i agree with the investment you put in, with re-occuring service based biz (much alike subscriptions) it's slow to initially recoup even if it's breakeven goal to help enrich the ecosystem for our own and mutual benefit before business goals

i've funded a server for 8 months with little return to run bots and scripts to cut down community volunteer time, and that's just automation, we put in a witness to help reduce partial cost (not even cover cost) and we don't even get any witness votes consistently to move forward, we were around 96 and now we're well over >115 because none of the volunteers nor myself have time in the last 2 months to seek support or promote our 100% community benefit witness {to my knowledge there is only 1 other like us that's Curie all other business, personal or community witnesses basically have private owner(s) and subject to their needs first not a community vote based leadership operation}

my point is i actually do understand, let me merely try to explain that the ongoing function of additional few lines and the non-thread needed operation adds next to no cost to existing overhead

my apologize for using the word profit, that was insensitive, i think it's fair that such fundamental function and impactful feature that's easy to implement not be treated so carelessly as a immediate profit grab benefit (imagine if Steemit Inc suddenly go from changing 0% to 35% if someone Re-Steem a post right when that function came out a few months  after launching a primitive steemit.com....how far do you think they will get today).....think bigger implement it as a marketing benefit for your company

think win-win, even short to mid-term, i ask you to consider my points as well, i was tired when i wrote all these, i'm still tired now. Bottom line is you lose nothing running this now....might as well get as much foothold as you can

look we can all forget this...and nobody want to use it with a stigma hanging over this.....and Steemians can stay modestly selfish or get worst.....or we get a little better due to development leader like yours, you can make a big change immediately early on, it's such a small and low hanging fruit but it could really make steem-bounty even as a separate web-based apps linking away from Steemit or Busy....if you agree i can point out to you some great way to monetize this via traffic return and not immediate cash harvest like greedy whales and self upvoters who put themselves and their coin stacking first and their own Steem wallets last, do it right for the best reasons, and the results that will get you the most user and maximum support