Frontrunner Contests by @htooms - Are there high curation rewards to be had?

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It's an interesting idea. A post is published. Everyone piles on with their upvotes. 24 hours later @htooms brings the huge whale votes. Curation rewards all around!

How well does it work? And when's the best time to vote? I analysed the two most recent contests to bring you some answers.

In addition to the frontrunning experiment there's also a second way to win: a generous competition for best comment. Worth a look if you've talents in that area!

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Contest 1:

The first contest post that I looked at can be found here:
https://steemit.com/takemyvotes/@htooms/24-hour-takemyvotes-frontrunners-and-a-comment-contest

The post completed six days ago:

• Past payout: $122.50.
• Curator rewards: $27.54.
• That gives an overall curation ratio of 22.5%.

In the charts below the curation rewards as a percentage of the upvote value are shown by the orange line or orange diamonds (measured against the left hand axis). The blue columns are the upvotes (measured against the right hand axis) the largest being a sizeable @booster upvote at the end.

A few rules of thumb as a reminder:

• "12.5% of upvote" is the theoretical minimum curation reward (unless your vote is dust).
• "25% of upvote" is the curation reward you can receive from upvoting any random blank post or comment.
• "50% of upvote" is a pretty good curation reward level.
• "100% of upvote" is hard to find for any sizeable SP holder.

The first chart shows all the upvotes across the whole post history.
The x-axis is not to scale. The upvotes are arranged chronologically with the number of minutes marked.

The second chart focuses on the early upvote period where the highest curation rewards can be had:

Very nice!

• Some really good curation rewards for minnow upvotes at early durations: exceeding 100% in the 19min-21min period (the very early upvotes are really very small). Note that larger upvotes (such as the 40c at 7 minutes) are too large to pick up these reward levels.
• Some strong curation rewards for dolphin size upvotes: pushing up towards 75% around the 22min-24min mark.
• A solid 40%-45% reward up to the 30 minute mark.
• Around 25% if you're in the first 24 hours, then down to minimum after the big upvotes arrive.

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Contest 2:

The second contest post that I looked at can be found here:
https://steemit.com/takemyvotes/@htooms/more-takemyvotes-fun-with-frontrunners-and-a-comments-contest

The post completed nine days ago:

• Past payout: $117.35.
• Curator rewards: $24.07.
• That gives an overall curation ratio of 20.5%.

The same two charts again:

Not as attractive a prospect. Solid, with the 25% level maintained for the first 24 hours. But the curation rewards don't exceed 50% for any sizeable upvote.

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Comparison

So what's the difference between the two contests?

Here's the upvotes in the first 30 minutes (aggregated across each minute) for each contest:

The second contest is just a little more competitive. There's nearly $11 in early upvotes for contest 2 compared to only $7 for contest 1 (before the sizeable upvotes at 30 minutes). The upvotes for contest 2 are also earlier than for contest 1, passing more rewards to the author.

Clearly the idea can work! But it would work best if the upvotes are added in stages; the smallest plankton and redfish upvotes first, then minnows, then dolphins, then the big whale votes. No doubt a hard thing to organise!

That's all for today. Let me know if you have any questions!

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Thanks for reading!