great post, and you are so correct, many people, including me get vote dust threshold and payout threshold mixed up.
@dustsweeper is an awesome tool, yes there is a small fee, but when you have a lot of redfish following you then the votes dont amount to much its really worth having paid the small fee.
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you should give it a try, you only need to send 1 steem to get start and you get it back via votes