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I was a manual curator for most part anyways up until we bought in the 50/50 curator author split on rewards. making anything out of curation up until that point was more hit and miss as a well timed gamed self vote by the author would normally destroy any earning potential.
After what I experienced this weekend not being able to have any internet whatsoever until I was shown how to hot spot things the weekend would have been a total write off. Not so these days as having Hive.vote set up it was not a total waste of time.
Not only does it allow you to carry on supporting others when you are not around but it also makes you curation on everything you have voted for. I think I have a target of around 13-15 Hive per day depending on how many users post.
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That is not all though as 
I really like the simplicity of how things are turning out on here as making it user friendly is how we are going to attract new users. Not everyone is going to be like the majority of hard core Hivers who spend a good few hours on the block chain every day.
I have enabled both so even though I was down I was still earning and staking taking away the need to "have" to log in. Not everyone has the time to do all the posting and engaging with other users yet there is no excuse for not voting. I hate seeing users on hivebuzz rankings who have 30 000 or 50 000 hive yet haven't casted a vote which tells me they only think of themselves. Most likely they haven't even replied to a comment in all the time they have been here. This is their loss as they are leaving a small fortune behind by not curating which literally only takes a few minutes to set up on hive.vote.
We are hoping to have our new service provider today so hopefully the last few days of being on the out looking in will be sorted.