Over the last week, I tried to see if I could make generate more steem by curating content vs. simply writing posts. I believe that, because of the increase on the number of users, it will be more difficult to "get noticed" and it will be easier to curate content to make STEEM.
Here are the metrics:
I made 7 times more steem curating than writing.
Over 1 week, I wrote 12 posts and upvoted 65 stories, and here are the rewards I got:
- 1.35 Steem writing
- 9.4 steem curating stories.
It looks pretty satisfying to see that you can make SEVEN times more $ curating content than reading it. I add to the equation the fact that I spent way less time clicking on stories than actually creating things.
But it comes with a price... a big one
During 1 week:
- I DID NOT upvote content I judged "good"
- I DID NOT even read what I was upvoting (probably 4 or 5 stories out of 65)
- I was ONLY upvoting content that I believed would generate Steem...
This is good news for my steem power, and overall good news to see that curation can help a minnow become something bigger.
But the main conclusion is that it's also pretty bad for the community. It forced me to click not on stuff I would not consider good, but on stories that I would imagine making it on the famous-infamous trending list. Stories I did not really care about... I was not even reading 90% of them. I played the "garbage game" and clicked on stories with clickbait titles and nice pictures (#girls...).
Unfortunately, my strategy based on upvoting lesser-quality content (that I would believe will make it to the trending list) worked better than spending time reading good content ...or even writing it.
NOTE: I still DID upvote for good stuff... but it was only for a minority of my upvotes.