@dan once said:
Curation is a game for whales and dolphins. Minnows are unlikely to earn any significant return on their votes. Minnows should stick to posting and commenting.
There is a lot of things Minnows and other Steemians don't know about Curation, @eroche discusses at length some valuable information about curation in his post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@eroche/the-economics-of-upvoting-your-own-post.
When I first came to Steemit, I was excited about the fact that I could pay myself by upvoting my own posts! Self-voting is almost like a default setting here on Steemit. For the majority of Steemians upvoting your own post is a good idea, it means you get a share of the curation rewards that are generated by votes on your post. So instead of getting 75% of the payout value you get more than 75%. Probably not a lot more but it depends on who votes for you.
I used to upvote my own post almost every time, and I won't lie I still do but recently I realize that self-upvoting in some circumstances may not be so much of a great idea and here is why:
1. It encourages easy manipulation of the platform
A preety easy way to make money on Steemit is to simply invest in the platform and self-upvote every single post of yours and get free money. Its like paying yourself and saying to yourself: "Here is a little appreciation for the job well done". But guess what? If the post don't suit the community standard of what amounts to quality content, you can easily get flagged. But then to earn up to 5,000 dollars when the price of Steem goes up by 1 cent, you will have to be a Whale with an investment of around 1m Dollars invested in Steemit. So at the end of the day is comes down to how much you can afford to invest.
Self-upvoting is considered a type of manipulation that could easily be the reason why Steem's price has been crashing.
2. If Whales just voted for each other Steemit wouldn't last very long. The Economic Value of the platform would quickly evaporate and Steemit would become little more than a Ponzy Scheme. @eroche explains how this can occur in his post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@eroche/the-economics-of-upvoting-your-own-post.
3. If a comment or vote has less than $0.03 payout - it will get rounded down to zero.
Unless your vote is at least that much. If you vote on a comment, and your vote is for example, $ 0.01 or 0.02 there is no payout. It gets rounded down to nothing. No curation for you and no payout for the person you voted for.
If your vote is less than that, it is best to only vote on comments or articles which already have at least 0.03 on it - then, your vote counts.
I didn't know and wasted a lot of my votes. But I read it and tried it by selfvoting on a couple of comments - and no payout.
If you liked this post,please Upvote and Resteem
You can also check some of my previous posts here below:
https://steemit.com/steemgigs/@joejoesky/u-talents-the-new-marketing-portal
https://steemit.com/sevendaybnwchallenge/@joejoesky/day-7-seven-day-black-and-white-challenge-the-movie-art-pose
Yours Sincerely
Joejoesky