If you vote 40 full votes per day, you will go from 100% to about 90%. That is the number of recommended votes. Or you could vote 80 posts at 50%, etc.
When you are completely brand new with no steem power, it doesn't make a difference anyway as you can't earn curation rewards until your steem power increases.
If you were to have bought into Steemit with a lot of Steem Power, and don't care to blog or gain followers or voters, than your advice to only vote on blogs that are regularly top earners might make sense. But you can make curation rewards on regular posts that become popular without you expecting them to. If you spread out 40 votes that way, you are likely to win at a few of those posts.
You won't get anywhere building up your blog if you don't make friends. To make friends/followers, you have to go and comment on people's blogs that you relate to and vote for them and follow your favorites.
Thanks for your help.
How do I upvote posts at 50%, the option to change percentage doesn't appear on my computer? My upvotes just stay at 100%??
You have to be at so much steem power before you get the voting slider. I'm not sure if it is 100 or 250 maybe??
Until you get the slider, you might as vote as often as you want since you likely can't earn curation rewards at that low level anyways.