What I am basically trying to say is forget voting for the big names unless you are genuinely impressed with their article.

This is correct. Basically, your % share of the reward is important, and if you are voting after a whale, your percentage share will be less than 0.001% in other words practically nothing.

To get an idea of what your percentage share is, look at the article in steemd. For example here is the url for your article in steemd:

https://steemd.com/curation/@onetree/curation-strategy-of-a-minnow

Click on advanced mode on the top right and then scroll down to "vote details" and click it. It should show you who has voted and their percentage weight. If your percentage weight is greater than 0 then you get a reward. If you vote on the "big money" posts as a minnow, your reward will be very tiny, because the whales take most of the reward.

Vote for the smaller posts - better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond.