The delegation strategy
A strategy that can be followed for the tiers is to lease from Minnowbooster and delegate to qurator and then let the mods know why there is suddenly a 100 SP from a non-member.
In this case the admin of tracking which portion of Minnowbooster's delegations belongs to whom is a bit strenous, so the mods have agreed that we would rather charge a similar rate. You can currently get around 160 SP per STEEM per week. This is equal to 4 STEEM per 160 SP per month or 2.5 STEEM per month for every 100 SP.
This would come down to the following rates
This means that if you achieved T4 with upvotes and a 2 STEEM sub, to get to T5 using the minnowbooster rate would cost you 2.5 STEEM.
Similarly from T5 to T6 (copper), it is 500 SP or 12.5 STEEM. So to go from T4 to T6 (copper) it would cost 15 STEEM total.
Similarly if you could only reach Tier 3 with upvotes and a 2 STEEM sub, the upgrade to T4 would now cost you 2.5 STEEM.
Why such a big difference? The lower tiers are subsidised by qurator post upvotes, but it gets too expensive to subsidise the higher tiers.
To make this even more clear, here is another table,
To go from T0 to Diamond would cost you 125 STEEM for the month.
The mods don't recommend this route, but will accept the STEEM instead of a minnowbooster delegation for a tier upgrade. Just contact them for the current market price, it will be monitored weekly.