I agree, I still feel like it's hard to explain it.
Honestly, I still don't understand how anyone makes money upvoting a post after the 30 minutes are up. Do you make money upvoting after 30 min? Or only the curators make money if they vote in those 30 mins?
For votes that happen within 30 minutes (this time will change after Hard Fork 20), a portion of the curation rewards currently (again this may change in the future) go directly to the author. After the 30 minutes, all curation rewards go to the curator. There's a long discussion raised by @blocktrades about this if you're interested.
Sweet, I am interested! I'll see if I can find that...thanks!