After three months on Steemit I am still struggling with the concept of curation and how the voting system works. I want to share with you the things I learned thus far and give you some very important tips.
My mistake
I was on the fence whether I should title this post "My first mistake on Steemit", let me explain why. When I first joined Steemit and learned that you could also earn money (curation rewards) by upvoting posts, I thought (like maybe some of you) that the best strategy would be to upvote high earning posts.
I made a list of the highest earning authors and upvoted their posts automatically with the help of Steemvoter and Streemian. Not because I am a lazy, money grabbing kind of guy but because of the simple fact that I don't have the time to curate posts all day (and hey, I was new at this so give me a break).
The thing is that I didn't know exactly how the upvoting worked and figured that the higher the payout on a post the more curation reward I would get.
But guess what? I was wrong
What I learned
So if I would have taken the time to read the white paper I may have avoided one of my (many) first mistakes on Steemit that were based on assumptions instead of doing some good ol' research. I was so consumed by discovering this brand new world with so much potential that I only focused on posting content and not enough on reading about the rules.
Curation rewards are earned by upvoting content (you probably already know this) and there are some rules that you have to understand to get the most out of it.
Voting Power
Every time you vote your voting power decreases. You have roughly 10 votes a day (spread over 24 hours). If you vote more than 10 times or don't spread your votes over the day then your voting power will go below 100%. This means that your upvote's worth will be less, so if for example your upvote is worth $0.10 (at 100% voting power) and your voting power falls to 90%, you will only be able to give posts a $0.09 upvote.
If your voting power is at 50% then your upvote will be worth $0.05.
You can check your voting power and the worth of your upvote at Steemnow.
Curation Rewards
Now for the important part. The upvoting process is designed to discourage certain behavior. If everybody just upvoted to maximize their payout than this would not benefit the platform (If only I would have known this from the start).
So the very smart people at Steemit designed algorithms that rewards the curator for upvoting content that is "fresh" , by that I mean high quality, but not yet trending posts.
If you vote on a post that is not yet popular but has the potential of trending then your stake in the payout will be bigger.
So you have to find those posts most likely to trend early and get your vote in.
You might think that it might be a good strategy to upvote early on popular authors because their posts always make a few hundred dollars.
................Well....... you are wrong
Explanation
After 7 days the author will get his/her payout and the curators (the people who upvoted) will get their share. The persons who contributed the most to increasing the payout will get the biggest curation reward.
If 500 people upvoted the post than your share will be 0.002 of the curation reward (if all upvotes were equal and at the same time). In reality that share will be even less because chances are that dolphins and whales are also upvoting the author.
But If you vote on a author who is less popular and by definition receives less upvotes than your stake in the curation reward will be much higher.
If 60 people upvoted the post your share will be 0.017 of the curation reward (if all upvotes were equal and at the same time). It is also possible that this post gets upvotes from a dolphin or whale but...
If you take into account the fact that you voted before the post became hot, your weight will increase even more even though a whale or dolphin voted on the post. Also because popular authors get a lot more votes the chances of you being the first one to "discover" the post are slim to almost impossible.
It also matters how much your upvote is worth so it is better to vote 10x at a 100% instead of 100x at 10%.
To summarize
It is better to follow and upvote authors that are not yet popular but have high quality posts. You will reap the rewards when those posts go hot or trending and you were one of the first to upvote.
It is better to give 100% upvotes (especially minnows) and keep your voting power at max.
It is good to get to those quality posts before everyone else.
If you want to get good curation rewards then don't upvote popular authors or posts that are already trending (If you really like the post than you can always upvote but don't expect much in curation payout).
I have successfully changed my voting strategy and only upvote those authors that I find to post quality content but have not yet been discovered yet. The payout of my curation rewards has gone up and I reap the rewards when those authors post a popular post.
What is your voting strategy? Let me know in the comment section
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