If you've been following me for a while, you'll notice something about all of my posts: they get a lot of comments.
And I upvote most of these, even though a lot of them are made by accounts that comment on every post (you know the ones). A lot of these are people who don't even bother to read the post. And some of them are outright bots.
Yet, as long as they upvote my post, I upvote their comments.
And the reason is simple: you make more money that way.
Look, whenever you upvote a "hot" post by a popular author, it's always a craps shoot. You might end up claiming a large curation reward, but it's hardly guaranteed.
But if you are the only person to upvote a comment, well, you get 100% of the curation reward, and even if that reward is relatively small, there may be hundreds of comments to upvote, meaning that your rewards can add up in a big way.
As a general rule, I am the only person upvoting the comments left on my posts, and even though I only collect about 1/4th of the final dollar value of the comment, that value is still big enough to collectively amount to something when I have 20+ comments per post.
And I've noticed that a lot of other Steemit posters don't do this. They prefer to hold back their upvotes, only bestowing them to the best commenters.
What a waste.
And I don't even have that much Steem Power, yet I consistently make about a nickel for every upvote. And, statisically speaking, that's a pretty large amount to be making reliably.
In any case, it's a better system than those people who spam upvote their own comments. Nobody flags you for upvoting other people. In my estimation, it is the best way to exploit the system (and it helps a lot of other people, too).
So that's why I do it. And that's also why I don't mind bot commenters. Heck, some commenters who I originally thought were bots ended up being real people who occasionally have interesting things to say about my posts.
Anyway, that's one of my secrets. Maybe you can learn from it (or not, but I think it's worth a try).