Oh, how time flies! Over ten months ago, I wrote the first Mind Your Votes! article. As a new curator back then, that post was all about investigation and discovery. I then followed that up with my personal curation workflow at the time in Minding my Votes. Ten months on, it's finally time for another Mind Your Votes! The basic system remains the same, though with Hardfork 19 and a massive influx of new users, it's time for a sequel. This will be a completely new document, written from scratch, focusing more on recommendations from my experience curating tens of thousands of posts over the last 11 months. It will focus on maximizing your curation rewards - not necessarily being the best curator. The intended audience for this post is new manual curators. Fair warning, this is an in-depth article - don't bother reading unless you're interested in curation. It also meant for Hardfork 19, so some information hasn't taken effect yet.
The Essentials
In a nutshell, Steem curation is a predictive game for Steem Power stakeholders.
This means, to increase curation rewards -
- Power up.
- Don't vote on trending posts. I repeat, never vote on trending posts. Look for undiscovered posts instead.
Of course, there's a whole lot more to it. Let's get down to it!
Voting power
Each vote you make consumes voting power. This means you have to carefully ration your votes, and only vote on worthy content. Voting power regenerates at a fixed rate.
Right, the numbers then.
When your voting power is at 100%, each vote will cost 2% voting power. However, as your voting power decreases, the cost decreases too. So, at 70% voting power, each vote will cost 1.5% voting power instead. As your voting power decreases, so does the influence of your vote, and consequently, your curation rewards.
Voting power regenerates at a fixed rate of 0.83% per hour or 20% per day.
In effect, you can make 12-15 votes every day while maintaining your voting power near 100%.
Note: These numbers are post Hardfork 19. As of 3rd June, a vote costs only 0.5%. I'd recommend preparing for the new voting power costs though, as it will be a dramatic change that could catch out curators.
Checking your voting power
Voting power is displayed nowhere on Steemit.com. The best way to do this is by visiting https://steemd.com/@yourusername. Look for "Voting power" in the left hand column. Another option is Steemdb.com - however, the voting power doesn't update in real time there.
Frontends other than Steemit.com may display the voting power. For example, ChainBB, currently in beta, takes an interesting approach - bringing voting power front and center to the curation experience. (They call it "voting effectiveness") For the purpose of this guide, we'll assume you're using Steemit.com.
Voting strength
If you're an active curator, you could easily make 12 votes in 12 minutes if you stumble upon an interesting comment thread.
All accounts holding above 483 Steem Power gain access to a voting strength bar on Steemit.com. (Note - some call voting strength "voting weight" or confusingly even "voting power") This offers a curator a way to ration votes. For example, a 10% vote will only consume 10% of the usual voting power. You would also earn 10% of the curation rewards, of course.
My recommendation would be not rationing, however. As mentioned previously, due to the quirk of vote cost reducing with voting power, your overall influence is maximized by utilizing as much of your voting power as possible. Hence, making 100 votes at 100% strength would offer greater curation rewards than 100 votes at 10%.
That doesn't mean you should always vote at 100%, of course. It depends on your curation objectives and workflow. For example, it may be advantageous to throttle voting strength according to what you feel may be the probability of curation rewards. If you are confident a post will make it big, go for 100%. If you feel a post has only a 33% chance of being profitable, go with a 33% voting strength.
The predictive game
Here's the ideal scenario - you discover an awesome post sitting at $0.00. This post then goes viral and tops the Trending page at thousands of dollars. You'd then stand to make a killing off curation rewards! The curation rewards algorithm very strongly favours early voters.
Of course, ideal scenarios are just that, but it is absolutely imperative to get into the predictive mindset if you wish to be a successful curator.
Don't vote on a post that has already earned a lot of money and is already high up on the Trending. That's largely a waste of your voting power. Similarly less profitable is voting on successful authors. Don't vote for them unless you can time it just right. Instead, dig for great undiscovered posts, promising new authors, and get the word out about them. Needless to say, that is hard work, but ultimately an order of magnitude more lucrative. I would earn maybe 0.001 or 0.010 Steem voting on a trending post, whereas it can be easily be 1 Steem voting on a completely fresh post.
Perhaps a more efficient way would be finding a balance. Follow upcoming authors, who already have a growing following, and vote for them in a timely manner.
The 30 minute rule
There's one last complexity to the voting system - for the first 30 minutes of post creation, a proportion of your curation rewards are donated back to the author.
At 0 seconds after post creation, 100% of your curation rewards are forfeit to the author. At 30 minutes after post creation, you get to keep 100% of your curation rewards. In between 0 and 30 minutes, your rewards increase linearly. Thus, at 10 minutes, you get 33%, 50% at 15 minutes, 67% at 20 minutes, etc.
So, you can't just pile on the votes the moment a post is made. At the same time, waiting till 30 minutes could mean other curators would have voted, by which time it's too late - most of the lucrative curation rewards have been taken.
It is imperative to be first in line, so take the time-bound penalty. As for how early? It depends on the quality of the post, the popularity of the author, and traffic on the site at that moment (by extension, time of day).
Curation is a skill
Curation is a skill that is learned through experience and honing your instincts. An experienced curator will know which post to vote on, when to vote and with what strength. There's no formula - there are far too many variables. Instead, an experience curator can instinctively recall -
- Who the author is, who votes for them, and when they vote.
- How likely the post is to be popular.
- Given the time of day and day of week.
Let's say, a curator sees author @x make a post at 12 PM GMT on a Wednesday with some awesome fiction. The curator will know author @x is an upcoming author without much of a following, but has bot votes hitting at 22 minutes. 12 PM GMT on Wednesday is a pretty slow time. Since this is a new author, not many others will be voting. Fiction is not as popular a topic as crypto, Steemit or photography, but there's an audience. So, instinctively, an experienced curator will know that they can afford wait till the 21 minute mark and vote with a 70% strength.
Over time, an experienced curator develops a mental database of thousands of authors, how popular they are, the content they write, and who votes for them, and can access most of this data instantly, instinctively.
If this is too much stress for you, like it is for me, just look for posts beyond the 30 minute mark. There's a shocking amount of excellent content nowadays that goes completely undiscovered - plenty of room for curation here!
Getting the word out
You have found an exceptional post sitting at $0.00. You have 10,000 Steem Power and have managed to vote it up to $0.10. That gives you a curation reward of 0.03 SP, which is already more than you would have received had you voted for some Trending post. But how do you maximize your curation rewards? Of course, you could wait for others to discover it, but you can also force the issue.
The key is letting other larger curators and SP holders know. Befriend whales and dolphins, share exceptional posts you come across with them. Post them into #postpromotion on Steemit.chat. Admittedly, I'm very poor at this and have never approached anyone for a vote.
My method of getting the word out is resteeming the post. I only do this 5-6 times a day, though. On average, I'm able to see around $10 rewards on posts I resteem, which brings my curation rewards up to 0.6 Steem Power per vote. On posts without a resteem, the reward is 0.1 SP or so.
Look out for initiatives that reward you for discovering content. For example, if it's a new author, you could submit the post to Curie. This will increase your curation reward to over 1 Steem Power, plus you'll receive 10 Steem directly from Curie as Finder's fee. That's $15 for discovering a good post!
Self-upvotes, unvotes and downvotes
On Steem, you can upvote your own post or comment. You earn curation rewards as usual, as you would on any other post. If you check the "Upvote post" box when creating a new post, you instantly upvote your own post. This means 100% of the curation rewards are auctioned back to you as author rewards.
Unvoting a post means you forfeit all curation rewards, irrespective of whether you upvote the post again. There are no curation rewards for downvoting a post either. In both cases, you still spend your voting power as usual.
Bots
Bots used to be a menace, but not anymore. As Steemit grows, bots will be forced to get very smart or give up. Today, most long-term bots have either downscaled significantly or given up and left. There are still plenty of auto-vote bots piling on the votes for popular / high-Rep authors. But as I have covered earlier, popular authors are unprofitable to vote on anyway.
In short, manual curators don't need to worry about bots anymore.
Steem Power delegation and curation trails
This brings us back to the #1 way to increase curation rewards - powering up. If you don't want to buy and power up your own Steem, you could instead request delegations. Put simply, Steem Power delegations are temporary donations large stakeholders will make to curators they trust. With a delegation, your vote is worth more, as are your curation rewards. Your SP delegation is shown in brackets under your Steem Power. All new accounts start off with a temporary delegation from Steemit.
You don't even need to be a good curator to get a delegation, just befriend whales, and convince them you're one!
Another way to increase your curation rewards are by creating your own trail. This way, other accounts will follow your votes, effectively increasing your curation rewards. It's not as effective as SP Delegation - you still share your curation rewards with your followers - but due to the early voter emphasis you still stand to make most of the curation rewards, relatively.
@acidyo has a great post about both. If you want a more details about Steem Power delegation, check out my guide to delegating Steem Power. Currently, the easiest way to delegate Steem Power is to use the Vessel app. Be warned, though, that this is an unstable pre-release.
Shameless plug - I have a curation trail at Streemian, feel free to follow.
How I curate
Just a brief personal note to close off this post. My curation priorities evolve alongside the Steem community, and I write about these in the occasional Curation Update post. Currently, I dig through the New feed, looking for posts with interesting titles, that have not earned more than $0.10. I start looking at posts at least 45 minutes old, curating over three or four sessions in a day, each lasting half an hour.
My general objective is to look out for promising new authors who engage with the community. Posts that meets Curie's guidelines, I submit to Curie. Others, I vote personally and resteem exceptional posts. I do occasionally vote on Trending posts if they are exceptional, but I'd say 90% of my votes go to promising new authors who have joined within the last month. Particularly during the month of May, we have seen hundreds of seasoned bloggers and vloggers join. Not only is this an order of magnitude more profitable for a curator, it's also critical for the health of the Steem community.
I don't use steemstats anymore, which was a crucial part of my curation 10 months ago. Currently, I'm eagerly anticipating Esteem.life which could significantly improve my curation workflow.
As you can tell, I don't follow most of my own recommendations, and neither should you. Every curator has their own objectives and motivations - feel free to develop your own methods.
Great post. I am also looking into curating big time. so many good posts really waiting to be discovered.
Keep up the good work!
will do. same to you
@liberosist Here's the spanish translation.
¡Presta atención a tus votos! II - Una guía para maximizar tu recompensa por curar contenido.
Great, thank you!
Fantastic overview! I'll be sure to incorporate some of your advises in my curating process.
You're one of the finest curators on Steemit, you don't need my advice :)
One has to learn every day to stay on top of his game. :)
Thank you for your article, it's very informative and helpful especially for people like me who is new to this community and still exploring different functions. I remember I Upvoted almost every new post and realized just now that's the wrong approach, will refine our strategies haha but Yea thanks for your detailed article, appreciated!!
Well, I learned quite a bit from this post. I didn't realize that a person had to have so much Steem Power to see that bar; I thought everyone did. Great content - I will re-steem this as others should see it.
I spend more time commenting, curating and resteeming than posting. But maybe I should spend less time curating? Hmm; I will have to ponder this.
Yes, the threshold is 1 Megavests, which is currently 482.66 Steem Power.
It depends on what you enjoy! When I first joined Steemit, I used to enjoy commenting and posting. Since then, I have developed a penchant for curation.
hey @liberosist would you be so kind an tell me what the "vest" is? i checked https://steemdb.com and it says i got around 1800000 vests - what is it? thanks for reply
It's the same thing as Steem Power, just a more technical way of saying it. The conversion is 1 million Vests = 483 Steem Power.
ok that was easy, thank you very much
I've been here for so long and finally I know what "Vest" means 😜 I was always wondering.
I will check mine right away.
To be fair, you don't really need to know. Knowing your Steem Power is enough :) Vests are just the geeky term for the same thing used within the blockchain.
This is also a bit of a problem though. People want to vote for the things they like, not what makes them money. So this is actually often working against onboarding and keeping new users engaged here.
Edit: Clearification. What I meant to imply here was that we need more engagement for users, that is not necessarily in of itself money related.
Ah, but you see, the system actively encourages voting on new authors and keeping them engaged here. I have mentioned this repeatedly, time and time again in my post. Voting for new authors is far more lucrative than voting for popular ones.
Many times that's true, but I still see a lot of room for improvement in that area. I'm gonna try to give some examples at a later date. (and then there's still the problem with that not really offsetting the issue I mentioned here)
Really !! Are you serious!
Interesting. My bot is finally back up and running, has it cause you any trouble? HF18 broke it, and it was months before I could start it again.
Welcome back :) I hadn't even noticed! See what I mean? There are hundreds of good posts with less than $0.10 pending payouts every day, and I can only reach out to a fraction of them. The landscape has changed entirely, with activity up by 500% and rising. I don't think as curators your bot and I will ever cross paths now.
The only bot currently that seems to get in my way is Winfrey guild, but that exhausts voting power so quickly that it's only operational a few hours a week. With Hardfork 19, such bots will go the way of the Dodo. I'd love to see smarter ones continue to develop though.
I'm new, so my posts get around 3.00 or less. Question, why does the payout amount go down? I had a photo that was at 3.18 but went down to 1.11 in the 2 days near payout.
i wanna know too!!
Cool, I like the sound of it. Since the restart, my bot has had its greatest success in the Korean community, for whatever reason. That could also explain some of why we don't run into each other.
Ah yes, that might be it! The Korean community has exploded. They have also invested heavily in Steem Power, so Korean posts often see large payouts.
Wow! I'm learning mote and more each day! I did'nt know how deep this platform went. I'm still trying to make sense of 80% of your post, but i think i'm getting it.
I've only just joined Steemit 3 weeks ago and am up to 53 followers! My largest payout has been a whopping $6. Considering my first few posts only raked in less than .30 cents, that's a MAJOR accomplishment for me.
I'd upvote you, but according to your curator rulee that would be considered a "no-no"?
You'll get used to it - just needs some hands-on experience. Yes, you shouldn't upvote me :)
Keep at it - it takes time and effort to build a follower base.
This article is very informative, do you mind if I translate it into spanish for the hispanic community here on steemit ?. I'll make sure to credit you.
Sure, go ahead! :)
This has to be THE most detailed explanation about curation that I have read. I do so very much appreciate what you have offered me (and the rest of us). How do you discover all these details? I expect only the people who created all the rules would have all the exact figures and would create some sort of document for others to read. There is a wiki now that we can add to and even get paid for helping with it, but the wiki is still in its infancy.
Thank-you so much liberosist!
The only way to discover all the details is by peeking into the code at https://github.com/steemit/steem
There's a whitepaper, but it's obsolete right now. Maybe there'll be an updated detailed whitepaper once the network is out of Beta. Things are still in flux at the moment.
Thankfully, you don't need to know the exact figures to be an engaged curator. That was my aim - so you know the system without getting into the under-the-hood details.
Whoa! I followed your link and can't understand a thing in there. So glad we have you to translate for us!
I don't most of it either :)
Cool overview! I have never really focused on the curation end of the equation (from a rewards standpoint) although I do read, vote and comment manually every day, and like to highlight and interact with new "quality content" from authors who have recently come onboard.
That's probably what most of us do! Still, always good to be aware of how the system works.
I'm brand new to steemit, as in I finally got approved today! This article was super helpful. I love the whole concept and learning about it's practicalities.
Great post. @kevinwong put me onto your series and I can't believe I wasn't following you. Thanks both.
I was not aware of the 30 min rule regarding curation reward forfeit. I have certainly been charitable with a lot of posts... I am stepping up my curation regarding quality comments, have some more steem power on the way.
Cheers!
by the way there is a way to see your voting power, not directly on steem but on eSteem, the steem app for android and iOs ... there you have this electricity symbol,
the number next to it tells you your voting power!
I compared with the number on the site you linked, it matches ..
Yes, the eSteem has it's own voting power indicator, as do Busy and chainBB. In fact, Steemit.com is the only Steem frontend without it!
I now have some Steem Dollars in my account and I want to convert that to Steem Power. When I attempt to do it, I'm presented with the following:
)
(
This throws me off and now I don't know what to do. Is it better to continue and wait the 3.5 days, or use the Internal Market? If Market, how? The link to the Market seems to want me to sell into bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. I'm lost and any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated. BTW, I'm not the only one with this problem, so another tutorial article is likely justified.
This is not related to curation, but please don't use the conversion function, as you'll lose money. This is because the Steem Dollar is currently overvalued at $1.80 or so. So, yes, you'll get a much better deal in the Internal Market. Or you could sell SBD at Poloniex or Bittrex and buy Steem from there if you want more liquidity. Instead of ~$1.50 which is what Steem is worth, you can buy Steem for SBD 0.80.
Sorry about being off topic. I thought that converting rewards (curated and otherwise) would be an extension of the same topic.
Thanks for the advice.
Really interesting and informative, thank you. Am I right in thinking that it's not worth voting after 7 days because the author gets paid by then? 🙂
That's correct! All curation rewards are paid out in the first 7 days.
Good job with this. Is there a date on the Hardfork 19?
Good question. Hardfork 19 hasn't been scheduled yet, but a RC2 was released yesterday. My guess would be by the middle of June.
This is absolutely fantastic information! It's probably the best post I've read when it comes to explaining the voting process. It also made me realize that I have making a lot of mistakes and now that I know how to vote, I should be able to increase my curation rewards considerably. Great job! Upvoted, followed, and resteemed.
And absolute great overview and tips you provide here. To be honest, I hardly follow any of your tips, but I guess my curation rewards kind-a-s*ck :) I upvote most of the comments in conversations I'm in, and the rest goes to posts. But I'm having fun and try to give others the rewards I can give them with my votes.
That's fine, as long as you don't pile on the votes on Trending posts thinking it'll get you many rewards. That's the one that bothers me :)
Agree, I hardly look at Trending channel since this doesn't give positive energy to those who need to work hard for a couple of dollars rewards; Not saying the trending posts are not worked hard for, but the differences are soooo big.
Fortunately, with Hardfork 19 things will balance out a lot. No longer will a few command most of the influence. Of course, it's up to the minnows and dolphins to curate responsibly and not just pile on the votes on Trending. That was one of my goals with this post.
I understand your goal and I appreciate it you took the time and effort to post on this :)
well, this was so helpful i just threw any advice over board and voted anyway on this post
Haha, thank you! Though, yes, you should have voted on a fresher post instead.
So much info! I remember reading your earlier posts on this topic, and the principals are always in the back of my mind, but I tend to vote with my heart, not my head. Maybe there's a happy medium in between...
Of course, you can vote however you like, but it's always good to know how it all works :) I do feel it's best for most casual curators to vote without thinking too much.
This is true, And great advice, cheers!
Thank you so much for this, liberosist!
So much to learn... I didn't know about the 30min rule. And about a lot of other stuff! I have figured out that increasing Steem Power is the main goal, so I set up my posts to collect 100% steem power, but I just learned that that's actually not that smart. Well, you live and learn!
I love the idea of delegated steem power. It can get a little discouraging when your post is being shared all over social media (out there) and everyone seems to love it, but here it doesn't even make $2 :)) If there are some generous whales who are up for that, I think a lot of beginners, like me, would be super grateful.
Weirdly, selecting 100% SP a week ago would be the right call as currently the price feed hasn't caught up to the huge increase in price in the last 24 hours. But yes, most other times, 50%-50% is the best option.
awesome awesome article. This will be helpful to a lot of us. Thanks for taking the time to write it. I saved this post to refer back to
This is exactly the kind of post that is both in-depth, and easy to understand as a newbie. Thank you!
Thank you - that was my intention. Give an overview of the entire system without getting into the exact algorithms.
Really enjoyed this post and learned a lot from it, so upvoted and resteemed it just cuz, despite your great advice.
Yes, you aren't going to earn much curation rewards by voting on this post. Appreciated, though :)
I'm in this for the long haul, not to make bucks in a few weeks. That gives me the luxury of liking posts which I like, especially those which teach me something like yours has done.
Hi,
A noob here with a question aboit the upvotes. Somwtimwa while currating I upvote and see major differences on how much the dollar amount jumps. For imstance just niw I upvoted and I think the dollar value jumped by like 7 bucks. Other times it goes up by .10, why the drastic difference?
Really cool post. Thank you! Upvoted and followed. Please feel free to follow back. Cheers
How much you add depends on how much the pending payout already is. If you're voting on a $1000 post, you might at $10, while voting on a $0 post might only add $0.10. In this particular case, I'm guessing the value jumped by $7 because maybe some other people were also voting at the same time.
Thank you for the explanation. Have a good day.
Thank you!!! Finally, after 6 months on Steemit I understand something about curation! Upvoted & followed!
Awesome! I have been wondering what the number under my SP is forever now... It's a SP delegation from Steemit! Sweet! Thanks for all the great info!
Enjoy it while it lasts! They'll pull back to delegation after a month or so, pass it on to newer users.
Fantastic read. It made me look at my current rewards and, wow, I quickly realized what I am doing is not working. Thanks for the shake up and causing me to take notice.
I know - it's not something most steemians think about, until they are pushed to have a look.
Nicely written @liberosist. Didn't know of some of the things you mentioned, so thanks for that!
I don't blame you - it's a complicated system with very little accessible documentation. I have chat with a new newbies who had no idea there was such a thing as voting power even after a couple of weeks here - they were just voting at will!
First I would like to thank you for this article. I have never learned more about curation in a month here, as I have learned from your post.
Things like what is 30 minutes rule and what is voting power or what it does confused me a lot.
It was always confusing until now, whether to vote or not on articles just posted by people I follow.
Well I never consider SP rewards while upvoting and commenting. I just comment and upvote only on those articles which I genuinely like.
I mean curation was built for that, reward those who are truly worthy. Maybe I am loosing a few SP per week, but what would my upvote that gives 0.04 cents at 100% give me as a curator.
I am already following you and acidyo. And the day from which i have been following you, my voting power never came above 70%.
I was posting my article about anxiety yesterday and when I clicked on post, It showed an error that I can only vote again in 2 sec, first I was a little bit confused, but then I figured that one of you must have voted at the same time and there is a self upvote while posting article, we both collided. So I have to wait 10-12 sec before I could post it.
At that moment I found out how much both of you work on curating.
Firstly, thanks for the follow :) You can adjust the follow weight on Streemian so you don't have to follow 100% on all votes.
Yes, most people would simply upvote what they like. But it's good to know how the system works.
I will adjust my vote weight when my vote would generate more than 0.10 cents, otherwise, If I give you say even 30% power, and you would vote with 10-20%, it will not be beneficial in any way. It will not even give the author 0.01 cent so what's the benefit of following anyone. So once I reach at a higher value, I will do that.
I am not complaining here about my less voting power, I never used it much, Not voted more than 6-7 post a day. I was giving you a compliment that my voting power is being used.
thanks for all this amazing info it really help me to understand better this thing about curating, I was just like you told voting more in the trending section. now I will explore and discover for a better curating experience, Thanks!
That's great to hear! Mission accomplished :)
wewowi know theredidn't is so much behind voting! read, Interesting you for sharing your knthank owledge! That app is doing crazy things, most of all its slow. Read you later then
Thanks for the post. I am new to steemit and your post was very helpful in learning about voting reward.
So easy mate! I'll hop right away and make some whalie friends lol
Haha, good luck with that :)
😂
Great. Very helpful! So worth learning the best practices and this totally helps. Re-Steeming!!! Please follow y'all, my next post is gonna be great! I "teased" it in my last post at the end. Check it out!
: )
#payitforward
Great article @liberosist looked for something like that for a long time.
May I rewrite this in Russian for Golos?
Sure, feel free, I only request a link back to here. Of course, I'm sure some things will be different for Golos, such as the voting power targets.
Thanks! There are some differences and we also awaiting for a HF, but the general strategy and article structure is brilliant! So I'll use it, with a credits to you, naturally.
Please help me.my steem new user.
I am live in myanmar country.
Please,,sir
Great post really helped me understand better.
Thank you, i learnt a lot from this article
Great info i have to read again.
wow, way to much info.. i think im gonna have to read it again at least one or two more times...
excelent work!!!
Fantastic Overview! I won't follow your own recommendations either!! ;-)
Step 1: have 100s of thousands of dollars worth of STEEM POWER. Step 2: done.
Or, convince a whale to delegate hundreds of thousands of SP :)
Fair enough :)
What a great post - Amazing
Never knew about the voting power at: https://steemd.com/@yourusername.
So much to learn. Much appreciation
very amazing post, i am impressed with your knowledge.
Great article very informative thanks
Awesome article! Very useful information especially for new comers or people trying to understand Steem ways as I'm currently doing..