When I joined SteemIt there were some strange things with the timing and order of votes. Several whales convinced me that I should upvote my posts.

I wish I didn't largely because my upvote was too low to matter.

Steemit.com did not show people the value of their upvote. Peakd.com shows the value of upvotes to three digits.

Here is a great clue for newbies. Go to the activities page on PeakD.com and look at your activities page. Click the box next to the words "curation rewards." It will show you your curation rewards.

The account vagabondspirit has about 90 HP. The account always upvotes at 100%. The page shows it usually gets 0.001 or 0.002 curation rewards. So, you need to have about 90 HP before you get curation rewards for your upvotes.

@vagabondspirit/activities

The Two Cent Cut Off

HIVE wipes away the curation rewards for posts that get under $0.02.

I decided that I wanted to have enough HP for my account to be over that amount. The upvote calculator shows the current value for a given HP vote value. NOTE: this cut off changes with the price of HIVE. Currently it is around 800 HP, which is about $440.00 USD.

With my upvote worth more than $0.02, I go through my comments and replies and upvote those with less than 0.02 in upvotes. This process is called sweeping dust.

My sweeping dust assures that people who upvote my posts get an award.

Ran Out of Things to Upvote.

I want my account to have 90% when I go to bed. Some times I find myself at two in the morning. I've read dozens of posts and haven't found anything that I want to upvote.

I think it is best just to upvote my own posts and getting some sleep, rather than speeding another hour reading posts trying to find decent material to upvote.

VerifyYourBrain Doesn't like Self-Voters

I've heard that VYB penalizes people who self-vote. I am not sure what their algorithm does.

Conclusion

New accounts shouldn't waste time upvoting. Redfish accounts should use their upvotes to sweep dust. Finally, IMHO, IF you can't find good content. You might as well self-vote.