Hello Steemit,
I feel a special kind of giddy whenever I receive a comment on a post. It reminds me of notes being passed around when I was in high school. Getting a note passed to me during class, or finding a note in my locker made me feel special, and comments make me feel a similar way.
But I still don't upvote comments on my posts. Why? Because as a little fishy with less than 500SP it doesn't make any sense for me to upvote comments on my posts. I only get 10-11 votes per day before my $0.03 starts to waver and become $0.02, and if the internal median price of steem goes down, my cents become smaller and smaller, sometimes even disappearing.
My first few months on steemit, I diligently upvoted all comments on my posts. It wasn't until later that I found that my $0.01, and $0.02 upvotes sometimes evaporated into nothing. Why? Because the weight of their worth, wasn't large enough to register on the blockchain, so they just disappeared.
I prefer to invest my upvotes differently. Instead of upvoting on comments, I respond to the comment, and then pay the commenters blog a visit. I read through their posts and familiarize myself with their work, and upvote a recent post or one that I particularly like.
By using this strategy, my upvote gathered with all the other votes on their post becomes something more tangible for their wallet. I also receive bigger curation rewards. Although the size of my curation rewards are small, they are intensely bigger than any interest rate I have ever received from any bank.
This also helps me to develop a circle of readers, as newbie writers like to build networks by reading each other work.
Do you have any similar steemit strategies? I would love it if you shared in the comments.