Guilty, I'm gonna admit that I've started with "Vote spammy comments knowing bigger votes are coming" this but until than I didn't get how curation worked. Because I didn't get any rewards.
As with the HF20 I got pretty pissed with the RC costs that I was able to comment 20 times a day or week I can't remember right now but it felt bad. So I decided to write a bot to curate. Now that bot returns like 2.5%/day so I would say not bad. I'm not upvoting shitty content but dsound posts because why not. And that was the easiest to write as a bot :)
Only option to earn from steem is either bidbots or whale friends so I don't think that's too bad to curate a project. Actually it's way better than delegating to a bidbot from my perspective.
So instead of the list above, I would suggest everyone to do the same especially those who delegate to bidbots.
I see your bot, glad it's working for you, and dsound is a pretty legit way to go.
Curating a project, or contributing to one will be the only way in the future, unless you have those whale buddies, which are becoming less and less.