Neither post rewards nor curation rewards are guaranteed on Hive.
This is a fact that I learned on a discord server IDK which one it was. Since then I never took them for granted. Tarazkp mentioned something in his comment:
It is like some people don't care if anyone reads their post at all, they just want the votes.
Sometimes I wish that instead of auto upvotes people would actually read my posts. Of course at first sight it makes me happy to see the number of upvotes and the good rewards. A lot of votes come from automated processes that will not actually read or engage with your content. I am following a few curation trails myself because my time is limited, what it does though it makes me miss content I actually would like to read. I see why manual curation seems to be the best way to reward good quality.
The farming of tribe tokens? What can I say it is addicting to see all those different tokens dripping in. Recently I started to use tags to drive organic traffic to the frontends. Maybe that would be a good rule of thumb to relate the first 3-5 tags truly to the content and then start the tribe tag thing?
Sorry for the long comment, but long post=long comment
RE: Your only guaranteed returns on Hive are those of your Hive Power APR