Curation Rewards Part 1

In one of my previous post I wrote about the fact that I changed my voting strategy. This change has lead to a very positive impact on my curation rewards.

This article about curation will consist of two parts. In the first post I will explain my strategy and in the second post I will crunch the numbers for you.

If you missed my post about how to earn higher curation awards check it out here.

It basically comes down to voting on minnows who post great content instead of upvoting the authors who are regulars on the trending pages.
This change in voting behaviour has led to 2 interesting developments.

The first thing that happened is that I made it into the Top 200 of effective Steemit curators who actively support newcomers. I was ranked #186 two weeks ago and in quite good company I might add. You can find the list here.

The second thing is that I was ranked 2nd on a list that compared the % of curation rewarded Steem Power in relation to amount of Steem Power owned. It basically means that the my voting strategy is quite effective. You can find the great post about curation by @abh12345 here.

The fact that I am relatively high ranked as a supporter of my fellow minnows and the high ranking on the rewarded Steem Power list is not a coincidence but a direct result of my new voting strategy.

It takes time to curate posts and to get good curation rewards you need to find those rare gems and get those votes in early. Since HF19 (that's Hard Fork 19 or software update 19 for those who are not familiar with the terminology) your voting power allows you to get 10 votes in (at 100%). Remember to spread those votes around or your voting power will decrease. If you have a slider it might be a good idea to split those votes into 30 votes at 30%.

Next thing to do is find some great authors. My advise is to join a minnow project that focuses on promoting good authors. A couple of examples are Qurator, Make-a-whale, circle of friends and Eco train.
Find those quality posts and check out all of the author's other posts.
There are a couple of things to take into consideration:

• Is the author consistently putting out quality posts?
• Is the author engaged with the community?
• Is this a author you see getting high rewards in the future based on the material he or she is posting?
• Is the author posting regularly?
• Most important, do you like what the author is posting?

If the answers to these questions are all yes then you have a winner.
If you have selected your favorite authors it is time to get your votin' on.
Decide on how you want to spread your votes.
For example I spread my votes around at 30% but keep 2-3 100% for quality posts I might happen to stumble on. So around 25 of my votes go to my fellow minnow authors I feel are putting out quality posts. The rest goes to other authors who are not on my list (and the occasional dolphin).
Because I am not able to access Steemit during working hours I use Steemvoter to automate my voting.

I do make it a habit to visit the posts I voted on afterwards though (if time allows).

In the upcoming second part of my Curation Strategy, I will break down the numbers. I will analyze one week of curation and list the names of the Steemians I upvoted and the rewards I received.
I will share the total amount of the payout I received from curation to show how profitable this upvoting strategy really is.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my Curation Strategy