This is why I operate according to integrity not ROI
This is what you said below though
but I do tend to vote for unknown people, and comments, because my ROI is greater that way
Here you said
I'd rather give my full upvote to someone who orders a custom-made GIF from me, because they are a valuable customer.....
So because they are a customer you'd give them an upvote or in other words because they gave you money.
Without even realizing it you've shown care for money and it would be dishonest to say that you don't, everyone does. Wasn't it the reward incentives that first drew you in? Expecting people to act out of the kindness of their heart is not a viable strategy.
The vast majority of people are here for the money, and when steemit marketing is this you can only expect this number to rise.
The key is to get the incentives right for quality content to rise. ( taking into account that money will always be the first motivator for people)
I use a hybrid approach and I freely admit that I have changed my voting behavior because for an entire year and a half I never even bothered to look at how curation rewards worked. When I found out that I received more SP for rewarding comments and unknown people, I thought it was great, because I am both giving people more directly and also getting more ROI. The combination of those two things make it more attractive. I am not saying that I operate on voluntary basis, as I have an entire family to support (including my parents). I am the only breadwinner and as a creative person, I never understood how to monetize my energy.
Everyone has to eat, I am just laying it out there that I value my integrity more than my payouts....because if I was to lose it all, i could rebuild.
If I did what you're doing, I think it would damage my integrity. We are operating differently.....
You can do what you wish, and I am glad you wrote this post. You writing this post opened up my eyes to something I was totally ignorant about.
That's the goal.
why wouldn't you do this then, at least on a part-time basis?
Because like I said in OP, voting for the content that I like means I would have to sacrifice some rewards. There is no way currently to ally both upvoting the post I like and profit which is why I proposed a solution to re-align incentives.
I wish to understand why curation rewards hold such high priority. I view curation as a gift, not a means to earn. I personally write and comment to engage and earn.
Curation rewards determine the quality of content . If you get the curation incentives wrong you get shit content.
But the curation rewards you're delegating to a bot are being blindly assigned to whoever pays for it, unless it's some type of guild arrangement. That means that any junk that qualifies with the minimum amount of words can be upvoted by you indirectly. I'm not sure I follow your logic, completely respectfully said. If you've delegated to something like @curie or ocd, that's a bit different, and worth clarifying.
"I have an entire family to support (including my parents). I am the only breadwinner and as a creative person, I never understood how to monetize my energy. Everyone has to eat, I am just laying it out there that I value my integrity"
I totally get all of that, thank you for sharing. I'm glad I am not alone. What creative asset can I monetize and how fast? I wrestle with that, so many directions, so hard to know, which path is the right path. Thank you for the kind upvote @stellabelle
I want to elaborate on my GIF making service:
I feel guilty for charging people SBD for my creative GIF making service. The reason for the guilt is that I was given a lot of Steem as an early adopter, and I also have given away a lot of my art for free in the past.
In order to for me not to feel guilty about receiving payment for my art services, I upvote my customers. In this way, my customers' reputation score is increased, they are compensated, and my guilt goes away. I still undervalue my artistic talents, and make of this what you will. I feel good about helping people have more artistic stuff for their blog and charging people cuts down on the people requesting me to do art for them. If I made it a 'free" service, I would not be able to do it, as I suspect I'd be getting too many orders.
You shouldn't feel guilty about getting paid to do a job.
I have to agree with @snowflake here, but that doesn't mean you're wrong @stellabelle. You have built a brand out of your way of doing things, and your integrity is part of that. @snowflake have their integrity too but it's not social. It reminds me of the way that George Soros has talked about his capitalist ventures being completely amoral to him. He does what he considers moral work separately. Many in the business world operate in this manner.
You're still taking about ROI and hedging your future on developing your character. That's smart and genuine, but it's still about the same stuff. It's just doesn't always have as high return for many other people.
I don't disagree with you, I'm closer to your way of thinking @stellabelle, but the core message from @snowflake is important because in a game theory world the incentives have to match up. And they don't. The messed up thing about incentives is that you can just "feel" them in the responses to actions you take, you don't even have to understand them or do an analysis like @snowflake did, to be affected by them.
In summary I'd say why not both! When the incentives are better balanced it allows us to have the freedom to choose to branch out and explore how to squeeze the most of things by finding new ways of voting, and by making that difference small enough with more cooperative voting that it has a net positive effect all round. Or something 😅 I'm just some guy with an opinion.