's just speculating, with a little jazz to it.
So me personally
I'm not interested in selling STEEM.
I'm not as optimistic as some and don't consider anything outside of BTC to be that reliable of a thing to speculate on. But STEEM is interesting and on the short list of non-Bitcoin cryptos that are worth thinking about to me.
But being powered up and putting your SP to use in some way is the only reasonable way to hold STEEM imo. (Otherwise it's like buying a stock that pays a big dividend and not taking the dividend.)
So that's why I always upvote my own posts and comments.
It's cheesy, if you look at the social media of it, but it's just totally normal and hard to argue with when you consider the economics.
I'll stop to pick up pennies on the ground, so it's like, why wouldn't I click a button to reward myself? Lol.
Delegating
So delegating will earn some return without having to self-vote.
People who hate on self-voting are basically confused and looking at it in a weird way, and they don't bother me. And no one has ever complained to me. But still, it's better to not have to.
At least, it's better to not feel like I have to post often enough to be able to optimize my voting power, and not be sure if that's my real motivation rather than blogging/commenting.
Even if the return isn't as good, I'd rather just delegate and use Steemit without as much SP behind me.
Apologies to the people I've been upvoting!
😶 that part makes me sad.
In between self-votes I also do spread the love around and support some people who I find to be good and worthwhile.
It's fun to do and I really enjoy it. I probably will hang on to a little SP, but it'll be less.
But whatever, life goes on.
I'll probably gradually ween off of it, and delegate a little here and there.
Where to delegate??
Anyone have any suggestions??
In general I'd like whatever gives the best return. But also am mindful to what the project is, and don't mind taking a little less if it's a good thing to support or fun or whatever.
