Hello my fellow Steemians!

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We all knew from the very first moment we signed up to be part of the Steemit community, that this will be a platform for which users get rewarded for sharing content and new ideas.But just like myself, we all had to learn about the Voting power and Bandwith limits the hard way!
We all are anxious to get as many rewards via being as active as possible, so here is a quick look at the Steemit voting system,and how to maximize your Steem power with Curational Rewards:

What is curational rewards?

Curational rewards are rewarded to users that upvote posts created by other fellow users. These rewards can take up to a maximum of 25% from a created post, while the other 75% will be rewarded to the author. The rewards distributed to the "curators" of a post mostly depends on your upvote weight and timing when casting a vote.

• Upvote weight:

All users have a Voting Power limit of 100% that will gradually regenerate over time.
Each time we vote at a weight of 100% we use only 2% of our total Voting power.Now this sounds a little confusing, but here is an example:
Let's say you have 500SP (Steem power) in your account, and your Voting Power is at 100%. Now when you cast a vote of 100%, you will only use 2% of your total Voting Power draining it to 98%.So by casting a 50% vote, you will use only half of your max 2% upvote(1%), and will leave your total Voting Power at 99%.

Now this obviously means that with a 100% you will earn the most rewards, so why not just vote at 100% all the time?
Well, your Voting Power takes quite a while to regenerate, and by voting at 100% too much would drain your voting power very fast, and thus making your upvotes worth a lot less.
Unfortunately, anyone with less than 500 Steem Power in their account, would not have the privilege to use the magic voting slider.These users will always vote at a weight of 100% and will need to monitor their Voting Power the most.

View your Voting Power at steemd.com/@yourusername (Replace yourusername with your actual steemit username)

• The perfect timing:

Being one of the very first to vote on a new post, or in the perfect situation, THE VERY FIRST to vote will lead to bigger shares on curational rewards. This means you will receive bigger Steem power rewards when the post reaches its payout time.

There is a reward timing system called the "reversed-auction" in place on all posts created to make sure rewards are distributed fairly after 7 days at payout.You can view a better explanation of this system here.I will just cover the basics:

Being the first person to vote after 30 minutes on a post, and it then getting bigger upvotes worth a lot more is the considered best curation possible.This is, however, a bit difficult to find as users tend to start voting immediately after they find something worthy of their upvote. This is why it is recommended to spend your bigger upvotes on new great content that you know more people will vote on.

So by constantly monitoring your Voting Power and voting on great content that others will also upvote,

You can grow your Steem power earned by curating very fast. The curational reward algorithm here on Steemit is designed to reward those who take the time to sift through the thousands of posts generated on a daily basis and upvote the best and original work.

IF you have less than 500 Steem power, here are a few tips on using your Voting Power efficiently:

• Vote only on new content that you know others would upvote too.
• Try to vote when you are one of the very first users to find a great post.
• Let your Voting Power regenerate from time to time,so your upvotes would be worth more.
• Don't vote on old or already popular posts.
• Vote on a post after atleast 15 minutes.

You could also use tools like steemstats.com to track the potential curation payout values of an account.

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You might also like:

The Qurator project was created to help give Steemians some extra exposure and awesome upvotes!

Please visit @qurator for more details.

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Get in touch: I am @gingerninja on Discord and Steemit Chat.

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as witness by heading here and voting for @gingerninja at the bottom of the page.

--Ninja by nature,Ginger by choice--