Why do some people earn curation rewards of up to the 18% of the total reward for a post while some people earn just 10% as the curation rewards?

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The rewards for each post on the Steem blockchain are split between the author (or authors) and those that curate, i.e. upvote and thus promote the post. Under the current hard fork HF19 the split of rewards is 75% of the post payout for authors and 25% for curators.

Curation rewards are higher for early curators than for those that upvote later. The idea being that early curators find and bring attention to the post with their upvotes. This is one way in which curation rewards for an individual voter may vary.

However, a further rule is that for curation undertaken in the first thirty minutes after an article is posted a proportion of the curation reward is returned to the author. It is this rule that determines the final percentage split of a post reward between authors and curators.

As an example, if there were only one upvote on an article and it was made immediately at the moment the article was posted, then the author would receive their 75% author reward but also all of the 25% curation reward. They would thus obtain 100% of the post rewards.

In a second example, an article with only one upvote that is made after 30 minutes would give 75% of the post rewards to the author and 25% to the curator. 

For other upvotes in between 0m and 30m there is a linear reduction in the curation rewards that are passed to the author (so the full 25% at 0mins, 12.5% at 15 mins, 0% at 30 mins and thereafter).

It has been determined from previous studies that the average curation reward on a post is around 18% of the post rewards. 

In a further complication posts with beneficiaries (a split of author rewards to another party) show a reduced level of author rewards once the post reaches its 7 day payout. This can make it look like the post has a higher percentage of curation rewards than actually was the case (to the extent that sometimes curation rewards / post payout it is higher than the maximum 25%). 

You can read all about curation rewards here:

https://steemit.com/curation/@miniature-tiger/an-illustrated-guide-to-curation-from-the-simple-to-the-complex-with-real-examples-from-past-posts-part-1

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