Picture the scenario:

Jonny likes to buy $50.00 of upvotes off the bidbots once a day with every new post of his to see how many curators he can snare. Typically, his posts might fetch $55 - $60.

You vote with your 10 cent upvote to bag your share of the curation rewards.

But what if you could go higher? A LOT higher?

Upvote a dollar? Ten dollars? Fifty dollars of your own (ie. You're a bit of a whale, say)?

If you were crazy enough (and I'm 100% sure no whale would be) to upvote someone routinely bagging around $60 with a $50 mega-upvote of your own, you can bet your last dollar Jonny would not be buying any upvotes for that post if he sees what you've gone and done.

Not if he's sane, anyway. For he's hit his target and isn't deluded enough to think his post could possibly be worth any more.

So what should the whale curator have done? How big should his upvote have been?

Existentially, you could say how long's a piece of string? Zero at one end and your maximum upvote at the other end? So, where on that piece of string should you be when setting the value for one of your typical upvotes? Knowing that the smaller your upvote selected, the more upvotes you can make?

The more radars you can fly under with people mostly not noticing? Not putting off their use of bidbots (that you're intending to benefit from)?

I fly my convertible 'no hands' style
Image courtesy of spangdahlem.af.mil - licensed for reuse

Of course, for every Jonny, there's a Tom, a Dick and a Harry.

Their posts will all bring in different amounts. $10 might be a nice return for Tom, $20 for Dick and $100 for Harry.

It's a no-brainer to keep your typical vote low once you've got to the stage where you can alter it.

Curation voting dynamics is all about the number of votes you cast and your average reward.

As curator accounts grow, things have to change.

A small curator might get a good thing going curating just a few regulars, always taking a nice slice of action for his investment. He might have lots of hits and very few misses. Nice, but he's only little, remember.

A bigger curator is going to have to diversify. His typical upvote can be increased (I must say I'll probably always prefer to 'bet' a maximum of around 10 cents on just about any post but others may disagree). But he will also have to curate more. So his hits will almost certainly fall relatively and he'll have to take a few more losses. He can still make nice profits though.

An even bigger curator should be spreading his love. Thinly. To just about everyone.

At this point - and I'm nowhere near there yet - it's probably better the curator walks away.

Again, it's how long's a piece of string. Tiny account, one end; giant, the other. Where's the best place to get off and stop curating or at least cut back drastically on it? Then, you're pretty much relying 100% on your author returns. You'll be able to self-upvote with your lovely maximum upvote and minnows will follow you around seemingly believing a rather large star to be emitting photons from beyond Uranus. You'll be set for life.

But you probably shouldn't waste your time manually curating anymore. (By then, in reality, there's automation / delegation).

Hope you enjoyed the read.

Here's the link to part 1 in case you missed it. Feel free to upvote that after upvoting this. 😉

Any comments?

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