This was going to be a short post, but one I wanted to get out quickly as I think I've found a good opportunity for minnows to up their curation rewards with this one neat trick.
Note: this is not an exhaustive article on curation rewards. For more basic information, you can look at the Steem blue paper or this explanation.
Anyway, the Steem blockchain is something of an experiment involving 50-60 thousand daily users trying to earn Steem. They do this by gaining followers, getting upvotes, and trying to get a sweet viral article that will earn tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars. All of us who post on Steemit are competing for the rewards pool.
The result has been the heavy use of bots, which have skewed the user experience away from a purely democratic system. These bots use their tremendous Steem Power to give ones post a huge upvote (for a price!), with the hope that one can recoup the cost by snagging more followers and getting into the Trending or Hot category.
My few attempts at doing this have been mixed-they've been successful at snagging me new followers, but neutral at income (probably negative if you count taxes).
We know, ProtegeAA! What are we supposed to do about it???
Of course, a lot of people hate this system, but there are ways for minnows to thrive in these conditions: front run the bots.
Yes, front run the bots! What I mean by this, is that you are going to figure out which posts are about to get a gigantic upvote, and then you're going to upvote that post before the big bot swoops in.
This should net you a much nicer curation reward than if you vote after the bot. Remember, curation rewards are there to help reward those that discover popular content first. You want to get in before the wave of upvotes, not after.
Regular bot users make this easy.
How do I find these people?
Use 
In this case, we see that 
Check it out! 
The pre
Meanwhile...
Meanwhile, you can look at other big upvote buyers as well. Some of them are regular customers. Here's your easy money tip: set up an account on Steem Voter to automatically upvote these authors 15-20 minutes after they post.
You just set up your own voting bot to front run the big guys.
But bots are awful!
No, bots are a natural evolution of human nature gaming a system. Steem is not a utopian fantasy that allows everyone to make equal amounts of money-it's a platform that gives an edge to 1, those with lots of Steem Power; 2, developers who can write great software (like bots); 3, content creators and social media savvy people; and 4, crafty folks who find tips like these to maximize their gains.
Ok, that might sound a little cynical, but the race to earn portions of the rewards pool is always going, and better players enter every day. Hopefully, the side effect is a platform with great content and lots of cool software development that funds itself.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
That's my One Neat Trick article for Steem...let me know if it works for you!
Oh, and as for the WoW 100 SBD upvote? You can check the progress here.
-Jeff
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://steemmaker.com/front-running-curation-bots/
EDIT: In case I am wrong, let us know in the comments below!