Why Upvoting is of Benefit to You.

As a newcomer, hopefully you've already figured out that you can upvote posts. You may even have seen the discussions on self voting and whether it's good or bad. You might even be wondering what the point is of upvoting content, especially when your vote is worth next to nothing, and what the gain is for you.

I've actually seen users who have started out well on here, getting their posts curated by some of the big curators because they are well written, but they don't seem to have gotten the idea that if they upvote others they can share that success whilst also still benefiting personally. They only see the big rewards coming in from the curated posts, then as their reputation gets high, that support moves to newer people and they wonder why their smaller supporters having given up trying to interact with them and support them.

In an ideal world we would all be altruistic and not worry about whether we benefited from our support of others, but let's be honest, there's only so much you can give without getting anything in return. So I'm going to run through some of the benefits to you of upvoting other bloggers’ content.

Getting yourself seen

When you vote on someone's post your name will come up, showing the writer that you have supported them. Do this regularly and they should certainly start to notice and might just visit your page to see if they like what you're writing. Admittedly the list showing who has voted on a post can only show so many names and it goes in order of the highest value vote to the lowest, so being a newcomer means you will disappear off the bottom of the list on a post with lots of votes. However, there are other ways for the author to see who has voted on their post such as steemnow.com and steemd.com.

While it is true that a comment is more likely to get you noticed than a vote, just be aware that if you comment without voting, especially if it's short one like “nice post,” then the chances are that the blogger will just ignore the comment, or downvote it if they are particularly offended.

So what's the point of getting noticed of it's not benefiting you right away? This is for future benefits if you stick it out, right? Well if you can't wait for future benefits I guess I need to tell you about some more immediate benefits.

Earning curation

When you upvote anything you have the potential to earn a percentage of the curation rewards on that post. Approximately 25% of a post’s payout goes to the curators and your cut of that will depend on your Steem Power and when you voted. When your Steem Power is low, there will be a lot of posts where you won't see a curation reward, but persist and the Steem will trickle in.

Avoid voting within the first 15 minutes of a blog or comment being posted. Most of the awards at this point will not come back to the curator. This is to stop people voting without reading, just for the curation rewards. Full curation awards kick in at 30 minutes. Don't be put off voting too much if the post is a few days old though. As long as it hasn't earnt well over $100 you can still potentially earn some curation.

Comments can be voted on as well as blog posts. Once your vote becomes worth $0.02 or more it can be a good idea to upvote comments you like, especially the good ones on your post. If yours is the only vote on that comment you are guaranteed the curation reward and if others like the comment as well then you could earn a bit more. Also, someone who upvotes and interacts with those commenting on their posts is more likely to have people coming back, because they are rewarding their efforts and interaction.

You might have noticed that I mentioned upvoting comments when your vote is worth $0.02. The reason for this is that any post or comment that has less than this in earnings is seen as dust and will be rounded down to a zero payout. This doesn't mean that if your vote is worth less you shouldn't upvote a useful comment on your post that you might want to get higher up the list, however, your vote will be more useful to both of you if added in with other votes on a post that has earnt above $0.02.

Some Final thoughts

Bear in mind that if you are a complete unknown it will take time to build up your account. Try to focus on the advances, no matter how small.

Use your votes, but don't overdo it. You can vote at 100% 10-11 times a day before your voting power gets too low to be replenished by the following day. Steemnow.com is a good place to check your voting power as it will show you how long it will take for your voting power to return to 100%.