Great post, I am relatively new to Steem myself, so I can't say as I know the rules of the road exactly either. But my view is upvotes have to be earned, by me, or others. The mere fact that your post caught my eye enough to trigger me to read it, doesn't by itself mean that an upvote is justified.
I upvote when the quality of post or comment is greater than average, in my mind, meaning that the post is better than most other things I see on here. That is the base level of approval I assign, so if I think your post is better than 51% of the stuff I see, I upvote.
The second question I ask myself about the content is how good was it? Good, great, superb?
Since I have enough Steempower, I can control my upvote's value, I manipulate it to lower or higher thresholds depending on the degree of insightfulness, or importance I ascribe the the post or comment.
If I think it was pretty average 50% upvote, if I think it was great or superb 75% to 100%.
Like you I know I only have so many upvotes per day, and I need to respect that fact by not just throwing my approval around. And when my voting power is down I like to take a break, lean back on my upvotes, I will still approve if its great but the standards become higher when my vote power is low.
Your post, 100% UPVOTE, mind you my vote is diminshed today, but still not bad. Enjoy! Blessings.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I have so much to learn, but am just constantly impressed by the support available for newbies here. I hope I can just start helping out some fellow newbies who might have the same questions as I have had on my Steemit journey. Peace!
Love it! That is the attitude that in my view makes Steem worth buying, and Steemit worth investing time into. I really believe people like you, and hopefully myself, are making this place worth being a part of, and as we do that we simealtaneously improve our own opportunity to earn something here, because we begin to attract more and more great people, hopefully all of whom contribute and deepen the pool of great content.
Hopefully....
Thanks.
Question. At what point do you get to control you voting power?
From the FAQ: "Once you reach about 500 STEEM Power, you will see a vote slider appear when you vote."