I agree with the article you linked from @kyriacos, that it doesn't really matter how one makes money on steemit. It's similar to not being concerned what your neighbor makes for a living. It will not change your outcomes at all. Sure you can emulate the authors that make a consistently large payout, but without their followers, your results may differ.
It would be insightful to see what the manual vs auto-curation numbers are for the top paying accounts. It is human nature to not want to miss out on the best possible curation outcomes and therefore the employment of bots is necessary to make that a reality. Use all the tools that are available to you on this platform.
You have got your points spot on! I think auto-curation bots of a few people are performing surprisingly well. Manual curation is tasking but then it offers greater flexibility and better quality of authors whos content gets noticed.
This is true!
Thanks. I mix it up with the curation. Manual definitely offers flexibility. I get annoyed when my bots upvote too much and spend all my curation capital. lol
haha! I can understand that. I like spending my time doing that and generally dont mind the effort that goes with it.