I care about voting - how about you?

In this post I would like to share my thoughts around voting. I´m adressing those users who currently have the impression that their votes wouldn´t make a difference.
From two recent posts of high-profile members it became evident to me, that even orca-level stakeholders doubt that their votes would actually count.
I will also share my manual curation workflow with you, a workflow that made me become one of the Top 100 curators on Steemit. And allow me to say that this Top 100 includes voting bots and voting guild accounts.

"Every vote counts", we hear this often and I would like to explain why I believe that this statement is very true. Let me adress two of the frequently heard arguments of non-voters:

"I simply don´t have the time to read through all these articles"

Right, curation takes time. Much less than you may think though. Still, if you don´t find the time at all for manual curation you can dedicate your voting power to one of the different curation guilds. The combined voting power of guilds like @curie, @robinhoodwhale or @steemtrail results in significant rewards in the range of 10$ to 100$ per post. Just to let you know that most of my own posts would have remained largely unrewarded without the votes from these guilds. And you can imagine how glad I am about this support. So, before not voting at all, contribute your voting power to those who do!

"My x cents don´t make a difference anyway"

(add your increment for x)

Really not true! As the rewards are not growing linear with incoming votes, your vote does not result in x ct but much more - potentially dollars - if added to already trending posts.

Even more importantly, if you identify good posts in the new tab with zero or close-to-zero rewards, your x ct put a mark on these posts! A mark that will be seen by other curators, prompting them to inspect this post, too! Your initial x ct will therefore increase the chances for that post to make dollars afterwards.

And lastly, don´t forget that voting also makes a difference to your wallet. The better you become in spotting posts with potential, the higher your curation reward will become. An additional interest of 20% p.a. on your SP holdings is possible with manual curation!

How? Well, here is my workflow that currently results in 70-80 SP of weekly curation rewards. In other numbers, ~0.4% of interest on my SP holdings every week!

My curation workflow:

Except for comments, I´m voting only at 100% of my voting weight - full stop.
I´m going through 5 voting cycles per day spending approx. 10 minutes per cycle.
I start with my home feed. Going there several times per day ensures that I don´t miss posts of my followed authors.
- A handful of my buddies are (manually) autovoted. Curation rewards are not the focus here, it´s just one of my ways to say thank you for their great company. As I´m not a whale (and I won´t become one at any time) I consider such buddy-votes entirely unproblematic. In the end, supporting friends and fellows is just a natural thing to do.
- A further 5-10 votes per day go on posts in my home feed, simply on articles that I personally like.
I continue with the new feed (and this is where maybe 90% of my curation rewards are coming from).
- Each cycle I vote on 7-10 posts in the 25min to 1h window. This totals to 45-60 votes per day and keeps my voting power in the 80-90% range.
- I only vote on posts with payouts below 1$. Mostly I vote on posts in the 0.01 to 0.30 $ range.
- Before I vote, I open the post and scan it! I don´t necessarily read everything. To assess whether a post deserves a reward requires in most cases less than a minute. If I have the slightest doubt that the post contains plagiarized content, I do a quick text or image search on google. Takes 20 seconds if this becomes a routine for you.
- Before I actually vote I ask myself just a single question: "Are there many other users who might want to see this post?" If I´m answering to myself "Yes, probably many" I hit the button. Otherwise I move on to the next post.