Curation Rewards Have You Confused? Let Me Help

Short post for today, but an important one. Yesterday, I posted about how to maximize the use of comments in building your accounts on Steemit and especially improving your engagement/network in the process. Upon reading through many of the comments, I realized that many people are very confused, misinformed, or outright clueless when it comes to Curation Rewards.

They Should Be!

Curation Rewards are a rabbit hole within the rabbit hole that is Steemit. There are so many factors that go into the curation rewards of a normal post (not a comment) that even some of the brightest people I know on Steemit are a bit confused on how to maximize curation.

To illustrate this point - A really smart guy Hive account@crokkon ran a series of tests last December to see how efficient the very best curators on Steemit were in choosing when and where to place their upvotes. He found that even the curation experts at Hive account@curie were only 66% efficient in their upvotes meaning they could have improved their rewards by 34%. Here is Hive account@crokkon's post if you'd like to take a look.

Here is the plan for this post so you can jump around if you like.

1. Basics of Curation Explained as Simply as I Could Muster
2. Strategies for Low SP Steemians (less than 100 SP)
3. Strategies for Steemians with more than 100 SP
4. Strategies for Steemians with more than 500 SP
5. Some Conclusions and a Recap

Some Basics on Curation

There are some really good posts out there (most of which are many months old) that work at explaining this complex topic. The best I've found was put together by Hive account@gmichelbkk about 3 months ago. He does a good job of explaining the process simply. Here is the link to his post.

Of course, I know that you all have busy lives and you are counting on me to give you some strategies to maximize your effort so, I'm going to give some basics on the basics for you here. Then I'm going to talk about strategies for 3 different types of Steemians.

I know you were all told about 25% rewards just for upvoting content and while it is true that 25% of the total amount of a post is paid in curation rewards, it doesn't mean that you get an equal share. In fact, most people get about 12.5%. I mentioned this yesterday on my post.

On regular posts (not comments), any upvote of a post that takes place BEFORE 30 minutes after the post hits Steemit will give part of the curation to the author. Yes, if you vote before 30 minutes you will lose some curation rewards. The matrix for this is from 100% to 0% with 15 minutes being the median of 50%.

For example - You upvote my post at 15 minutes and you are the FIRST person to upvote that post. Also, you are the only person to upvote that post. You will give 50% of your curation rewards to the author. If you were the only upvoter and voted at 30 minutes, you would get 100% of the curation rewards, which would be 25% of the value of your vote.

IMPORTANT - You don't get 25% of the value of posts you vote on. You get YOUR SHARE of 25% of the value on the post when it pays out in 7 days. I think many people misunderstand this principal.

Example 2 - If you are the ONLY upvoter on a post and you upvote it for a 1.00 upvote (I know most of you don't have this kind of SP, but just for an example), you will get your share of 25% of the posts payout. That means your $1.00 vote will get you .25 if you voted at 30 minutes or after AND you were the only voter.

It would be nice if this was the only parameter by which we needed to calculate. Unfortunately, there is a factor based on the position that you voted on the post. People who vote early get more rewards than people who vote later. In fact their percentage of the curation reward can be significantly higher than 25% of their voting power. This can be very cool if you are timing your votes correctly and getting your votes in before the Big Dogs or Whales come in and upvote.

For some very cool examples of how this works, you can visit a post done by a SUPER Smart guys Hive account@miniature-tiger. Here is his post

However, here is the example I gave in post yesterday where my friend Hive account@krusper upvoted my comment and then I came in later and upvoted it for an amount like 50 times greater than his upvote.

My comment with 2 upvotes, Hive account@krusper was first with an upvote of .003 and I was second with .325

My Curation Rewards

His Curation Rewards

Intuitively, everyone wants to think that somehow I stole his curation rewards, but that isn't the case at all. Actually, he got some of my curation rewards because I was late to the party and he was first.

In this example, Hive account@krusper gained extra curation because he voted first and I came along and upvoted for a lot more later. In fact, his curation was 66% of the value of his upvote of .003. In most cases he would have been lucky to get .001. So being early to the party on a good paying post helps especially if you can beat HUGE upvoters like bots and whales.

However, if you vote too early (before 30 minutes), you risk giving a lot of your rewards to the author of the post. So, where is the "sweetspot". That is difficult to say. Remember, the best of the best in curating only get it right about 66% percent of the time. Which means they are leaving money on the table. Therefore, it isn't likely that you're going to do much better and that is why I have some strategies for you.

Curation Strategies for Low SP Steemians

These are strategies that I would employ if I was in your situation at this level of SP. Take this advice or leave it. Better yet, if you have a better idea, share with me in the comments and we can see what improvements we might make.

1. Don't waste your time or your precious votes chasing curation rewards at all!
2. Upvote comments on your posts or your comments if you think they will reach .03 payouts. The reason for this is because time makes no difference on comments and it's easy to be first. If you're right and the comment gets about .03, then you will gain some extra curation. If you're wrong, you at least made a positive gesture to the person who commented on your post or comment.
3. Use your upvotes like they are GOLD. You only get 70 - 75 of them a week at full VP. They are precious and should not be wasted by throwing them around the platform like a Marine in a strip club.
4. Don't use curation trails. What? Everyone tells me to use their curation trail and I'll make MEGA money in curation. No you won't. Period. No. You need your precious little votes to make friends and build your network. You can join a curation trail when you have 500 SP or more.
5. Upvote people that you know will share the love back. See my article form yesterday on how to do this effectively.

More Than 100 SP but Less than 500 SP

Somewhere around 150 SP you're going to get to .03 VP so your risk of getting "dusted" decreases significantly. However, don't get too excited like I did and hit the strip clubs as referenced earlier. Even at .03 your total upvotes at 100% for the week add up to $2.19 (73 votes approximately). Usually around this time, I see people getting all altruistic and wanting to share the love blah, blah, blah. Don't fool yourself. You've got nothing special yet. You need more friends and more SP. Play the game just like you were at less than 100 SP. You will grow your network of friends and thank me later.

One exception to this. At this point, you should be using some of your income to make more income. I suggest joining Hive account@qurator if your stuff is actually good, readable, and good quality. If you're wondering about it, then go their Discord and just ask them to take a quick look. Joining Hive account@qurator at this point in your adventure is a great step because of the daily upvotes. More strategies like this later in the week.

Also, around 250 SP, you should definitely be self-voting all your posts immediately at publication. If you have any sort of a network or following, they are going to be upvoting you automatically. Don't let yourself be 2nd or worse on your own posts.

WooHoo! You've hit 500 SP

Party like a Rock Star! Uh, no. Celebrate with beer here and not champagne and, yes, strippers. You have reached a cool milestone and now you need to change your curation habits.

Currently 500 SP gets you about a .12 upvote. Even better is the ability to use the slider if you're not doing it on Steemworld already (see my post on Steemworld - here

1. Self Vote your posts immediately. You should be used to this by now and hopefully you've learned to deal with the guilt trips laid on you by the purists. You should be using about 1/4 to 1/3 of your VP on yourself.
2. Use Steemauto to automatically upvote people you know and like (and that ALWAYS put out good content). Set your time on the auto vote for between 22 - 29 minutes (maybe earlier so monitor this). In this way, you are going to get good curation rewards because these people get good payouts. Check weekly to see if others are beating you to the upvote and adjust your times accordingly.
3. Upvote all your commenters to .03. I can't stress this enough. Once they see that it has hit .03, they can sneak in their own paltry upvote and you both get paid (you more than them as a percentage). This will also, help you earn curation while making friends and building your network.
4. Don't follow a Curation Trail yet until you get to about 750 or more SP and even then there are some other options that pay much better than curation trails. Again, don't believe them when they tell you how you're going to make so much in curation. You aren't. It isn't going to happen. Get over it.
5. Increase you auto votes on communities that you support to a higher percentage. These community posts such as The Daily Curator or Read ASAP are always going to get decent rewards. If you increase their vote percentage and your timing has been refined, you will make some better curation while looking like a big supporter. Win/Win.

Concluding Remarks

Here is a link to a curation calculator that Hive account@yabarmatt at Steembottracker made. I don't use it, but I'm sure it might be useful because he's a great guy with a lot of intelligence. Can't imagine he'd bother making it if it was useless. - curation calculator

You can make some good results on curation, but at the beginning it really isn't worth chasing. Focus on building your network of friends, getting familiar with the tools, and making great content and comments. If you don't believe me on how little curation matters early on, look at my lifetime curation rewards and this last month. You'll see that I made more than 90% of my lifetime curation in the last 30 days.

Focus on 100 SP, then 250 SP, then 500 SP. After that you can be more flexible with your money (upvotes). Until then, spend it wisely.

All the best to everyone. Remember that quality comments get quality upvotes from me - every one of them.

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