I think you have the math right and I agree with your thoughts.
I'm curating for money about 50% of my upvotes and the others are for posts I want to support and for good comments on my posts and those I see elsewhere.
No matter what - I do not vote for garbage posts. I keep my power above 85% and better over 90%. This makes my vote more effective.
I found out the importance of curating early here from somewhere and have done everything I can to get the best reward. I follow the rules you show above pretty closely. My voting time is 25 minutes to 2 days with a prior payout of under $2. I resteem and promote on other social media for about 70% of what I curate and I think I sometimes raise the reward for the author in that way.
I was doing better than other minnows of under 100 sp but it was slow and painful to get payouts even close to .010.
Then I found out about delegated sp and now have about 1000 of that and will continue. Why? Because my $0.17 upvote is a powerhouse in this crazy place where whales vote at 1%. The difference is truly stunning.
I took the advice to grow your sp to heart. Curating effectively is one of the ways I do that and I probably always will. I do not know how people can vote at 50% power all the time. My ocd would be off the charts and my cheap brain would be seeing money left on the table :)
I hope to be at the top of your list if it included my low sp level. Anyone at my level who was above me in curation/sp% - I would be investigating so I could find out their secrets!
Thank you @fitinfun super comments as always :)
I've added you to my list, if you've had this 1k delegated SP for at least 7 days then you could be in with a chance based on what I see above. I'm working on the next Post now, and staying awake by chopping the stats gathering up between replying :)
Thanks!
I'm trying! Now you have given me so much to research!
Thank you! How nice of you to keep going with this. I actually have my delegation in 4 pieces :) I have 3 leases and the amount I got when I signed up. I'm very interested to see this new information. It's 3 am in Bangkok, so i am ready to work now lol.
I've added you to this weeks Curation data :)
Wow! Thank you! I am studying this hard now. Great comments on the other post that I'm studying. I'm glad I am not the only person focusing on this side of the task for steemit.
Over top of all of the financial side - i think it's important to upvote in an effective way to encourage other minnow steemers. I'm shocked at the bigger payouts I get when the post only makes $5-$15 total. This is such a mystery!
This is the cool thing about curation that will always keep the keen curators looking for the up and coming posts. a 100% vote at .20$ on a post that goes to $20 is much better than hitting a $200 post at $30, in my opinion. The multiplication factor in the first is much higher. Midnight over hear, will get back to your other reply on the new post 'manana' :D
Yes, I get buried on those really big payouts no matter how well I time my vote. It's almost not worth voting if I know the post will go over $150 or so.