Hi everybody!
Here's a graph that guides you to the Optimal Time to Upvote on Steemit and specifically the Curator Gems!
The blue line represents a Curator voting on The Curator Gem and the orange line represents the same Curator voting on an Average $1 Post. The first hour is stretched to show the relevant parts better.
Earlier Optimal Time to Upvote
As you can see, the approximated Optimal Time to Upvote is a few minutes earlier on the Curator Gem. This is because it gets much more Steem Power in its Curation Pool compared to the $1 dollar post and therefore, the Weight of the Vote can compensate for the 30-minute rule at an earlier point. Check out this article for a longer explanation about that trade off. As you may have figured, for posts that gather > $500 this effect is even stronger and the Optimal Time to Vote can be around 5 minutes after the post.
Higher payout ratio
Another thing very visible in the graph is the payout ratio is multiple times higher for The Curator Gem. If both posts are posted at the same time, it will always be more profitable to cast your vote on the Curator Gem. However, if they are not posted at the same time, there are moments that the payout ratio for the $1 dollar post is equal or higher. As you can see at the Optimal Time to Upvote (29:30 minutes) for the $1 dollar post, it equals the payout ratio of The Curator Gem between day 2 and day 6. In the same way it is possible for The Curator Gem to compete with the payout ratio's of extremely popular posts ( > $500), but generally speaking, the more popular the post is, the higher the payout ratio.
Conclusion
Curators can greatly increase their payout ratio by smart Curating. If you have an idea about the expected popularity of a post you intend to upvote, you can make a fair estimate of the Optimal Time to Upvote beforehand. There are two things to keep in mind here:
The more popular the post, the earlier the Optimal Time to Upvote comes
The more popular the post, the greater the maximum payout ratio
If this article was helpful to you please consider upvoting, following and resteeming! And of course, check out