Tips for New Steemit Members, How does all this Voting Power and Curation Work.
My advice is ignore it all! For real, it's pretty damn confusing and overly complicated. It's not going to make a huge difference for you in your first month here anyways and it will come.
I suspect you really want to know anyways
Since you opened this post and read past the line that said ignore it all, your expecting something, so I'll try to simplify things.
Voting Power
You may have heard this mentioned at some point, but essentially everyday each user can cast 10, 100% upvotes, before you start depleting your voting power faster than it can replenish. Each vote drains about 2% of your voting power and takes about 2.4hrs to recharge. Votes casts at higher voting power will be worth more than votes cast at lower voting power. You will also earn curation rewards based on how much your vote was worth. So a lot of people try to keep there voting power between 90-95%, or if your really precise like 95-98%.
But you can't even see your voting power on Steemit, you need to use a third part site like steemnow.com or steemd.com to be able to see it.
Here's what it looks like on Steemnow.com
Voting Weight
When you first start out and until you have about 500SP, all your votes are cast at 100%, around 500SP you will get a vote slider, where you can pick what strength or weight to cast you votes at. This makes it possible to stay in the zone up in the mid 90s for voting power.
It looks like this.
Told you confusing right
This is why I say don't worry to much, when your first here, just have fun, vote away! Once you have that slider you can actually stay in the range.
The only reason to keep in the zone of voting power is to ensure your votes are worth as much as the can be and you earn the most curation rewards, but honestly your vote is worth like half a cent to 2 cents it's really not worth killing your brain over. Be aware of it, learn about it, but don't worry so much until it counts.
But what about Curation
Any guess what my answer is?
It's pretty damn confusing and overly complicated and it's not going to make a huge difference for you, so ignore it
Sound familiar, I'm sure you really want to know. So here the easy explanation on how curation rewards work. Everyone who votes for the post gets a very small portion of the payouts depending on when you voted and how much. But this when and how much gets confusing. It's very best if your the first person to vote you will get larger rewards, and the best time to vote is exactly 30 minutes after the post was made. If you vote before 30 minutes you forfeit a small portion or your curation rewards to the author. I believe at 15mins, it's 50/50 and closes more before that with more going to the author. You will also get more rewards if the post pays out a higher amount, but if it does your vote was probably so small anyways it's not going to matter much anyways. Curation rewards are very small and should not be a focus early on. I don't think it even becomes important until you have at least 20 000SP, then you may start seeing rewards that matter.
Anyways this post probably confused you, the damn curation stuff still confuses me and most people, so really don't focus on it
If you are new Here I have a couple other great posts to help get you started.
The art of Making good comments
Advice and Suggestions for new Steemit Users
Footer by @bearone
I like how rather than going into detail with graphs and diagrams you kept this simple for new users - “ignore it.” Probably the best advice for new steemians so they don’t get overwhelmed. Nice work.
Heck, I still totally ignore all the timing for curation and stuff and just vote what I like when I see it, sometimes very early and often way too late
Super informative, and a great post for the noobs! Gonna resteem and send onto a few minnows
#thealliance
I wonder which minnows you had in mind haha
your minnow face ;)
🐟
Thx for sharing, hopefully it helps a few people, thanks for stopping by
Nice explanations, phelimint. I’ve been in Steemit for a while and some of this stuff still confuses me.
Yeah, made by engineers I guess... lol
Thank you for the informative read :)
Love the lil bit of humour too, like
"Ignore it, don't ask... Okaaaay, if you really want to know"
haha, thanks again 🙌
Ha, thanks, glad you liked it. I'm probably a bit corny..lol.
Still nice to see some effort for the sake of entertainment :D
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by PheliMint from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP. Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Good overview. Voting power is always an issue for me, I'm really generous with my upvotes, I want to support a lot of steemians here. Trying to recover my VP this month. @ironshield
Yeah, I wish I had more VP too, there never seams to be enough.
I think curation rewards are one of if not the most confusing thing about Steemit... Upvotes are fairly straightforward, even vote power, but trying to decipher those damn curation rewards is like trying to decode heiroglyphics while only having access to Urban dictionary🤣 ok maybe not that bad, but your advice about not even worrying about it couldn't be more sound! 🤙
Yeah, curation is way too overly complicated. But really I don't think it matters all that much to us anyways. let the whales worry about curation
Great info phelimint! Also, the steemnow site is really neat, much better than the site I was using.
Yeah, steemnow is my goto for voting power, since it updates in the real time and no need to refresh.
I was about to be enlightened, but now I am still confused. I think I will fall back to your first advice and not worry about it.
Thanks for trying to explain. Actually that is better than any other explanation I have seen.
So do you end up getting any credit for those you vote on after the first 10 when it stops changing the counter?
Yea, you keep getting credit, it will just end up draining your power faster then I raises.
I like your advice. I'm trying to figure out ways to up my SP, but I think I'll take it slow for now. Thanks for sharing the steemnow.com It's neat to see all the info it gives.