I have picked 5 random whales and analyzed their weekly and yearly earnings on Steemit.

What is a whale?

A whale is a Steemian (a user on Steemit) who has an effective Steem Power (Steem Power +/- delegated Steem) of 50,000 (50K) or higher. (*)

(*) The definition of a whale is actually a bit more complicated and depends on another unit called VEST. This would be a topic for another article ;)

Background

It is very important when talking about earnings that whales have invested a lot into Steemit (energy, time and/or money) and so while their absolute numbers earned may seem high and provoke envy, it is more important to look at their relative earnings in percent of their investment to get a fairer evaluation.

Some of the following whales (not all) have been quoted in a recent controversial discussion about the reward curve as negative examples of whales misusing the system (sometimes negatively referred to as "reward pool rape"). I do not totally agree with this position, because these whales have (a) invested a lot (b) have thousands of followers and (c) give back a lot to the community by upvoting and resteeming others. But in this post I do not want to argue about that (because this leads to such a controversial and negative discussion), but rather look at their earnings just of curiosity and to give some perspective.

Methodology

Remember, one of my previous Steemit Secrets was, that there is no privacy on Steemit whatsoever. So everybody can check how much Steem a Steemian has and even look at their weekly earnings. I took the weekly earnings as reported on the profile page under Rewards and multiplied the numbers by 52 to get a rough extrapolation of the yearly earnings. Please note, that the numbers are not 100% accurate because some weeks can be higher than others depending on activity and actual post/curation rewards. I also count 1 SBD as 1 USD to make the numbers comparable. I convert SBD back to Steem by multiplying the Estimated Authors Reward times 2. Actual earnings are higher because of high SBD/USD price, but I wanted to look at pure Steem in this calculation and exclude the absurdly high SBD price. Also assuming paid reward is set to 50/50.

Estimated weekly earnings in Steem = Estimated Curation Reward + (Estimated Authors Reward * 2)

Estimated yearly earnings in Steem = Estimated weekly earnings * 52

Yearly ROI = Est. yearly earnings / effective Steem Power

How much do five randomly selected whales earn on Steemit?

@lichtblick

Steem Power
50,389.089
Weekly Earnings Curation
29.474
Weekly Earnings Author
163.846
Weekly Earnings
193.32
Yearly Earnings
10,052.64
Return on Investment (ROI)
19.95%

@grumpycat

Steem Power
283,467.529
Weekly Earnings Curation
131.558
Weekly Earnings Author
770.018
Weekly Earnings
901.576
Yearly Earnings
46,881.95
Return on Investment (ROI)
16.54%

@adsactly

Steem Power
639,452.317
Weekly Earnings Curation
145.098
Weekly Earnings Author
1,023.316
Weekly Earnings
1,168.414
Yearly Earnings
60,757.53
Return on Investment (ROI)
9.5%

@transistor

Steem Power
297,171.047
Weekly Earnings Curation
257.547
Weekly Earnings Author
31.508
Weekly Earnings
289.055
Yearly Earnings
15,030.86
Return on Investment (ROI)
5.06%

@sean-king

Steem Power
169,323.300
Weekly Earnings Curation
91.181
Weekly Earnings Author
14.478
Weekly Earnings
105.659
Yearly Earnings
5,494.27
Return on Investment (ROI)
3.24%

Conclusion

These 5 randomly selected whales make a yearly ROI between 3.24% and 19.95% of their invested Steem Power. Considering that the yearly inflation of Steem is currently about 9% (the inflation is the source of the reward pool and used to pay the rewards, witnesses, and interest on SP), these numbers do not look overly concerning to me. It is actually much easier for a minnow to make a 100% ROI than for a whale.