Words of wisdom! It's good to see there are people who use their votes in a reliable and honest way, especially with all those curation rewards and downvotes scandals, etc. The community needs it.

First of all, thanks for being on the site, and for sharing your advice. I've been on here for a little over a month, and i really do love it. I haven't posted nearly enough, due to exams, but i am looking forward to getting more into it. I would really love to do what you're doing. Way too many posts goes completely unnoticed, and theres a huge gap between the time spent writing/ payout of the different users. Some spent minutes writing a several hundred dollar post, while others spent hours writing a post that isn't seen by anyone. I would like to reward the latter, and seek out the hidden quality content. For that i need my steem power to grow though, but that i am working on. Currently only sitting at 262 steem power, but i am slowly getting there. Looking forward to 500 where i will get the slider. Anyway, if the price of steem continues like this, it wiill be hard to gain a much higher steem power. Like everything else, i should probably have joined earlier ^^ 
I hope you had a great new years eve btw :)

Ah I didn't know that Chrome extention existed! Just downloaded it, thanks

I have a similar approach: even if I don't use steemvoter, streemian or similar and I upvote just manually (because of this I'm missing some good posts from friends and charity accounts, I have to think about the opportunity to use steemvoter or similar ^_^). I usually watch in my feed and what the people I follow resteem, so I upvote the posts I think add a "value" , even if a different value in different fields. Sometimes I like to "discover" new interesting posts watching on "new" from people that I don't follow, but it's very difficult because there is more trash between the posts. :( I also upvote the replies on my post that I think add a value (about the theme of the post or simply because the author wrote something that make me think he/she read the post, just like an encouragement). To upvote comments I use a lower percentage than I use to upvote a post (just few time I upvoted using an high percentage a comment, but just because the author wrote an interesting, informative comment like a post ^_^) .

i appreciate you for this(I also vote on comments. Good comments on my own posts are very likely to get something).and tell me how can we increase my sp?

i never used autovoting services and i don't intend too but i get why some people use them and it's as you mentioned to vote for some of their friends,charity accounts and in general people (that worth for them at least) given the fact that time is limited.

I only vote manually and i had made a pact with myself to read everything i upvote or at least 70% of it. i know it may take sometime but i follow the logic of ''*do what you want others to do to you*'' Also another key i think is commenting on people and show them that you read their posts ( *but now i get out of the point*)

So, here are the things that i learned from this post:-

- If you are a new user, you are using your 100% voting power on your first upvote.
- You can decide how much your vote should be worth if you  have several hundred steems.
- You should not upvote a post that is more than 7 days old. If i am not wrong the author doesn't actually benefit from it.
- so this is the reason why my first upvote was 1 cent and others where flat out zero.

HERE ARE SOME OF MY QUESTIONS:

- Does my steem get consumed by upvoting.
- how many upvotes (with some value) can i make in a day to reward the author, as a new user.

I recommend you to go trought the post featured in the @ocd compilation since they are mainly from high quality and deserve a bit more value. That make it also easier to find good post.

Hi Steve, I've been a Steemian for a week and I'm proud of that. I try to make interesting blogs about everything that has to do with sustainability. It is nice if this is appreciated and people give reactions. I think you have to invest a lot of time and energy to make it a success, but that is not bad. You get a lot in return. Thank you for your explanation and advice.

Thanks for sharing! I'm actually just voting manually on posts and comments as I wasn't sure if the other kind (bots, etc) were legal, but I'm assuming since you're using it, that it doesn't violate any Steem rules. I've been using Instagram for many years, and there you'll get banned if you use any kind of bots to upvote on stuff.

cool
i see your plan sir
not everytime whales vote massive for whales

i have asked myself that question severally until when i noticed that the rich only help the rich cause they want to invest in people that understands whats the meaning of risk but i still dont like there view,

meanwhile i have my own little minnow project coming up i dont know if you could helps. *(art minnows)*

and your conclusion was superb
i think i have to seal it..*(lols)* 
> There is money to be made here, but you have to earn it.

Also, don't forget the power of resteeming someone else's post, it gets the post seen by potentially more eyes :) That's why I do the 'Resteem Sunday' for new Photographer's.  I tend to resteem things I like and that haven't earned hardly anything.  There's not an exact science to it, it is just what catches my eye :)

Good information about some basics about steemit for new user and i am happy to see that you are giving vote to comments on your post and also reading all comments it is very good thing .this act will encourage people to comment on your post .specially for new user because they have not a lot of power so that is why  their comments always stay below.

Uhhh 4% 0.16 ehehehe someone is powerful. Eheheheh yeah that is great i am doing the same. I have been saving and delegated already some steem power to some people and will keep doing it. To help people to get motivated and also be able to grow as members of the community.

Having the slider seems like it makes your whole life so much easier! My vote is finally worth a penny or so and I want to vote on so many things and comments but my votes won't mean much if I deplete my voting power right away!

new Steemians can also join Busy.org and they can also utilize the voting slider even if they don't have the slider on Steemit !

I am planning to use that slider as well soon. Steem is becoming more and more expensive so I definitely should start that way. Thanks for the idea!

Great approach my friend... As I am a minnow and have only SP 19.. So, my vote value is not much and I can use only about 11 votes daily... That's why I cannot have a constant approach.. I keep on digging through my favorite users (you are one of them)... and then I vote what seems to me is great content for steemit.... My vote doesn't have value or add value to the content creator but still its a vote and many of the steemians really appreciate every single upvote...God Bless You!

Much obliged for the thought...
Upovted and resteemed

Helpful post....

Really interesting post! I'm just voting manually, since I want to read before upvoting, but if I find really interesting bloggers I could also decide to use an automatic tool.
At the moment, I can't choose the upvoting percentage, so I can upvote few posts per day. Hope to reach enough SPs to control it. Even if I'm still earning few cents per day with my Blockchain and Cryptocurrency course, so it seems a long way.

And you have no idea how grateful I am for your continuing delegation support, without which I doubt my account would be pushing just a smidge under $3K as we speak.

that more info add on is cool. Thanks!
https://media.giphy.com/media/a0Lgc1JvbfS4o/giphy.gif

I always find it interesting how other people use steemit.com. When I first started on here about 7 months ago I was only interested in writing articles. Only later did I start voting on articles and leaving comments. It is an essential part of this community and I can't emphasize its importance enough to new people that are on here.
I am in the same position as you; I just don't have enough time to research and write articles AND read hundreds of posts. Of course, we all have our own interests and those are the posts I try to seek out and upvote.
The other thing is that I realize for some people on here getting an upvote could mean the difference of eating or paying the rent. After all, we are a community and helping others should play a part of being in this community.
Thanks for the thought provoking article.

...upvoted followed and resteemed

This sort of post really helps out the nubies who really appreciate it I'm sure.

> You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned curation rewards. That's because I'm not that bothered about it.

More people should be doing this. I see so many people who speculate in getting the best returns from curation rewards, and that is horrible for the long-term health of the blockchain (in my opinion). It will simply end up with the popular authors making huge amounts of money, while everyone else makes very little. If we all voted like you do @steevc, Steemit would be a much better place. This is also the reason why I have stopped using a curation guild, but rather only vote manually on good content (and a few authors who I am a big fan of, and therefore autovote on).