Commenting is a curation reward?
Commenting isn't by itself a curation reward. There was a proposal at one point to dedicate a portion of rewards specifically to comments, but it wasn't adopted. Comments are rewarded based on upvotes like anything else.
However, where the advice makes sense is the fact that it has now become common for good comments to get at least an upvote or two, sometimes more than that. And as the author of a comment, you earn the author portion of the reward (75%) rather than the curator portion (25%). On this thread there are many comments earning $0.01-0.20 each. That may not sound like a lot by itself, but if you are engaging in a good conversation and write a few comments, you can collect a few of these little reward morsels on one post without writing anywhere near as much as a new post (or as much as I did here). So it can really boost your rewards.
"And as the author of a comment, you earn the author portion of the reward (75%) rather than the curator portion (25%). " This is good information for everyone out there!
Thanks for correcting! I didn't realize that the comments are paid out of the author reward - that's awesome. And it means that the incentive to comment is even bigger than most people realize. I'm trying to upvote every root comment in this post to spread the reward around - I wonder why other authors don't do the same? My upvotes are worth about $0.10 and I'm curious what people will actually receive, but I have to think it's a lot more (percentage wise) that if the post wasn't upvoted.
I actually will do test with new users who have made very little or any with their post. I invited them for simple discussion, if iit was good discussion, i upvoted. Some would make a few bucks doing this. Also helped if it attracted higher SP members who entered the discussion.
The new users were simply amazed that if engaged with discussion they would make steem dollars and steem power. both as authors and curators.
I need to start doing this more!
Yes, I tried to upvote everyone in these comments once. I think authors should invest more of their voting power in comments on their posts - great way to encourage discussion and spread the rewards around.