The Up And Downside Of Curating In STEEM What Are Your Techniques? 🙃👇👆
Here is my view of the curation changes in steem. Most of us know that if we curate we would earn curation rewards and if we curate a possible "good earner" post within the 5 minutes window before the big votes comes in we would earn a better curation rewards.
So it is a race towards putting in your votes before others put in theirs but the closer you vote after the post was posted the lesser your curation rewards gets. So basically we just have to choose whether we want to get lesser rewards by voting early or voting within 5 minutes to get more but with the risk of getting less if others vote before you.
But in my opinion I would do the latter but it depends on the author and its followers and trails so it is not a magic bullet and things varies as you sometimes get good curation after five minutes too as reflected by your vote efficiency and that can be seen in the steemworld.org/@yoursteemusernamehere by @steemchiller.
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The good thing now is that we do not have to wait for a long time if we are voting manually because they had implemented the 5 minute window penalty mark so we can maximize our time in curating.
The downside of curating is that we just have a limited voting power in a day because we can just do about ten 100% voting weight because it eats about 2% of our voting power so if we do 50% voting weight it will eat about 1% of our voting power.
But our voting power is just limited because you do not just vote and vote and vote lest you will drain your voting power and the amount that you can give. You will have to wait until you replenish your voting power so you can upvote again so you have to retain your voting power in order to curate more effectively for your and person's interest.
So ten 100% vote weight in a day will cost you a day of waiting time. That means that you cannot curate more, rather you can just divide your voting weight into smaller chunks like 40 upvotes of your 25% voting weight otherwise you will just deplete your voting power.
One thing is that the reward curve was bent upward now and it means that your vote value is lesser if you vote a post with zero votes in it but your vote value gets bigger if there are already bigger votes in a post. That is why your vote value in comments is lesser than before and if you would upvote your commenters with a small vote weight, both of you will not get reward as the system now dosn't count dust votes and you will just waste your voting power in that regard which is unfortunate for new users that are just starting even for minnows and small dolphins in this jungle we cal steem platform.
I always try to do what you suggested for 100% voting strategy. I search for new content to upvote while my daily power recharges back to max, and then I cast my next vote.
Steemrewarding.com even has a form I can use to time my votes on multiple posts I pre-select, so that it does not fire my next vote until my power has finished charging to max. That way I can go to sleep or to work, and know that my account is still actively earning rewards through curation.
Honestly, I tend to curate posts that are not receiving enough deserved reward payment. If the post is less than 5 minutes old, I wait, or save it for later. I do not try to time my votes on specific authors to win a big curation vote before their trail of curators kick in.
Sometimes I fire off two or more 100% votes in a row without waiting for my power to recharge. Only if I know I am going to be busy and I know I have nothing queued up.
Your way of curation is excellent and it should be the way to do it for everyone so that the smaller accounts could benefit. @creativetruth
I’ve left my voting behavior largely unchanged. Thankfully the reward curve wasn’t as severe as I’d feared. I upped my default comment votes from 25% power to 35% to compensate a bit, but I still vote comments. I did start using SteemVoter again, to automate votes only on the handful of authors I know I’d upvote the majority of their posts anyway. I set that to vote at 5 minutes. Beyond that I continue to read and manually vote the same as before. I’m not attempting to maximize my curation rewards, but they have still increased solidly since the Hardfork. That’s actually nice for me since I don’t post nearly as frequently as I curate. I’m always on the lookout for good new Steem members to give some initial support to.
That is also good that you are using auto voter, it is handy if you are busy on something else @bryan-imhoff Now it is just hard to earn because of the changes so we have to really adjust and it comes with a price.
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Hmm.. I used to think alot about this kind of thing too. With the longer curve, I perceived more possibility of making a difference. Made it interesting too, if not impossible to predict.
It took a lot of experimentation to feel I was optimizing curation while keeping it focused on what and who I value most (a challenge that I enjoy so- motivating in different ways) and interestingly enough, I think that those efforts resulted in higher reward for the content creator in many cases and I was happy with that because I respect those who put alot of time into creating posts- and keep doing it... because I've had a harder time running with the herd than I expected I would. A realization that was helpful to me though.
As I understand it (assuming that I do understand it), and appears to be the case- beyond time of vote, the value given (likewise, received) from your vote is higher accd. to your VP. So high volume voting dilutes the value of reward you give with your vote, for better or worse. That will fluctuate obviously and I'd bet that it is a wash if analyzed on currency value specifically.
I see a lot of value that can come through in different ways- by commenting. Saying that reminds me that I've been slacking there so let this start renewed momentum. Means I'll be consuming more content also, leading to renewed involvement. (writing things out helps me make changes)
Are you noticing a reduction in content rewards? I'm happy to see that you have a few dollars in. I haven't been around much lately so I need to get a feel for new conditions / see the results as they evolve.