The Voting Cheat Sheet taught you how to make serious money from upvoting blog posts. If you haven’t read it yet, you should (link below). Today, we’ll discuss another way to make money on Steemit: by voting on replies, not just the main blog posts. Of course, I will never advocate voting on bad content or anything with which you disagree. You should only vote for something if you believe it makes Steemit better.
Voting on reply posts: it seems like a simple idea, but it’s not. In order to make good money, there are opportunities to understand and recognize. There are also hurdles to appreciate and overcome, or else you will not make a dime using this strategy. But once you understand the reply post landscape and learn how to spot buried treasure, you can make some good money this way.
Before we go any further, let me warn you that upvoting replies isn’t an easy way to make money. The method is simple, but the work takes time. You’ll need to patiently dig through posts and scan the replies, getting ready to pounce when you see one. You’re not hoping to score a fist-sized gold nugget with this strategy; you’re aiming for a pan full of smaller pieces of gold that add up to a much larger profit.
But if you get good at this, then you can tap into a great source of income that few Steemit users have discovered yet.
If you want an easier way to make money by voting, you could stick with the Voting Cheat Sheet and its guidelines.
In fact, this post is my first follow-up since that one, so I’d like to check in briefly on how the Voting Cheat Sheet’s advice is faring. In particular, I provided you with a list of All Star Posters to follow here on Steemit. Those are posters I pre-selected as having several top-paid posts and meeting other screening criteria. I then sorted the resulting list by frequency of posts up until that date, since it’s easier to follow someone who posts dependably.
Since I posted that Voting Cheat Sheet, someone following my advice would have kept a close eye on the following posters and jumped in as one of the first to upvote their posts.
Don’t forget that 50% of the income from every blog post goes to the voters. Those with the most Power Up value and those who upvote earliest make most of that share.
So how are we doing so far? Let’s check in on the All Star list I gave you. How much did they post and earn in the last two days? All numbers are estimates and they’re rounded.
Steemit founders’ posts: 
7, 8, 10 and 12. Did not post in last 2 days. VERDICT: It’s only been two days, but if the post volume continues to be low, it may not be worth your time to follow them as closely.
OVERALL VERDICT: The All Star list is gold. It’s platinum plated with gold. If you had followed the posters on this list and jumped in early with upvotes, you would have shared part of the 50% of the $5597 these posts earned. No, wait, we forgot to add in the founders’ posts. A quick check shows us that
Voters get 50% of the $10,000, so how would you like a big chunk of that pot? Not bad for two days of “work”.
As always, save some of your daily upvotes for posts that help build Steemit: every day, look for and upvote some blog posts from posters who are new, poor, or create good content that makes Steemit better. I save half of my votes for good content and use others to pick winning posts.
Honestly, I’ve had worse jobs than being an upvoter. By the way, what will you write on your tax return as your Occupation? When an attractive person at a bar asks you what you do for a living, what will you tell him/her?
Occupation: Voter. I’ll bet you’ll get audited for sure.
Bar scene: “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Chris. Really, you’re a Nurse? Cool, I’m a Clicker.”
For something more appropriately foo-foo, maybe you could tell them you’re a Content Curator!
Curating Reply Posts
Now on to what I promised. Again, the rest of this post is about mining for gold nuggets in the reply posts. It’s not as easy as just clicking; you have to dig a little through posts to find these gems. But they’re worth it. And you don’t have much competition in this space. Reply comments are being pretty well ignored so far by Steemit voters.
Conclusion
Even today, you can still find buried treasure, hidden in the reply trees of old posts, days or weeks after the post has been made. Voting on reply comments really is a great opportunity to make extra money on Steemit. You won’t get rich from finding one or two, but the longer you can spend looking for these, the more money you can make.
I hope that you have found this information helpful and look forward to working with you on building Steemit. As a reminder, always remember to save some of your votes (25-75%) for upvoting good content and posts from new or poor users who need support and encouragement. That is the best way for us to grow Steemit.