Curating with @tipu is a Gift

I have been curating for @tipu for 6 days now and I am very happy with the results.

Minnow Tip!

Before I go on about @tipu, here is a place you can curate too even if you are not a @tipu curator. They are not taking nominations for new curators right now, but you can still help people anyway.

Join the @c-squared / @c-cubed Discord

@c-squared / @c-cubed has a Discord room and you can get approved to drop links in their "hive." I have been doing this for a couple of months already and have really ramped up now that I am curating for @tipu.

Any good undervalued post link can be dropped there. If two of the admins like it, the post will get curated by them and get a nice upvote.

Some of those @c-squared curated posts might go on to get @curie votes (or votes from other programs) and then you have really helped someone.

So go ahead and get into the @c-squared program and start curating too.

Back to @tipu...

My curation actions:

So far in six days, I have @tipu curated 29 posts and moved up to Level 3. I started at Level 1 and Level 8 is the highest.

You can see who I have curated here:

https://tipu.online/curator?fitinfun

Most of the posts I have curated have "efficiency" of over 100%. This is the goal.

Getting over 100% is better for everyone. This means that AFTER @tipu voted, more votes came in. If the percentage is lower than 100% this means that no one voted after @tipu, and so they are not making money for their delegators.

I can now curate 7-9 posts each day. This turns out to be a lot of work. Sometimes I stumble into posts, but most of the time:

I search a tag.
I open some posts based on title and first lines
I read the posts without seeing the media. This is because I have media blocked in my main window due to my crap wifi situation.
I click to the full blog for each good post to see what they have been doing and what payouts they get.
I copy promising posts into my media-enabled window to see the full post.
I decide who to vote for.
I vote with my own blogs (total about 1 cent)
I follow the person with my own blogs.
I do the tipu curation.
I drop the link to @c-squared if appropriate.

I curate posts with under $1 in payout and of course, they need to be good. I am also not repeating authors, so I am throwing a wide net.

It is not really hard to find low payout posts, but then - do they deserve more payout? I probably look at 5 posts for each one I curate. The vote I send is somewhere between 25-60 cents each time. I am not sure how that is calculated.

What do I curate?

Any topic I can understand.
Few errors in English - I'm making allowances for English as a Second Language posts. This is very subjective, but if the message is clear, interesting, and shows effort, I have leeway.
Photos and media need to be sourced properly.
Payout less than $1.
Authors that normally get lower payouts. So I am not trying to jump on Whale posts or people who get $20 a post no matter what. If you have had a few hits lately, that's fine. Maybe this NewSTEEM thing is trickling down.
Post age less than 48 hours. Normally, I am looking at posts over 2 hours. I am not usually looking at the 5 minute mark since those posts could "hit" in the next hour or so without my help.
At least 150 or so words of text.
Normally more than one photo.

So a contest entry with one photo needs a story too. A post with 10 photos that tell a story might need less words.

What do I not curate?

Negative Nancy posts complaining about STEEM, politics, news, or life in general being horrible.
Posts full of swearing.
nsfw
Gross medical posts
dLike, Appics, Steemhunt. Not that there is anything wrong with those posts. I am just not looking at them.
Video posts - I do not have good enough metered wifi to watch videos for any reason.

What's in it for me?

I am now getting daily wallet transfers from @tipu. The last one was 4 cents :) I am glad for any STEEM, no matter the size.

I will also get curation rewards for the posts I curate since I give my 1 penny vote to them before I send the @tipu vote. I will be very interested to see if I can tell a difference in my curation rewards. I should know in a few days.

Any downsides?

One downside is that with all of this obsessive curating I am posting less of my own posts. I need to be more focused on getting my posts out FIRST and then curating. But when I check and see I have votes to give, I want to give them!

I'm not sure when the day resets, and a couple of times I have "lost" my votes when adjustments are made. This is a new program, and I want to use my votes when I see them.

Is this a scam?

I did a dPoll about @tipu curation and got a comment from someone who thinks this is just another way to reward your friends on STEEM. I do not see it that way.

I see very little self-voting, which is indicted in the stats for each curator and very easy to see:

https://tipu.online/curators

(FYI: I have no intention of @tipu voting for myself or either of my two other blogs.)

According to a recent @tipu post, they are working to make sure this program is "clean." Another stat is "Curation Diversity." This indicates how many different authors you have sent votes to.

In most cases (like mine) this number is very high. 100% means you have not repeated any author. The lower the number shows you are rewarding the same authors frequently. I am taking the leap of faith to say that this would get you kicked out of the program. So you cannot just keep voting for yourself and your three friends.

= =

That's all for now. I know I will be back to this topic soon again in a future post. I feel like this vote is a huge gift and it will be a while before I get over it :)