Also, I believe the amount of rewards that came in before and after you vote impact your share. For instance, voting on something before a whale does give you a better payout in that timeframe than if you vote after the whale in that same time frame.
Don't quote me on any of this though, recall hearing it a while back.
I believe you're right. In order to be a successful curator you need to help bring a post out to become viral. In order to do this you'd have to vote before it gains higher amounts of value rather than voting on the trending page where the value is already high.
think I'm gonna change my name to cudaguppie ...when I grow up I wanna swoop in and steal a whale's lunch...well maybe just a half a tuna sandwich...I'm not greedy :-)