Curation rewards or?

So here I sit with exactly 4376sp. Now before I tried this experiment, I was noting down on paper my curation rewards (daily) after voting for people from 100 down to my 90% threshold. The returns were minuscule, and hardly going to grow my account. I noted I was getting for a 7 cent upvote, for anyone else, a tiny return of 0.0 (not a lot at the end of them noughts) return. say 0.04 and such like.

So I took the decision to delegate 4000 sp to smartsteem via here https://smartsteem.com/dashboard/.

In under 1 month, the returns have been to date 34.579 steem & 2.847 SBD.

The downside to this much improved growth, is the lesser ability to upvote those people around me, that I support!. (my vote value now 1 cent at 75 - 100% @ 371sp)

So it would seem to be a choice then, 1. be selfish and enjoy much improved returns, 2. or cancel the delegation, miss out on 5 days curation, and carry on as before.

I have not yet finished the 31 days experiment, so will decide at the end of those days.

I now fully understand, why so many people with a large stake, decide to delegate that stake, they own, to bidbots.
Without doing this experiment, I had no basis to justify or criticize their actions. Though as it is "their" stake, I feel I hardly have the right to criticize them anyway. Community spirit I hear you scream? Maybe some of them do not have time to log in and upvote people 10 times or more a day, I say.

The returns are variable, and dependent on people using the Hive account@smartsteem - Hive account@smartmarket system, though seem to average approx 1.8 steem per day, plus some loose change in SBD. Like I said, this is a massive improvement on manual curation.

So there you have it, my experiment and why. I can not comment on something I have not tried, now I have tried it, now I have facts, not just fiction.

@Shepz1 is wishing you a superb Sunday, and is off to cook the food for my ladies, safe in the knowledge that I have almost completed my Yamaha rd 350 ypvs today. :-)