Wanted to share some tips on Voting Power... "The Hidden Power"

The Power

Each time you vote your voting power drops by 2% (i.e. Voting power after the vote = 0.98 x Voting power before the vote). Voting power is a major factor in what curation rewards you get for upvoting. However, Steem Power is king in all rewards, but we will save that for another post.

Where Is This Magic Number?

Go to steemd.com to check your voting power. (https://steemd.com/@your_username)

Your Voting Power is continuously replenishing at a rate of 20% in 24hrs. (About 0.83% an hour)

Curation Rewards

On steemd.com you can check the posts that you upvote for and see your specific reward for the upvote you gave (known as rshares)

Each upvote you give is a 100% upvote (100% of the 2% previously discussed). Once you reach 500SP you will be able to actually change this value so that the upvote doesn't cost a full 2%. Say you want to vote a lot during the day and don't wish to go less than 80% Voting Power. You could choose to have each vote be 50% of a full 2% vote (so each vote would effectively only use 1% of your Voting Power).

Other Options if <500SP

If you have less than 500SP, like myself, then there is another option to using less than a full vote on every upvote. This is possible if you join a curation trail or have a voting bot. In my case I front run a couple voting bots and I also trail a couple specific whales with my votes. In these instances I can actually utilize less than a full vote. You can see in this instance I used a 50% vote ( or 1% Voting Power)

How Does This Translate To Curation?💰

With so many variables involved... including: amount of time passed between post creation and your upvote, your amount of SP, where you upvoted relative to other voters, Voting Power used on the upvote etc. It is very difficult to get a feel for your curation reward for each upvote. One tool you can use is steemdb.com (https://steemdb.com/)

Here you can check your author and curation rewards over each day.

This will allow you to check what voting methods are working well for you and which ones aren't. From there you can fine tune your voting and realize the full strength of your Voting Power!

I hope you find this useful in your curation game! We have some catching up to do my friends, but don't let that discourage you! Steem on!