On Front Running Whales for Curation Rewards

This is exciting. I have 673 STEEM POWER. I've noticed that when I am the first to upvote a post, the upvote value of the post shows $0.01. SteemIt.com rounds up; so I guess this means that my 100% upvote power is now worth over half a penny.

I wish that the interface showed more digits; to give a clearer picture of our account value.

Steem Block Explorer shows my upvote value at $0.0041.

Unfortunately, when I am the only voter, my vote is washed away as dust.

Dealing With Dust

"dust" refers to funds earned but not paid out. The minimum payout for a post is $0.02. Posts that fail to raise above the minium don't receive a payment.

Speaking of dust, It appears that the @dustsweeper and @dustbunny accounts finally went blank. They were my favorite bots as they would sweep up the dust on small accounts.

Since I lose my funds when i am the only voter, it seems to me that the solution would be to only upvote posts that have already crossed the upvote threshold. The problem with this strategy is that payouts are weighted by the vote position.

Tracking Curation Rewards

The Curation Rewards is the best tool for tracking one's curation rewards. This report is valuable as it shows the actual funds received.

My report shows that I am receiving between 0.008 and 0.080 for my upvotes. The payout depends on where I am in the voting queue. I get 70 upvotes a week. To make a STEEM a week, my reward average needs to be about 0.015 STEEM per post.

Front Running Whales

People can get big rewards if they front run the whales.

Front running whales is difficult as many of the whale accounts are run by computers that vote exactly at the five minute mark to maximize their upvote rewards.

One of the things I dislike about SteemIt is that the platform pits people against bots and the bots always win.

I admit, I've been obsessing of the curation report this year. I want to get to the position where I earn a STEEM a week for my curation efforts.

With 673 STEEM POWER, I can only do this if I manage to front run a few whales.

This means that many of my upvotes are based on the activities of the whales and not on the quality of the posts.

It also means that my upvotes are currently feeding the imbalance that makes SteemIt such as hostile place for new users.

My Goal is a STEEM a Week

My goal is to earn a STEEM a week through curation. The easiest way to achieve this goal would be to buy 50 STEEM POWER. That way I would reach my goal without playing the front running game.

If I had money shooting out of my ears, I would buy enough STEEM so that my upvote was worth over the $0.02 threshold. As I recall, one needs about $480 SP to accomplish that.

Anyway, I was lamenting that I have to waste time front running whales. I asked Night Cafe to generate the picture above of a person jumping before a steam engine to reflect my sentiments.

Too bad @dustsweeper went silent. Dusty evened the playing a field a bit making it so that unpopular accounts could still get rewards for their posts.