Hey everyone! Thought it was time to write about these things since a lot of newcomers seem confused about them and constantly wondering how they work and what they do.
Curation Trails. Why and how.
Anyone can set up a curation trail. When the website Streemian.com was created by @xeroc, I went ahead and created an account there and activated my curation trail. As many of you newcomers here I felt like my SteemPower was very limited and the influence it had on posts was not much. Since I wasn't able at the time to personally change that, I instead set up a curation trail and announced it on the site.
The idea to set up the trail came to me as I was a very active curator and commentator and after reading one of @dan's posts about inactive accounts basically "wasting" their voting power when they remained inactive. I started out with a few followers and got the support from @ausbitbank early on and now I have over 45 voters following my votes. This means that whenever I vote on a post, their accounts will vote on it shortly after.
Since I saw a lot of unfairness around at the time (voters only voting on a few different authors, many newcomers not seeing any visibility or rewards on their posts) I wanted to change that. Having been a newbie myself I felt like I would be perfect for curation trails as I would focus mainly on newcomers and introduction posts along with the @projectnewbie account I had running back then. Since we also had a decline in user activity with the price it made it possible for me to vote on a wide variety of topics and authors. Then after a while I only started following active accounts while focusing mostly on newcomers. Now with all the increase in users and activity I might have to start focusing on a more smaller user-base but at the same time its great to see more curators vote like I do.
There is also some extra curation rewards for curators that run a trail. Since my vote comes in first it means that the accounts following it will increase it because of the reward curve we currently have. Even though I had a lot of accounts following my votes it only netted me around 500 SP from curation rewards in 6-8 months from tens of thousands of votes. You can see my curation history in this chart and the spike that followed there after is because of Delegated SteemPower. *read more about delegation later in the post.
As you can see I didn't make much curation rewards in the beginning and for a long time after that. When the price went under 10 cents it felt even less considering I had made around 50 $ in that long from curating, but like many other Steemians we knew that it was just a matter of time til the price saw a correction. :)
Just like you might think right now "there is no point in my starting my own curation trail, my SP is so low" I just want you to give it a second thought and not consider the rewards so much as of now and focus on building, building and building.
Every project needs work and improvement over time and a lot of companies and investments don't see much profits in the beginning.
A user asked me the other day to name 5-10 active curators and I found it weird how hard it was to find active, manual curators. It feels like many more focus on authoring posts and maybe only use their voting power for their own interactions with users.
I personally want to incentivize more users to start curating and even start their own curation trails! Each and every trail can be focused on something different and unique and with the rise in activity and upcoming communities this will be even more important to have community curators who reward users fairly and distribute the votes more actively. Now I will write a little bit about SP delegation, so if you have made it this far in reading - there is a special bonus after that.
SP Delegation.
After the recent hardfork Steemit now allows SP delegation.
Before this there was only curation trails, even if there were inactive investors and accounts that wanted to share their Steem Power with other users so they could curate more effectively and earn curation rewards they couldn't do that without transferring the actualy Steem as Steempower to the curating account. On a decentralized network with many accounts its hard to know who you can trust and if your SP support will be abused/misused. So to remove the trust-issued while allowing curators to make more curation rewards and increase their influence they made SP delegation possible.
What it is, is another account delegates (as in borrows) Steem Power to yours. You can not transfer or withdraw this SteemPower, but it will count as if its yours when you curate and when you receive curation rewards from it. Bear in mind that the users delegating you Steem Power can take it back at any time.
So without further ado and to keep this post somewhat short, I want to ask the readers if they are up for curating and maybe even starting their own curation trails!
If you are interested please let me know in the comments and what kind of posts/tags your curation will focus on, and over the course of a couple weeks I will keep an eye on your curating and then delegate an amount of Steem Power to your account to increase your influence and curation rewards if you are doing well at it!
Thanks for reading!
I know I'm not maximizing my direct earnings by my voting behavior, but that's not why I'm here on Steemit as ANY kind of a primary motivation. I don't really understand why I have no other curation rewards than $.01 from shortly after I joined, but I'm not terribly upset about that, I'll just keep blogging away.
When I set up my trail, I'll concentrate on a few authors and a few subjects.
@music
@science
@open mic
@spirituality
some old friends, and some new ones just from running into them on Steemit
@mfmp because that's what got me here, even though I'd heard of Steemit last year when it was really young.
I am interested in arts, crafts and photography; love to curate.
Hey @acidyo, are you still delegating to minnows for curation trails? I've just started studying this, and I think I'm going to set up a trail. Can't hurt right? I'm going to focus on homesteading and garden related content. I'm finding there is a an evergrowing number of homesteaders signing up to steemit and posting really good quality, in-depth articles and not getting a lot of views or votes. I would like to help this community do better!
Thank you for your consideration,
@amymya
Hey, I only delegate my SP for free to curators of the OCD group so they can curate more efficiently on newcomers! Will be adding a few more english curators soon so stay tuned for that post.
I will definitely stay tuned, thank you for your response :)
brilliant post explaining what a trail is able to do!
thx for information...
i might considering curation now
not sure yet what kind of post/tags ... i guess all
focus should be on real users and valuable content
Thanks so much for this information @acidyo , I got some new information how to begin my steem blog.
Great post mate, resteeming - I'm also looking for good curators to keep an eye on and potentially delegate to or manually vote follow.
As our userbase grows, the amount of content to curate is growing exponentially and I want to make sure the right people are rewarded.
Also heres my curation rewards - this is what delegation + shitloads of constant curation looks like :D
Hey @ausbitbank, I probably won't have the time to be an super active curator, but I'm vastly impressed by what you contribute to the platform. I've tried to set-up Streemian to follow your trail. Could you confirm that it's correctly done, or should I also delegate some SP to you now?
Sorry for the newbie question..
It doesn't look like its working, but I appreciate the gesture :)
While your steem power is so low, curation trails won't be very effective for you or others and I'd recommend building your power for a bit longer before trying to automate voting :)
I'm newbie, but trying to understand. If you curate manually, why would want to delegate SP to someone else? Or I guess in general, why ever? Since it's the recipient of the delegated power who receives the extra curation rewards right?
I must be missing something.
Yeah I'm a newb and I don't get any of this. The article needs to start from the beginning. What is curating in terms of Steemit? Does it just mean upvoting other peoples content? All of this is over my head.
Curating on steem is simply finding, upvoting and sometimes also helping promote/spread top quality posts. Curators can earn a share of post rewards by recognising quality posts before other people do, and upvoting them first.
The tricky part is being able to consistently do this without showing favouritism so that we end up with rewards being shared with the right people making original content (like yourself) and not to people doing copy pasting from wikipedia and identity theft.
I'm new here. less than one month. Haven't posted much yet because I'm still learning the ins and outs. I don't copy and paste content but will be posting more great content from my life's adventures like this one where I made a phony press pass and got backstage at the Stones concert. Got paid for the pictures too. https://steemit.com/photography/@internetguy/how-i-got-paid-to-sneak-backstage-and-photograph-the-rolling-stones
Keep me on your radar if you like the exclusive content. Thanks.
Copy/paste is fine if the content is good AND YOU CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTE.
Upvoting is really just a miniature version of that, all things considered.
Thanks for your reply! I have been learning as much as I can the last few days. Thanks for the clarification!
Curating means looking for good quality content to vote on.
In my case I would still curate manually as well, and delegate some SP to empower good manual curators to be able to directly reward content. The curator would earn more for themselves, and I would end up with a shortlist of content to review (by checking curators upvote history on blockchain) that I could then vote on as well (earning even more rewards for the curator).
I can always cancel the delegated SP at any time if I don't feel the curator is doing a good job, or is self voting excessively etc..
It's basically loaning a small % of my power to someone who I trust has the best interests of the larger community in mind , and a way to pay someone to partially prefilter my reading list with their own recommendations.
There's only so much 1 person can absorb in a day, every day, forever and being able to empower a team of curators to help look after the place in exchange for locking down a portion of your funds that you weren't withdrawing anyway is a pretty sweet deal imo.
Especially when they cannot possibly steal from you, and everything they do is auditable :)
</ramblyrant>I see, thank you for the clear explanation, I understand now why it's mutually beneficial. This place sure has a big learning curve, but I think it'll be worth it economically and for self/community development.
Thank you for this. Makes a lot of sense. I do vote good people. I wish to follow some good curators... where do I find them? Only on Streemian?
very interesting point of view ! WIll be a lot of work when going mainstream :P
If you're looking for help, I'm available. Steem on!!
Wow very interesting m8!
You, sir, are very kind! That is a very steep climb...
@ausbitbank how do I find that chart for my profile?
Thats from @heimindanger's steemwhales.com , here's your profile on the site
https://steemwhales.com/isaac.rodebush
@acidyo thank you for this post. I have been looking for some explanations on the way curation works. However, I have a few questions I'll really like you to explain to me. Firstly, When is the right time to upvote a post? before or after 30 minutes? Secondly, I tried registering on streemian to join a trial, but they demanded my password, is that safe?
Very informative post. Resteemed $ Upped!
Hey you just made a dollar off just a comment! see how amaziing this place is?!!!!
:D
You can find the answer to this in my last FAQ post here:
https://steemit.com/faq/@acidyo/what-is-voting-power-efficiency-and-curation-reward-penalty
If I'm not mistaken they only require your posting key which you can find on wallet-permissions. Which means that if your posting key were to be seized by and attacker you only need to use your owner key or private key to change it. Which also means that the only thing the attacker can do with your posting key is comment/post and vote/flag. :)
No. I actually wanted to unlock my account with my posting key, but they demanded my private key or password. I think they started that newly.
Your posting key is public. So they don't need that one. They're probably requesting the private posting key. You have public/private key sets for several things as you can see in your account. With the private posting key, if ever stolen, one could only post in your name. Which is not too dramatic, as you can change it any time with your owner private key.
I gave them my private posting key, but they rejected it.
Oh, they need that? Well, that is a bit inconvenient then. Haven't tried it yet myself. Just joined yesterday, but I'll get there.
Oh, okay :/
I'm sure curationg trails and sp delegation will soon be available on the steemit site, so you can wait til then instead of handing over your private key.
Thank you for posting @acidyo.
Appreciate the explanation and visuals. Thank you for the curating you do. It is appreciated and motivating.
Yes...there are all kinds of people here and if we are objective.....we will begin to see that the Steemit experience is different for everyone and learn to 'Live and Let Live'.......although that means something different to everyone as well. This is meant in the sense of letting others enjoy Steemit in their own way.
There are the three C's of the Steemit experience.
Compose
Curate
Comment
and it stands to reason everyone will have their own emphasis and contribution to Steemit.
Thank you for the opportunity to think on these things. ^_^
Appreciate your contribution to Steemit.
All the best to you. Cheers.
there are not so clear to me yet all of this and my English are not great but I read all your article and seems really good opportunity I would love to be a part of this but I will need more clear and specific information about my obligations. I could write about fitness and health or something more simple because of my English. Let me know how can I help the community and my self
I'm a Filipino and now I understand why @ filipino - trail 's account has a -trail in it ( i see others too). thanks..
Thanks for this information @acidyo, as I'm very ignorant about this side of things. But I do curate manually. Mostly photography, positivity, art, philosophy, spirituality, some news, introduceyourself, and other random stuff.
I'm happy to learn, so if you don't think I'm suitable for a trail, or delegation, how can I improve?
Awesome post. Really well explained too, I feel like I understand it a lot better now! Hopped off your trail last week and I am going to try to be a more active curator in the future. :)
Very nice information acidyo!
I browse new tab all the time... :)
You are the sort of curator I was looking for! ;)
But I dont autovote everything I see here as many people do.
I read the title, the post and I comment if I have something to say. :)
You are a wise man!
Me too. I also like to check out the full tag cloud and find unique tags to either use in the future or follow once esteem.life is fully up and running.
me too
Manually curating and looking for great content takes a lot of time. You know that well. For that reason most of us have set automated votes and then use the rest while browsing the site and to reward users that comment on their posts.
If I happen to make a good comment that I put effort above average (This is subjective, of course) I also vote it for better visibility.
Lately, however, with the influx of new users I've noticed how I'm running very low on voting power and I've been thinking of switching 100% to manually curating.
The most important issue currently with the platform is that new users aren't found and rewarded for their efforts. The same faces habit the trending pages over and over again and it might not be deserved every day but thanks to automated voting, that's how it is. Safe voting.
I do understand it's a way to build a loyal author base and reward them for sticking through but I feel it's not working perfectly as is.
I will be looking in to setting up a curation trail thanks to your post. We'll see how it goes. If you have any more advice on this topic, it's more than welcome!
Edit: I just noticed your special addition! From today onwards, I'll do manual curating only and start the curation trail. (I'll probably do announcing post about that). I'd like to focus on finding devs, new ideas and new people and support those the most!
Completely agree, if we want the community grows and newcomers don't get discouraged we have to find the way to promote more diverse content. I will also try to start a trail oriented to topics and cultural activities that are not mainstream but equally valuable, I also want to include more content from latino background.
..and thank you very much @acidyo
Great comment. I find this also and am moving into manual curation of nature-inspired art and decent posts.
"it only netted me around 500 SP from curation rewards in 6-8 months from tens of thousands of votes. "
Thanks for sharing this info - it really seems like curation is a low income activity unless you can accrue A LOT of resources - either from personal investment, or from a serious curation trail.
I do see opportunity there... a very well managed curation trail with excellent transparency, there's probably a lot of room on Steemit for more of those.. hmmmm
There sure is! We need more curators! :)
You are one of if not the best curator on the site! Steem does need more like you!
Hi. Just what I've been looking for! The explanation on trails that is.
I recently created an account on Steemit and also started a trail with it. It's meant to help grow the Nigerian community on Steemit.
It hasn't been finalized/announced yet but we could discuss in chat.
Sure, let me know when you post more info about your trail!
Great post... and some good reminders!
And you're exactly right, there are not very many consistently active manual curators out there. And it's a LOT of work... even on a pretty "slack" day at my day job I feel like I have "been around the world" when I interact with 40-50 good posts AND their comments... and then I look at that in the context of how many excellent posts in total are posted every day... and then I consider how those efforts would truly be nothing more than a flyspeck if Steemit had even five million users, not under 200,000....
I have not been active here for months so pieces like this one help to find back in here and to catch up with updates.
Thanks for the great information! I have been trying to curate when I can, at least I think that's what I have been doing lol, usually in the photography and money areas.
Keep up the good work!!
Informative as always good sir! I am still perusing the logistics of the Steemit platform. My interests as curator can be narrowed to five: love, philanthropy, friendship, encouragement and goodwill. Live the Golden Rule !
Excellent post. I do lots of curating manually. Will be getting back into writing post as time permits. Great idea you have presented here.
This is awesome! Thank you @acidyo :)
I would be interested in starting a curation trail for Reiki, Spirituality, Crystals, Energy Medicine, Alternative Healing & the like <3
Much Love & Bright Blessings to you!! Namaste
A great post, and just another example of how much more I need to learn here. I'm a one-week-old minnow, and with each day that I dedicate some time in reading through posts and familiarize myself with features, I realize Steemit is a fairly complex social media platform and that I have a long way to go in the process. Thank you for putting this together.
Hello @acidyo its a really good post and I enjoy our chats :)
Nice to see this explained. I've never really understood how to build up your Steem with curation. My curation payments often look like .000001 which can be kind of discouraging. Great post.
You work naked? How awesome is that!
Very informative and good article for newcomers like me..
Great info reminded me of steem in the early days.
Newbie thanks, understand curation better now.
Thank for sharing
Followed and upvoted
Thanks for explaining what trails are and how DSP works @acidyo. I'd love to curate great content related to health, fitness, nutrition and travel around Asia.
Thanks, I'll make a list soon of all possible participants and then narrow it down a bit!
Seeing what you have accomplished, I would indeed be VERY interested in finding out more and starting my own trail. So far it has been agonising trying to promote my posts. It feels like begging and if this can help with account visibility, please tell me more! If curation is more viable I would love it. I try to comment on as many new posts as I can.
And maybe: "Lend me your aid"
I'm new here and didn't even know what curation is. Thank you for the comprehensive explanation. Interesting.
You are lovely and delightful! :)
I am already curating extensively but prefer to do it manually.
For every upvote I give i make sure to also write a comment.
I read all the posts I upvote. I think it is important for the authors to feel valued not only in votes but also in content appreciation.
Thanks, will keep you in mind!
Hey @acidyo
I was right these days at streemian from @xeroc and I must say, that some of the top curators there aren't even voting. So it is a real waste to follow them. I just want to remember, that you guys have a look first on who you follow for voting automatically.
I have been in steemit for a week. I found the information of your post very useful.
Thank you.
Welcome and glad it helped out. :)
Hi, thank you for the post, acidyo, will be following you.
I think I'd be interested in specialty curating - tags @health, @reading, @science, things like that. Medicine mainly, but I do have a lot of hobbies too. :)
Would a trail be useful for multi-specialty curating ? Or would it be better to have a trail of people interested in the similar thing?
MNIV
useful information to process and put into execution. thank you @acidyo for the insightful article, helps new people overcome the learning curve faster!
I created an account on Streemian, but I'm a little unsure how to make a curation trail. I would love to create something specifically on San Antonio, TX and another on craft beer. Could I bug you for a little help? I'm sure you're busy so I completely understand if you don't get the chance, thanks for posting this info and helping us newbies learn about curation!
https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing
direct link to create your own trail, good luck!
Thanks!!
Thank you so much for this brilliant idea! Yes, please count me in.
I actually joined with the initial thought of encouraging and helping others put their ideas out. Because the first post I ever stumbled across was pure genius:
https://steemit.com/art/@nikosgyftakis/everything-flows-nothing-stands-still-heraclitus
I would love to do art and books. Your time is greatly appreciated!
@acidyo ~ Thank you again...I have just finished joining Streemian.. but I am not sure how to tell if I have successfully created/started my own trail.. any help is greatly appreciated <3
Namaste
Thank You!
This is a direct link to where you can set up your own trail:
https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing
Awesome post, and is so much useful especially for the newbies.
Now for the sp delegation and the curator you required,
I am planning on making more engagements. I just joined steemit two months ago, and now I have been doing good. You can check my recent post where I explain how I manage to get 100 followers in so less time and 200 within a week of that. I am focusing on getting more engagements in this community through comments. I comment on good authors and appreciate them and especially newbies. As I don't own much sp, little delegation would be better :)
Thanks, keep up the good steeming! I'll add most of the interested users in this thread to a list soon and start narrowing it down to who will receive some delegation!
sure! thank you
Hi @acidyo, glad to have seemitians like you making things easier to understand for newbies. So can i deduct what you mean for curation is not to blindly "vote for the sake of voting" but rather to truly appreciate the content. Fair system in rewarding the deserving ones.
Yes, most of my daily voting power goes to underrated posts, but many curators feel different about that of course.
I'm interested! I'm looking for other users who are promoting the idea of Liberty (vice large government attempting/failing to solve our problems for us).
I am trying to set it up, but I followed you for now.
I would focus on poetry, photography, drawing, art, food, and illustration tags to select the most inspiring posts.
direct link to the curation trail site if you are on streemian
https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing
Thank you very much @acidyo for this post.. It cleared my many doubts. Still I want to know
Thanks for writing this!
So this trailing system could be the reason why there sometimes is a big jump in the number of upvotes? In my three last posts I saw a massive difference in upvotes, and for the most popular one, yielding around $100, I could never follow how quickly it could gain votes.
Excellent info! Thanks acidyo! I would love to be a curator. I see so many great posts fall through the cracks. As soon as I am comfortable with my following I will definitely get more involved.
I'm trying to find a way of filtering the posts by least viewed after 1 hour.
Very helpful to new users, and there are a lot of them right now. Thanks! :)