Really it's only because Steem is worth less than $100 million. If it was $100 billion (or ~20% of Facbook), your vote would be worth the same as a 6k SP account today, which would be ~.02 SBD.
As far as the current threshold to actually push .001 SBD, I'm not sure. I push close to .05 SBD, so I would guess you would need 1/50th of my acct, or ~270 SP (.79 MV) to push .001 SBD with the current price of Steem.
As a non-investor, influence currently needs to be earned through creation/engagement. However much creation/engagement one seeks to produce is completely up to them. Just like how much one chooses to invest.
Also note that as posts get bigger, your vote pushes more and more. I have an attempted miner account, @boomer, which can push pennies when a post is over $10.
I actually posted under it because I'm messing around with Streemian XD
Confirming this is me btw :)
I noticed that, too.
Sometimes my vote added a lot, sometimes a little, and sometimes it took away.
Ok, so when I get around $100sbd I will start seeing my input, but until then do I get the fractions, or not?
You need to get to about 270 Steem Power. SBD doesn't add influence. 270 SP costs about .21 btc, or $130 USD, currently to get to the .001SBD minimum threshold, if my rough calculations are correct.
Until then, yes you can still get curation rewards. Go to your wallet, then click rewards, then curation rewards, and you can see that you already got a couple. You can get more by voting between 20-40 times a day on posts that will become popular, within the 15-30 minute window. You won't get much most of the time, but you will likely notice a little trickle after a while if you keep that activity up.
I've voted most of dollar vigilante and barry cooper's posts early, but I've only gotten one curation award, I don't understand what was different about it.
I've voted a lot everyday, my voting percent is near 80.