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Let's say I asked an interesting question which got a lot of attention and some really good answers. My problem was solved because of those answers and I've accepted one of them. But I want to also pay some reward to the second best answer that already exists on my question. Could I start a bounty for that sole reason? Is it within the site rules?

Does question needs to stay in the featured area for 7 days?

If you’ve asked a good question, edited it with status and progress updates, and still are not receiving answers, you can draw attention to your question by placing a bounty on it

But I don't want to grab more attention on the question, I just want to award an existing answer

Update

It has officially become a trend, There are three questions right now in the Featured section with reason

One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty.

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    You can award a bounty to any answer, for any reason you like and you don't have to of accepted that answer, When you start the bounty, one of the available reasons is "reward existing answer", so no rules will be broken. "and does question needs to stay in featured area for 7 days?" , no, you can award it after one day, see here for more info: askubuntu.com/help/bounty
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 10:32
  • @MarkKirby so basically the bounty will be awarded after one day
    – Yoginee Pingale
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 10:42
  • I saw a statement in the link you provided, does my question conflicts with that statement?
    – Yoginee Pingale
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 10:44
  • Yes, you can manually award it after one day, I am not sure if it will credit for the answerer right away but you can click the blue bounty icon bellow the accept mark after a day. That line in your edit is only one reason for awarding a bounty, you can choose the reward existing answer reason and it shold stop other answers when they see it.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 10:47
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    Also more upvotes can be drawn to the answer by delaying the bounty award because it automatically puts the question on active tag. Another good way to reward imo
    – Anwar
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 11:28
  • @Anwar One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty would probably make up-voters think like meh, this answer is gonna get bounty anyway
    – Yoginee Pingale
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 14:25
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    @YogineePingale maybe or maybe not. If the answer is exemplary, people tend to upvote usually. But you must be careful not to delay or forget the bounty period
    – Anwar
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 14:29
  • @Anwar got it, thanks for the advise
    – Yoginee Pingale
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 14:51
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    @Yoginee not really, many people used to do it! And they still do it! In my case I found the answer underrated, that's why I started a bounty.
    – Sumeet Deshmukh
    Commented May 20, 2017 at 9:32

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You can absolutely do that; you can award bounties to any answer as mentioned by Mark Kirby. There is a bounty reason just for giving extra credit to awesome answers:

One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty

I will add though, that personal gratitude is not really the intended reason to award a bounty. The purpose of a bounty in general is to draw attention to a post. As an example for this particular bounty reason, this question was closed as a duplicate but received an answer that is probably more useful than the answers to the target, so muru offered a bounty on the question and awarded it to the exemplary answer to attract more views and votes to the page. The more views a page has, the more likely people are to land on it when using search engines. Another reason to use this bounty reason is to give credit to a late and great (or otherwise under-appreciated) answer on a question that already has accepted and highly upvoted answers, to push it higher up the page so that it is more readily seen by visitors.

When you offer a bounty, be aware that you are giving away your own reputation irrevocably.

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    it's not hard earned reputation i got lucky
    – Yoginee Pingale
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 14:51
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    @YogineePingale sure, we all have got lucky imho :) And it's just unicorn dollars anyway, right? I just wanted to mention it to be sure.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 14:55

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