Using steemstats, I noticed that voting for boosted posts means almost no curation awards in return when your voting power is much lower. In order to maximize my curation award, I decided to vote only posts which are not boosted.
On a highly boosted post, I earn only 0.001 to 0.002 Steem power:
When voting a high-quality post early, which was not boosted, I can earn easily 7.5 - 15 times more SP:
So if I vote 10 posts which are boosted from the first second on, I will earn 0.01 - 0.02 SP curation award per day.
But if I vote only posts which are not boosted from the first second on, I can earn up to 0.15 SP a day.
The reason for post creators to buy vote bots and let them vote early as possible is the reason that voting within the first 30 minutes shifts most of the curation award from the voter to the author. In the same time, your curation award is strongly reduced when you vote after the vote bots with a much lower voting power.
So observe your voting reward and improve your earning by:
Good helper for finding posts which are not boosted:
There is also a vote reward calculator https://steemcalculator.github.io/, but it is not working most of the time.
