Curation is tricky, you need some decent upvote weight and you need to get in before the big votes come in. I have seen curation as strong as 4 steem for a $0.20 upvote. It's all about timing. Jumping in too soon and you will give most of your uvpote to the author, jumping in too late and you will be too late.. I say hunt the underappreciated posts an upvote them around 20-30 minutes after they posted. Only if you think that post will get some decent upvotes later.

A lot of the autovotes go out around 18 to 30 minutes so jumping in earlier than that on the whales posts might score you some rewards, but only if your upvote is worth something.