This series is designed for people looking to curate for profit… If you don’t like profit, look away now!

Set SMART objective

Okay, I’m going to kick off this series by whizzing through the 101 of setting SMART objectives. SMART objectives are

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Let’s go through these one by one and apply the principles to curating for profit.

S

Specific

Some more buzz phrases this time on being specific. Here are the “five” Ws of being specific:

• What
• Why
• Who
• Where
• Which (How)

What - You should be clear on what your goals are. Your goals are to vote. Don’t get too side tracked with other activity. By all means come back to posts to comment etc. However if you’re curating for profit, your primarily focus is to decide whether you should upvote a given piece of content and how best to upvote to maximise profit.

Why - You should be clear on your motivation for curating. Are you curating for pleasure or are you curating for profit. IF you are curating for pleasure you don’t really need objectives. Go, vote for stuff, enjoy yourself, if you profit fine, if you don’t, no sweat. If you are curating for profit, on the other hand, then you should make maximising your STEEM Power return your goal when voting.

Who - This should be simple, it should be you voting. You may be in a position where it makes sense for someone to vote on your behalf. You make even decide to have a bot vote on your behalf. This series is mainly geared towards human curators, however I’m sure bot operators may also find some of the observations useful.

Where - You should be clear on where you will be curating, at home? On a train? Will you create through the whole day or in dedicated windows of time?

Which (How) - Lastly you should be clear on what you need to curate. Access to the website and time to read will be top of the list. What are the constraints on you voting? Do you have a full-time job?

M

Measurable

Luckily you have data coming out of your eye-balls to allow you to measure how successful you’re being when voting. My advice is to keep a daily chart of either your curation rewards and/ or your SP balance. Set goals and track them. Use the numerous tools at your disposal, starting with the curation rewards page.

A

Achievable

This is a big one. If you’re curating for profit, be clear on how much STEEM Power (SP) you want to accumulate through curating. More importantly is your target achievable?

I’m currently looking at 100% ROI per annual on my SP holding. I don’t expect such high returns lasting. That’s with me being in “obsessed with curating” mode. I’m also one of the few ‘non-bot’ human creators who are experimenting with curating for profit. I figure that if I can get a 50% ROI at the end of 12 months, I would have done bloody well.

However 50% or 100% return on your SP is only worthwhile if you have a lot of SP in the first place. If you only have the free 3.5 SP on sign up, in a year’s time that could double with 7 SP in “interest”. Let’s say you do really well curating and earn another 7 SP (curating + interest). This will leave you with the princely total of 14 SP at the end of the year. If the price of Steem stays the same, your $7 worth of SP will have increased in value to $28. You may find that the work involved in curating is not worth it to make an extra 14 bucks over the course of a year.

If however you have 35,000 SP and we set your ROI at a more realistic 50%. If the price of Steem stays the same ($2 per Steem) you could net around $35,000 in extra SP value. That’s a completely different proposition for 2 to 3 hours curating a day.

The objectives you set yourself should be achievable relative to the amount of SP you have. If you are low on SP, I’ll maintain that you are probably better off posting and commenting for profit than curating. If you only have free sign up equity, then one $100 post could net you 2 year’s worth of curation SP… plus $50. It would probably be worth you spending that 2 or 3 hours a day honing your writing skills than curating if you’re in that position. Once you have a reasonable amount of SP, then curation will be worth your while.

R

Relevant

Be honest with yourself. Does it make sense to make curating for a profit your goals? If you’re a fantastic writer or content creator, do you really want to spend hours curating content when you could be creating your own work? If you have a tiny amount of Steemit power is the sweat equity involved in curating worth the return? Conversely, if you’re a whale with a million dollars’ worth of SP, voting for profit may not be the best use of your influence. IF you’re a dolphin on the other hand, struggling to make an impact writing, curating for profit may be a way to pull in a fairly consistent income stream. It will be work, however it could be worth your while.

T

Time-bound

Time-frame your goals; calculate how much SP you aim to earn each day, how much each week and how much each year (or however long you plan on curating for profit). Time-frame how much time you intend to spend curating and when in the day you will do it. For example, I’m based in the UK. However I don’t plan to stay up all night to get in on all the prime time US voting action. I let those posts go and focus on the ones that suit me.

Be prepared for unexpected!

If (having been through the SMART objectives) you decide to join me on the journey of curating for profit, be prepared for a rocky ride. Rules can and will change, prices will fluctuant, new features will be added and peoples behaviours/ voting patterns will change. It will make for an exciting (if slightly geeky ride).

To summarise

• Be specific on the what, where, who, when, how you intend to curate
• Take advantage of the many tools and data at your disposal to measure how well you’re curating
• Set achievable goals relative to how much Steem Power you have
• Make sure that curating is relevant to who you are and what you want out of life. Like most things, curating is not the walk in the park it might seem from the outside.
• Set time-bound deadlines on what you aim to achieve by what date.

Lastly remember nothing is set in stone and anything can happen in the crazy world of crypto. My advice would be to approach curating for profit from the perspective of having fun and exploring the art of the possible.

Hope you found this resourceful and join me on the next instalment.

Until next time… Happy Curating!