That Time When ...
If you've ever wondered why your posts don't earn as much as other posts, even post you may consider to be inferior, like a one liner or simple TFW GIF, the issue may be your timing. Posting late at night or in the early morning generally will yeild lower payouts versus posting during the daylight hours (in the United States).
Here's a good example. The other day I questioned a post titled "5 years addicted to heroin - my story told in pictures", that was making $5,000 at the time, and called it out as being fake. At the time everyone was upvoting the post and telling OP what a great story it was and thanked them for posting.
Heroin Addict Scam Post
When I first saw the post the one thing that struck me was the quality of the images, which were taken by an obvious third party and they were professional quality images. This drew a red flag immediately. I then searched for one of the images online and found where the story originated. It was originally posted back in January on Refinery29.com. I then compared the text in the article to the story being presented on Steemit and discovered it was pretty much identical outside of being changed to a first person point of view.
I didn't want any retribution coming my way for calling out OP as a scammer, so I used the "adm" account some of us use to downvote plagiarism and made a post asking OP to provide proof they were who they claimed to be. I followed up with the "tuck-fheman" account to give the adm claim some more credibility with the community.
I spent a lot of time researching this making sure I was right before calling it a fake. I then notified as many of the top whale upvoters as I could. I wanted to try to get them to remove their upvotes before the payout rewarded the account that was plagiarizing someone else's content and deceiving fellow Steemit users into upvoting, by tugging at their emotional response system with a sad story.
I then followed up with a post of my own, calling out this scammer, trying to get even more people's attention so they would not upvote the scam post. It took a few hours work, but after all was said and done I was successful in reaching enough whales to get the post total down to $0.00. A big thank you goes out to all of the whales who either removed their upvote or changed their votes to a downvote (especially 
After all of that was finished it was time to get some sleep as the sun began to rise. I wasn't expecting a huge payout for my efforts, but I also would not have turned a huge payout down! :)
When I woke up later that day, the first thing I noticed was that someone else was rewarded over $5,500 for pointing out the community effort in flagging the post as a scam.
Lesson Learned
All of my time and effort for being the first person to publicly question this scam post, finding the original article, contacting all of the whales and saving $5,000 (or likely a lot more) from being paid out to a scammer yielded me $80, while someone else profited $5,500 for posting about my efforts. Again, I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out how timing is everything, so that the rest of you don't make this same mistake ... if you want to earn the big rewards on Steemit.
Timing
If you want upvotes from Dan & Ned and most of the whales, your post should be made between the daylight hours in America. There was a chart here many months ago showing when most users were participating on Steem. It basically showed that you need to post somewhere between 9AM - 5PM EST, or during daylight hours in the United States, to receive more upvotes.
If you're not able to post during these hours, another trick is to reply to comments on your post every few hours. This will essentially push your post back to the top of the Active feed each time you or someone else makes a comment on your post. If your post has not received any comments, you can simply click EDIT and re-save your post to push it back to the top of the Active feed during these prime Steemit hours.
My post earned $80 because I posted it in the early morning, and by the time most Steemit users awoke to view the feed, it had already been pushed down so far that few noticed it, especially the whales. However, the other person posted theirs during the peak hours and Dan and other whales noticed their post and rewarded them heftily for bringing up my work.
Quality Content Does Not Defeat Bad Timing
You may spend hours working to help the Community and even more time writing about your efforts, but that doesn't mean you will be rewarded as much as a silly meme. Someone else may see your post making very little, because you posted it when most people aren't on Steemit, and they will capitalize on your quality low paying post by simply restating what you posted ... and do it at the right time!
Timing is sometimes more important than the quality of your content. We've all seen a simple regurgitated meme posted at the right time earn thousands of dollars, while a very well thought out post made at the wrong time will earn a few dollars. In most cases, you can solve this by waiting until the peak Steemit hours to make your post. Wait until the Founders (Ned & Dan) are awake and most of the whales are browsing for original quality content to upvote. I think you will find that you will be earning a lot more by following this simple rule.
Other Tips To Earn More
- Post during daylight hours in the United States.
- Tag your post appropriately using no more than 3-4 topics.
- Use images to break your post up and make it more pleasing to read.
- Use Headers to break your post up into sections.
- Reply to comments on your post every few hours or refresh your post.
- Join the Steem Slack and make yourself known by helping out new users.
- Post your article links in Slack's postpromotion channel after they are 15-30 minutes old.
- Befriend a whale or two.
- Post on a topic that's new to Steem that's popular to most people elsewhere.
- And most importantly, be nice to Dan & Ned. ;)
Rule Breaker
With all of that said, I'm going to break the rules I've stated above. This post will be made at 3:05 AM CST, while most everyone is asleep. Why? Because I want those of us who are up during these unfortunate (as far as rewards go) hours to see this post at the top of the feed. I want those of us who miss out on the big payouts, due to our schedules, to benefit from this very key information.
Not everyone will be able to change their schedule just to make a post, but hopefully by combining some of the other tips above more of us nightwalkers will be able to one day reach the big reward payday like we were a hot woman that creates makeup tutorials while traveling the world talking about Steemit! :)