What Votting Pattern Would You Recommend for a Minnow To Maximize Curation Rewardd?
For minnows with low Steem Power (I note that your current level is approximately 30SP so I am initially considering this level in my response) my advice is not to worry about curation rewards at all!
Even on the best of days, given 10 votes with a combined daily value of around $0.01 to $0.02, the curation rewards are going to be a few cents at most. Spending any time hunting for good curation rewards with this level of Steem Power is simply time wasted.
Better uses of time and vote power, particularly for newer users, are:
- Upvoting and commenting on content that you like. This supports the author, helps build your network and community, and may get you some rewards if your comments are useful.
- Contribute content to the dApps which have a good spread of rewards based on quality of content or participation. Musing, Steemhunt, Actifit (or for larger contributions Utopian) all give a fair possibility to earn. Time spent on these dApps will bring greater rewards than curation hunting.
For minnows with higher Steem Power (technically minnow level goes up to 5000SP!) then curation hunting can start to bring small amounts of money (although the bullet points above are still likely to bring more).
Here my (simplest) advice would be to find authors that regularly get rewarded by the dApps with large holdings of Steem Power, for example Utopian or DTube.
The whale votes from these dApps are typically delayed due to the moderation / curation processes from the dApp teams. This gives the opportunity to vote before the whale, which is what generates the high curation rewards.
Vote around the 15 minute mark (a change under HF20) or possibly a few seconds before. Voting prior to 15 minutes sends a proportion of your curation rewards back to the reward pool (based on a linear reduction over 0-15 minutes). But voting too long after 15 minutes will mean other curators get in before you.
Look at the post payout at the time of your vote. Estimate the final post payout (based on the reward history of the author). A ratio of 64x (i.e. voting on a $1 post that eventually reaches $64) will give a curation reward equal to the value of your vote.
But the key is consistency: find authors who consistently catch the higher rewards.
Good luck!