How to Earn higher Curation Rewards
After three months on Steemit I am still struggling with the concept of curation and how the voting system works. I want to share with you the things I learned thus far and give you some very important tips.
My mistake
I was on the fence whether I should title this post "My first mistake on Steemit", let me explain why. When I first joined Steemit and learned that you could also earn money (curation rewards) by upvoting posts, I thought (like maybe some of you) that the best strategy would be to upvote high earning posts.
I made a list of the highest earning authors and upvoted their posts automatically with the help of Steemvoter and Streemian. Not because I am a lazy, money grabbing kind of guy but because of the simple fact that I don't have the time to curate posts all day (and hey, I was new at this so give me a break).
The thing is that I didn't know exactly how the upvoting worked and figured that the higher the payout on a post the more curation reward I would get.
But guess what? I was wrong
What I learned
So if I would have taken the time to read the white paper I may have avoided one of my (many) first mistakes on Steemit that were based on assumptions instead of doing some good ol' research. I was so consumed by discovering this brand new world with so much potential that I only focused on posting content and not enough on reading about the rules.
Curation rewards are earned by upvoting content (you probably already know this) and there are some rules that you have to understand to get the most out of it.
Voting Power
Every time you vote your voting power decreases. You have roughly 10 votes a day (spread over 24 hours). If you vote more than 10 times or don't spread your votes over the day then your voting power will go below 100%. This means that your upvote's worth will be less, so if for example your upvote is worth $0.10 (at 100% voting power) and your voting power falls to 90%, you will only be able to give posts a $0.09 upvote.
If your voting power is at 50% then your upvote will be worth $0.05.
You can check your voting power and the worth of your upvote at Steemnow.
Curation Rewards
Now for the important part. The upvoting process is designed to discourage certain behavior. If everybody just upvoted to maximize their payout than this would not benefit the platform (If only I would have known this from the start).
So the very smart people at Steemit designed algorithms that rewards the curator for upvoting content that is "fresh" , by that I mean high quality, but not yet trending posts.
If you vote on a post that is not yet popular but has the potential of trending then your stake in the payout will be bigger.
So you have to find those posts most likely to trend early and get your vote in.
You might think that it might be a good strategy to upvote early on popular authors because their posts always make a few hundred dollars.
................Well....... you are wrong
Explanation
After 7 days the author will get his/her payout and the curators (the people who upvoted) will get their share. The persons who contributed the most to increasing the payout will get the biggest curation reward.
If 500 people upvoted the post than your share will be 0.002 of the curation reward (if all upvotes were equal and at the same time). In reality that share will be even less because chances are that dolphins and whales are also upvoting the author.
But If you vote on a author who is less popular and by definition receives less upvotes than your stake in the curation reward will be much higher.
If 60 people upvoted the post your share will be 0.017 of the curation reward (if all upvotes were equal and at the same time). It is also possible that this post gets upvotes from a dolphin or whale but...
If you take into account the fact that you voted before the post became hot, your weight will increase even more even though a whale or dolphin voted on the post. Also because popular authors get a lot more votes the chances of you being the first one to "discover" the post are slim to almost impossible.
It also matters how much your upvote is worth so it is better to vote 10x at a 100% instead of 100x at 10%.
To summarize
It is better to follow and upvote authors that are not yet popular but have high quality posts. You will reap the rewards when those posts go hot or trending and you were one of the first to upvote.
It is better to give 100% upvotes (especially minnows) and keep your voting power at max.
It is good to get to those quality posts before everyone else.
If you want to get good curation rewards then don't upvote popular authors or posts that are already trending (If you really like the post than you can always upvote but don't expect much in curation payout).
I have successfully changed my voting strategy and only upvote those authors that I find to post quality content but have not yet been discovered yet. The payout of my curation rewards has gone up and I reap the rewards when those authors post a popular post.
What is your voting strategy? Let me know in the comment section
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Very interesting. I must admit that my payouts increased since I started voting for new content with potentisl
Yep, I did the same mistake in the beginning :) I was giving my full votes (as a minnow it was almost nothing anyway) to all the high payouts posts hoping that it will make me grow faster. And I didn't see any curation popping in my wallet. But in the same time I was voting on my friends that joined together with me and even though their posts didn't go higher than 1$ in payout I did see some tiny curation reward.
That made me think about the strategy too.
I also read somewhere that it matters when you upvote. If it is the first 15 minute of a post, 16-29 min of the post (If I am not mistaken), or after the 30 min of the post. The earlier you vote the more goes to the author, less to curators. The later... more goes to curators, but never above the 25%.
Yeah, I don't know if that rule still applies. But it was that the if you vote within 29 minutes the author benefits the most so it was better to vote after 29 minutes.
I can't remember how old was the article... I read id just a few days ago, but it could be a lot older than that.
This is still true.
This is excellent information @xervantes. :c)
One thing that I'd suggest you become aware of, if not already so, is the 30-minute rule. Up-votes placed on posts that are less than 30 minutes old will revert a portion of one's rewards back to the poster. :c)
So up-voting a 15 minute old post redirects around half of your rewards to the original poster.
Exception - if somebody up-votes him or herself (for obvious reasons). 9_9
another consideration is that the person who up-votes first has more weight in rewards than the second, etc.
Otherwise very well stated. :c)
Thank you, I wasn't sure if this rule still applied after HF19. Thanks for clearing this up for me.
Thanks, so are you saying you have to wait half an hour before upvoting?
You don't have to - but if its a poorly known author who hardly gets any up-votes then you might want to push it closer to 30 minutes.
Some people get dozens of up-votes within that period of time. They likely don't 'need' your upvote - but if you do decide upon an up-vote then aiming for the 15 minute mark or beyond might be optimal. Half the curation reward still goes back to the author but this may balance out against getting in on votes after quite a few more others.
OK how do you decide what posts or comments to upvote?
I wouldn't say that I have a solid strategy (once I eventually get a slider such would be more do-able) - but I tend to vote on good content with few upvotes.
As for comments - I mostly up-vote responses on my posts - if they aren't clearly just vote-hunting one-liners.
I do the same, is it working for you?
goo info! this is help me a lot! thanks for this!
verywell explained. I,have know idea how the curation reward calculated before you explain it.
but my thumb is hard to stay still and not hit that
@xervantes56, thanks for the great summary on the upvoting process. I can relate about being so excited when I first joined Steemit that I missed out on some learning opportunities.
It is always a good idea to return back to the basics. Thanks for the reminder!
There is a lot to take in when you first start, I am still busy correcting some of my beginners mistakes
yep, exactly.
Thank you!
You're welcome :)
Well written and I think we all can relate to those mistakes 😆I know I can I made many of them before I understood how things worked. It's a working progress. Great information and useful to people who still are new here.
Thanks, I joined Steemit in June and am still figuring things out. Sharing what I learned will hopefully help others avoid the mistakes I made.
I also joined in June 😉 cool.
And sharing your experience with others like this is very kind and will help many I'm sure.
Have a good night. Cheers
I'd like to know, what is the best time to vote? If you discover a high quality post as soon as it's posted, would you wait for 30 minutes to earn higher curation? What if in those 30 minutes, post receive a hell lot of vote value? Would you loss on curation? But if you vote in first 10 minutes, it's as good as not voting as far as curation rewards are concerned.
I'd like to know your stand on the best timing for an upvote to a post which is going to generate a storm of upvotes right from it being posted. Thanks for your input!
The thumb rule is that 20 - 30 minutes is the best time to vote. I usually go for 20, a part of the curation goes back to the author but I have no problems with that.
Thanks for this that is what I wanted to know. How do you feel about voting guilds?