Curation strategies - A minnow’s observations

It‘s been a couple of days since I joined the steemit platform and as a minnow with limited steem power and resources curation rewards have been hard to come by. With those with larger account opting to delegate or automate their voting power, minnows are left to come up with strategies which they can use to get at least get some share of what curation rewards that are left available. While you may not earn much initially using the following five strategies, they will ensure that you’re upvote doesn’t always go to waste.

1. Be the first to vote on the post you have chosen. While you get 25% of all the curation rewards if you are the only curator after 30 minutes of a post coming out, by that time it is more than likely that someone with a larger account than yours has voted before you. It is better to upvote from the 20 to 30 min mark of the post coming out and earn a smaller percentage of the of reward if the post is likely to attract future upvotes after the 30 min mark.

2. If you are voting purely to earn curation reward, take note of the author’s reputation and past payouts history. With your limited voting strength it may be wiser to vote for an author just beginning to make some earnings than an already established one who may have a larger following where you are less likely to earn any curation rewards due to possible larger curators with more steem power than you.

3. Conserve your voting power by voting a maximum of 10-12 times per day at 100% voting strength and then letting it build back to 100% power before repeating the process. Monitor your voting power at steemd.com/@yourusername and try to maintain voting power of 80% and above. Initially as a minnow you are disadvantaged by the lack of voting weight due to lower steem power so to maintain any chance of earning even a bit of the curation rewards you seek, vote at full strength but less often.

4. While there are some tags that payout higher than others, the competition for posts under those tags if very high and as a minnow your power to earn curation reward is limited. It is better to initially concentrate on less popular tags that may have a lower payout but will have better prospect of getting you some curation rewards before taking on the popular tags after you gain some steem power.

5. Due to the constant stream of post from around the world at varying hour's of the day and days of the week, the strategy here is to find the best moments of the day to curate new posts depending on your time zone. This may depending on the authors of the posts, if they do so manually rather than automate the process when their posts come out, there may be a time of the day when you will be able to curate content which suit your particular strengths thus your location becomes a key factor.

Finally, while the above strategies are but just general observations, they are by no means the only consideration to take into account when you curate content because even as a minnow and with the exercise of curation being subjective, the posts should deserve you’re upvote if you find that they add value and not merely for the rewards they may bring you. Take time to leave a comment on posts you have upvote as this is a way to increase your audience for your own future posts.

Image sourced from Pixbay.com