Good day, my fellow Steemians!!!
Do you guys upvote your own posts or not? Should you or should you not? Let's discuss.
First of all, let me put very briefly, how the curation rewards work.
25% of a post's total payout is paid as Curation Rewards to the curators (upvoters).
Earlier you upvote a post, more is the reward for you. The first upvoter gets the largest share of the curation reward, followed by the second and so on. But there's a catch. A part of curation reward will be changed to author reward, if a post gets its first upvote within 30 minutes of its submission.
So, curation reward takes 30 minutes to build up completely i.e. 100%. Before that you upvote a post, a part of it will be changed to author reward and will be given to author and not to the curators. To get an idea,
1. If you upvote within 15 minutes you give 99.94% to the author and get only 00.06%
2. If you upvote after 15 minutes you give 50% to the author and receive 50%
3. If you upvote after 30 minutes you receive 100% curation reward
The percentages mentioned above depict the share of the curation reward i.e. 50% means 50% of curation reward, which is in turn, 25% of the post's total payout. So, in case 2, the author will get 87.5% (75% + 12.5% ) and the curators will get only 12.5% of the total payout.
Now, you know what will happen if you upvote a post immediately after its inception (see case 1). I come across a lot of posts where I see one upvote just seconds after the post's submission. Guess what, it's the author himself. :D
I know exactly why do you do that. You also want to earn the Curation reward for your post along with the Author reward, and why shouldn't you? You put in a lot of efforts to create and submit your post on the steemit, and 25% of that will go to the curators. WTF, right!!!
Many Steemians have suggested here to upvote your own posts to earn greater rewards. They have demonstrated that, given proofs that it works in real and earns you lot more if you follow Narcissism (well, you like your own post). In fact, I guess you would have observed that yourself.
Now, let me share my perspective on this. When, you upvote your own post (just seconds after its inception), you are taking away the curation rewards. It might discourage fellow steemians from upvoting your post. I mean, why would they upvote without any rewards. That in turn might bring down your post's total payout.
Oh, these curators are being selfish, you would say. Do they care only about the rewards, and not the community. Won't they upvote because you have posted such great content. Well, they might or might not. But I am not sure who got selfish first. :p
People looking to earn some curation rewards here on Steemit scan the new posts relating to the tag of their interest. They try to upvote first on a post after few minutes has elapsed since its inception to earn maximum rewards. Think when they will see your upvote already there. Well, if your content is so much appealing that they won't be able to control themselves to upvote your post, then you need not worry.
Personally, whenever I see the author's name in the list of upvoters, I refrain from upvoting that post. I do this not because I know that it won't earn me any curation reward even after losing my voting power. I do this because I see author's selfishness in that gesture of him upvoting his own post. When the author only cares about getting all the rewards for himself and not about sharing it with the community, why the f*ck would I?
At last, this is my personal opinion:
Upvoting your own post (just after its inception) will earn you all the payout from that post. But it might cut down the number of upvotes you would have got otherwise.
Advice and Suggestions are most welcome!!!