New Upvoting Strategy! I'm Giving Away Upvotes To Those Who Comment!

It's become clear that upvotes, if used properly, can provide bigger returns than just upvoting your own posts and comments.

Steemit provides an interesting platform that is first and foremost a social site but it also has real money to be earned. This changes the way you should engage if you are trying to maximize your time on the site.

I don't believe spamming to get votes is going to be a profitable method here.

Also, I don't believe that just upvoting your own comments and posts are going to take you as far as you could go.

Upvotes are mini investments that should be properly allocated such as an investment portfolio.

It's generally a bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket and upvotes are no different.

So let's look at the different baskets you have when it comes to upvotes:

1. Your Posts
2. Your Comments
3. Others Posts
4. Others Comments

First, remember you have 10ish full upvotes per day. (I believe the actual # is 12 / day but not entirely sure)

1. Your Posts
   Yes, it does make sense to upvote your own posts to a degree.If you post 1 time per day, then you should upvote your own post for sure. Then you will have 9 more full upvotes for other types of engagement.If you post 20 times per day, then you should upvote some (3-5) of your posts but not all of them. If you tried to upvote 20 or your own posts per day, you wouldn't have any left for any other content and it would be a matter of time before your voting weight goes to zero.

2. Your Comments
   This starts to get a bit tricky but there is still lots of value in upvoting your own comments.
   The main benefit is that when you upvote your own comment your position on the comment thread is increased. Your comment shows towards the top of the tread which greatly increase the chance of engagement you receive which is good for you. The drawback is if people view you as greedy and out for yourself, then you can attract some unwanted attention.

3. Others Posts
   To be honest, I haven't seen that there is a ton of value in upvoting others posts. It's a great way to show support for quality content that you enjoy, but don't expect much back from that. However, you should show support for every post that you comment on with an upvote. I prefer partial upvotes from 25-50% depending on the quality of the content. Rarely will I give a full upvote to a post. I will spend the rest of my voting power on the comments on the post.

4. Others Comments
   This is where you can get the most benefit. You have to be into giving to hand out upvotes that you could have kept for yourself. This really shows your character and your dedication to the community. My suggestion is spend most of your time as you're building your account, upvoting other peoples comments. This is the best way to attract new followers and create engagement on your own threads.

Here is how I'm looking to allocate my voting power moving forward:

1. (2) 100% Upvotes / day for my own posts
2. (2) 100% Upvotes / day for my own comments
3. (2) 50% Upvotes / day for my own comments
4. (4) 25% Upvotes / day on others posts
5. (8) 25% Upvotes / day on others comments
6. (20) 10% Upvotes / day on others comments

This is something I'm going to shoot for but not guarenteed to happen everyday. If executed properly this will split my upvoting power 50/50 (me/others).

I will test for a while and see how things go.

If you have any feedback on this type of strategy, please let me know.

Also, what upvoting strategy do you use?