Curation: How you doin'?
How well are you curating, financially speaking? Are you making the best use of your Steem Power and votes?
In this post I'm going to try and show, using some Steemit friends, a possible method to working out just how well your curation skills rank against other Steemians.
Curation and it's rewards system is a complex beast. The structure of the how the rewards are decided upon for each voter have been explained many times in detail, and here's two I found (via google search, well done @calamus056) which I think do a good job:
https://steem.io/getinvolved/paid-to-curate/
https://steemit.com/steemit/@calamus056/curation-rewards-explained-in-great-detail
My takeouts from the above, and general opinion is:
Voting at 0 minutes will earn a 0.000 curation reward
Voting under 15 minutes will earn VERY little unless you have a lot of Steem Power
Voting between 15 and 29 minutes will earn an increasing % of the curation reward split
The goal is to get in prior to the big hitters, but not too early in that your % in the 2nd point isn't too low (e.g. 16 minutes)
It is commonly suggested that 25-30 minutes is the 'best' time to stick a vote in (especially on known power-authors posts because they are likely to have more auto-votes coming in at these times)
As you can see, a combination of many variables such as Steem Power, voting strength, voting weight, and time of vote, (and more) all play a part in the amount of reward received. Is there a skill to it though? And how well I am doing?
Now this is the point where this blog could crash and burn. Without a good level of knowledge of 'SteemSQL', @arcange's lovely invention, coupled with the information I've received from others in that curation data is tough to un-earth, I've used the following method to obtain what I need for this example.
- Use steemit.com Wallet to collect Steem Power and + or - the leased/delegated steem
- Use the 'Rewards' drop-down menu to find 'Curation rewards' for the previous week
Therefore, my data is gathered manually, and the curation period is only for the previous week. This is obviously not ideal and reduces the potential to widen the results set (maybe I can get some help with this, anyone?)
My results set is as follows:
The key columns are:
Curation: Total curation rewards for the previous week
SP Total: Total vested Steem Power (including delegated SP)
Curation/SP %: The % of curation rewarded Steem Power in relation to amount of Steem Power owned
This final column is what I feel is a genuine indicator of how well you are working the curation game with the tools (including vested Steem Power) that you have at your disposal.
Imagine you have 10,000 Steem Power, and I have 1,000 Steem Power.
After a week curating, the rewards for both of us are 1 SP each.
In my mind, I'm working my Steem Power 10 X harder - If you, in this example earned curation rewards of 10 SP, then I would say we were curating with equal skill.
(If you are with me here and agree, I'm starting to feel happier about myself and the time spent working this post)
The % of curation rewarded Steem Power in relation to amount of Steem Power owned
- We have Steem Power ranging from 3.2 Million, right down to 629.
- Voting power between 42% and 100%
and
- A curation reward % of between 0.025% and 0.205%
The difference between 0.025% and 0.205% is almost 8 X more curation reward relative to vested Steem Power - quite a lot!
So what are you saying here Asher?
@osm0sis, a 6 week old user is curating (financially) more effectively than @curie, @booster, and the mighty @blocktrades, as well as our number one witness @good-karma?
I think so! But I will need some reassurance here!
It could be that it's impossible to manage that much SP effectively with regards to curation rewards?
@osm0sis may have had a lucky week? Yes but what about @xervantes who also has a high Curation/SP %
Maybe all users with less than 5/6000 SP did better than the bigger accounts? Thanks @dandesign86 for ruling that one out!
If I followed @osm0sis or @xervantes in a trail would it be more profitable than trailing @curie?
This post has raised more questions than answers to me - answers I hope you guys can help with. So before i finish up, just a few more points:
If you have spotted any glaring errors in my post, please let me know so I can fix them (or start from scratch!)
If you would like to be in my personal curation league (that doesn't exist just yet) let me know.
If you have better % than @osm0sis or any other comments, let me know below.
And finally...
- I feel that curation should be about finding awesome content and giving it an up-vote, irrelevant of the curation rewards you might receive.
Thanks for reading today, comment below to help reduce my voting power further!
Asher
Just skimmed it, looks like a lot of great info going to save for a deeper read later.
is this true? I am not sure, while it is much reduced it is not 0. As an example I am going to 100% vote this post at 9 mins and lets see
Thanks for taking part in the experiment!
I've read a few articles today, and just found another that support a close to 0 (but not quite!) payout on curation if you vote in the first 15 mins.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@vapekings14/the-truth-about-upvotes-curation-rewards-and-author-rewards
looking slightly better here as its reported that the scale goes up from 0 mins..
https://steemit.com/steem-help/@sykochica/answering-common-questions-about-voting-and-curation
I may adjust my text slightly :)
Cheers!
New curation post out - couldn't include you this week as you delegated a bunch of SP and sent my chart crazy!
Hey
Any idea of your curation reward for voting here at 9 mins?
Ash
I received 0.441 SP, not sure what I had in my voting power at that time, I think maybe 20,000 SP.
Of the 8 votes I made that day it was the biggest reward and I usually vote after 15 mins.
Here's a link https://steemdb.com/@fiveboringgames/curation/2017-10-04
it a good site and you may be able to gleam more info
Great thanks for checking up. So from 1 minute onwards is earning curation, good to know, cheers.
Nice post and interesting topic. Check @htliao, he is doing very well, and no auto bot upvote from his account.
Hi @tumutanzi
Thank you for your vote and comments, I will check @htliao soon and see how he's doing. Thanks!
Hi @tumuntanzi
I have done the stats for @htliao and he is indeed doing well. He would be 2nd place in my chart!
p.s. I know Sheffield quite well, I think the city is getting nicer the past 10 years.
Thanks!
hi @tumutanzi - I have a new curation post out - you are in the middle of the table, and @htliao is doing well again!
Nice
Nice self-vote! :D
Thanks for the great info. The other thing I find confusing is that lots of posts say not to vote if there are already lots of votes. When you wait 30mins, good posts by popular authors have lots of votes. It makes voting for humans, rather than bots, very difficult!
Hi @seajai
Yes this is another tricky factor, and I think it is in place to make rewarding new (non-bot ready) user accounts the most profitable. E.g. @curie is doing well in my stats and they aim for this type of content.
Thanks for your comments and good luck!
Love this post. Well done on collecting this data. i know you have been interested in this for a while. When I start curating more, you can add me to your list. Resteemed, and also thinking about the qustions this poses
Thank you @paulag!
I'm glad you remember me mentioning it to some of the #bisteemit members a few weeks back. And also happy you are having a think on the questions. I'll push you for some answers later!
Cheers!
Of course I remember, because the idea is good. we need to set you up with a way to automate this
Oh I'd love that!
Curation Leagues 😁
If the reward could be found for the previous week then that would be fine.
The league or leagues (split by minnow/whale following/followers etc) would constantly be changing I think, and could be a nice weekly post.
Automation would be good. If anyone can figure out a way to pull this data then please count me in.
Dude, you have romped the curation charts this week! How did you do it!?
Combination of luck and hard work trying to identify undervalued authors I'd say. I am also using steemvoter which is helping with the timing of my upvotes.
Well it's put you at the top of my league so well done!
Thanks. We will soon see if it was a one-off fluke I suppose!
Keep up the good work with your analytics.
Great post!
I think that it is easier to have a higher curation relative to SP if you have less SP. My own ratio is 0.1064%, so similar to your own, based off only 44 votes out of 70 for the last 7 days, and putting no thought into financial curation, simply upvoting the things I like.
My purely anecdotal evidence for the above is that my largest curation (a couple of weeks back now) was nearly 10 cents off my (at the time) 2 cent upvote (which I think would scale up to a huge 2.6% off 70 votes on your scale). [It was slipping in ahead of someone who upvotes their own comments on day 6. It was to see the financial impact (the idea being to set up some form of robin hood levy on the return on self upvoting - not that I actually have any problem with the "investment approach", I just think the return on it is too high currently due to whales who don't vote )]. But the large curation came from getting in ahead of a larger upvote, and I'm guessing this doesn't scale if you're a whale.
I think the way to getting "curation data" is to reconstruct it from the underlying rather than extract it. I have some thoughts on this, although it needs more investigation. I'll try to do a response post once I'm finished with the votebots!
Thanks dude!
Good thinking out loud here! I was wondering if smaller SP gave you more leverage compared to a whale, but @curie is high on my list and i also checked another whale today who would be 2nd on the list (see comments in post)...
@osm0sis is always in on my posts before I start with the bots, and uses a larger vote on content she likes. The same is true for the 2nd on my list, using 30-100% vote weight on what he likes. Sooo, more thinking more data required!
new curation post out - did you get any time to data hunt yet? :)
Hey! No, sorry, fighting bad data on the upvote bots the last few days! I'm hoping to get to it soon though!
Nice new post btw!
Bad data - nooo! Good luck over there, and thanks!
I think your final point is the important one. Curating should be about finding great content irrelevant of reward.
I've read so many different theories about curation rewards and when to vote, but what happens when you wait to vote and forget to come back, or you wait to vote and a whale comes in and suddenly the post you found so rewarding gives you hardly any curration because you are no longer amung the first.
I personally gave up on understanding how it all works, and just upvoting the posts I want to upvote whenever I see them. LEt the rewards take care of themselves.
This was a hard decision for me to come by since I am leasing steem power right now and need some curation rewards to feel like I got my money's worth. But the headache of trying to figure out what and when to vote is not worth it. Instead I have fun with handing out my upvote to stuff I like, and let the rest pass under the bridge.
This is very good data though! Well researched and put together. If @paulag helps you automate it, that will be some great tool!
Thanks Mike, great comments!
Personally the rewards from curation are too small to make it stressful, you need a lot of SP to make a 'worthwhile' sum - check the data above to see what's a worthwhile amount to you.
Hopefully we can get something going with the #bisteemit team, I would love to see the stats for the whole community on this.
Cheers!
Asher
Lots of interesting stuff - thanks for posting, it clearly has taken a lot of time and effort!!
From my perspective, I have decided not to worry about the timing of my upvotes and trying to maximize my return. Sure, over the long-term an additional few % now will make a big difference, but on the flipside, if STEEMIT is alive and kicking in 5 years time, then I am not sure I will need to worry too much about a few $ here and there
I vary my % upvote according to how good I feel a post to be and to my voting power at the time, but otherwise I just vote for stuff that I like when I see it - and comment of course...
Cheers
I think that's the best way to go, don't worry about it and keep voting what interests you. I suspect the financial rewards might be less, but it's in favour of health of Steemit.
Cheers for your comments 😁
Am sure you're right, but my account is very small relative to others and to my mainstream investments - and the difference between small and small - is small
I am pondering double or tripling down - at that point it may make sense to take a slightly more scientific approach. But it needs to stay fun!!
Cheers
I've added you to this weeks Curation data :)
I've added you to this weeks Curation data :)
The power of thought...:) Just today I was thinking about influence of SP and decided to find out a piece of information about it. You even can't imagine how gratefull I'm now for this post. Will read it once again to make sure I understand all well.
Only one (maybe silly) question with your permission:
if all we know tt voiting until 15 min is useless why so many people vote during 1-15 min?
Hi @anamarena thanks for your comments 😊
I have revised that section slightly (and may do again), and now think perhaps it's only almost useless to vote at 15 mins. I would still suggest the best time period to vote being 25-30 mins though.
Asher
Only been here for a couple of weeks so thanks for the tips @abh12345. The problem is what happens if everyone takes your advice and nobody votes in the first 15 minutes. Wouldn't that screw up the SP algorithm?
I've now read its 99.96% useless at 0 minutes, so perhaps it's not as bad as nothing under 15 minutes. I'd still suggest aiming for as close to 30 as you can.
Thanks for your comments and good luck on Steemit!