Steemit: Curation League - Week 4 - Trends developing

How well are you curating financially? Are you making the best use of your Steem Power and votes?

This is the fourth post in a series which looks at a method to work out just how well your curation skills rank against other Steemians.

The users listed in this report have been selected at random and vary in account size (Steem Power).

---

Curation and its rewards system is a complex beast. The structure of how the rewards are decided upon for each voter have been explained many times in detail, and here are two I have found (via google search, well done @calamus056) which I think do a good job:

https://steem.io/getinvolved/paid-to-curate/

https://steemit.com/steemit/@calamus056/curation-rewards-explained-in-great-detail

My takeouts from the above, and general opinion is:

• Voting in the first minute will earn you a curation reward of almost 0.000

• Voting between 1 and 29 minutes will earn an increasing % of the curation rewards split, this value peaking at 30 minutes and remaining the same from this point onwards

• The goal is to get in prior to the big hitters, but not too early in that your % in the 2nd point isn't too low (e.g. 15 minutes - approx 50%)

• It is commonly suggested that 25-30 minutes is the 'best' time to vote (especially on known power-authors posts because they are likely to have more auto-votes coming in at these times)

As you can see, a combination of many variables such as Steem Power, voting strength, voting weight, and time of vote, (and more) all play a part in the amount of reward received.

Is there a skill to it though? And how well are you doing?

Recently, @xervantes produced a couple of excellent blogs (part 1 and part 2), detailing his technique in reaching a high level of curation reward for his current Steem Power.

I have used the following method to obtain what I need for this report.

• Use steemit.com Wallet to collect Steem Power and + or - the leased/delegated steem
  

• Use the 'Rewards' drop-down menu to find 'Curation rewards' for the previous week
  

Therefore, my data is gathered manually and the curation period is only for the previous week.

This is obviously not ideal and reduces the potential to widen the results set because of the time it takes to gather the data.
Hopefully in future, we can programmatically obtain a much larger set for analysis.

This weeks results

The key columns are:

• Curation: Total curation rewards for the previous week

• SP Total: Total vested Steem Power (including delegated SP)

• Curation/SP %: The % of curation rewarded Steem Power in relation to amount of Steem Power owned

This final column is what I feel is a genuine indicator of how well you are working the curation game with the tools (including vested Steem Power) that you have at your disposal.

Imagine you have 10,000 Steem Power, and I have 1,000 Steem Power.

After a week curating, the rewards for both of us are 1 SP each.

In my mind, I'm working my Steem Power 10 X harder - If you, in this example earned curation rewards of 10 SP, then I would say we were curating with equal skill.

The % of curation rewarded Steem Power in relation to amount of Steem Power owned

This weeks' findings:

• The second week in a row where @dontstopmenow leads the way by a distance. This guy is curating like a champion!

I've just spoken with him on discord to find out a little more information about his technique and it goes as follows:

• Mostly manual curator - around 80% of votes cast
• Tends to vote with 100%
• Likes to keep voting power above 75%

On congratulating him regarding his curation abilities, @dontstopmenow had this to say:

Well done @dontstopmenow!

---

• @biophil, last weeks 3rd with .45%, has moved up to 2nd spot with an improved .51% - well done @biophil!

• Again, consistent stuff from @buggedout who moves up a spot to 3rd this week

• @mikepm74 also scored well and deserves praise in 4th

• A special mention this week to @mammasitta who has really pulled her socks up, doubling her curation %. Good job!

---

• Without any excuses this week, I still sit way lower than the average. Personally I feel that I'm voting at the right time, but perhaps my vote is spread across too many users and I vote too many comments - This is unlikely to change though, I like sharing my votes around!

• The difference between the highest and lowest %'s is a staggering 31 X better ratio! If we ignore the @pharesim and @good-karma, this ratio between top and bottom is still 15 X.

• The average % curation reward/Steem Power is 0.14816 this week, down from 0.15785 last week

• It's still debatable whether a very large amount of Steem Power restricts curation performance using these figures. e.g. at 500,000 SP, you are giving a post the highest reward, and cannot 'soak' enough of the curation reward to reach a high curation %.

• Following on from the point above, only 1 of the top 10 curators in my league have over 10,000 Steem Power

• Accounts @roomservice and @botdot were added this week because I noticed they were 'front-running' @booster. While they are no match for the top 4, the numbers show a good curation %, without any manual 'work'

A few points:

• If you have spotted any glaring errors in my post, please let me know so I can fix them.

• If you would like to be added or removed from my personal curation league (next weeks post) let me know

• If a user has powered down or powered up Steem in the past week, the results will be skewed (but they look ok this week)

• Some Users, 'Power Users', and Whales (listed in this post and otherwise) are not aiming for max. curation rewards, and are supporting communities with their votes (@pharesim, @good-karma, @acidyo)

• If you have any other comments, please enter them into the box below

And finally...

• I feel that curation should be about finding awesome content and giving it an up-vote, irrelevant of the curation rewards you might receive.

---

I am part of a Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #bisteemit. If you have analysis you would like to be carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you.

---

Thanks for reading today

Asher