Looking Forward Along the New Steem Path.

After all the concern of how the hardfork would affect smaller accounts, I don't think it's been as detrimental as many were thinking. It's taking a little bit more of a boost to get posts into the earning zone, but it's cents rather than dollars. This is good news, because it means comments can still be rewarded without needing copious amounts of SP. So we shouldn't stop commenting and interacting, because it’s still the best way to grow our accounts.

There are a few people unhappy at the reduction in author rewards and it is disappointing to see that drop in earnings. However, there already seems to be an increase in curation, so while author rewards may have taken a cut, I'm already seeing more votes coming in as accounts get into action on the curation side. Hopefully this will start to balance things back out again.

Personally, I feel I can't be anything other that grateful for the support of anyone, because their votes aren't unlimited and they don't have to upvote my content. I write occasionally for a couple of magazines and whenever I put an article forward I'm prepared that it might not be accepted and that the pay will vary, depending on length and how much they like it. There are other magazines in existence and they focus on different interests, so I wouldn't expect them to even be interested in my articles. You could say that these are like whales in the real world. They have the ability to pay me money, but going to them and expecting them to pay me for what I've written would be presumptuous and I certainly wouldn't then start writing articles to magazines complaining that other magazines won't buy my articles. I don't see Steem as any different really. No-one here is obliged to upvote my work or even like it. In fact, much of what I write about has a limited audience. Not everyone is interested in it and on the flip side, there are things I have no interest in and I'd be unlikely to upvote them.

Looking for the positives, curation rewards have increased and, let's be honest, curation is much easier than creating quality content anyway. I've always worked to build up my Steem Power, because I hope to be able to reward some of the amazing posts I come across as well as I feel they should be rewarded.

There seems to be some confusion about whether votes from small accounts are actually detrimental or completely worthless. They aren't and it's certainly worthwhile upvoting. In the right circumstances your vote could earn you more than it was worth. So what's your best approach to upvoting?

Firstly, don't be put off voting for the things you love, even if they don't seem to be getting much attention. If you love it, the chances are others will too and as their votes get added to it, your share of curation increases. Consider some voting trails if you want to be sure your vote will fall on quality posts. Aside from the obvious ones like @curie and @ocd, @tribevibes votes for a screened group of authors and is followed by the @tribesteemup whale vote to maximise the rewards of its trail following.

Then there are other experienced users who have set up vote trails and made the offer that you can follow their upvotes if you want to get your SP working for you, but don't have the time to find content. Off the top of my head, @whatsup has made this offer and @artemislives leads the trail for @ecotrain which has reasonable sized accounts following it. Just go to @steemauto to jump on these trails.

If you have a passion for a particular subject, the chances are there will be trails for those communities. For travel there are @travelfeed and @steemitworldmap, the @homesteaderscoop votes on homesteading related posts, @naturalmedicine does posts on natural healing, if you like photography, there is @photofeed and art has @ntopaz. I'm sure there are many more, feel free to give them a shout out in the comments.

~○♤○~