Thanks for the shout-out 😊

You've demonstrated that no matter what your wallet size, you can get around 8 to 9% return on curation. In fact your 9.7% is one of the highest I've seen. And when you add on the 3.257% inflation to your staked HP, it increases your return even more.

For those who are not aware, here's a feel good tool to see how much interest you get in real time. I don't think you'll see that with your savings in the bank or anywhere else.
https://hive.codergeek.org/

people won't want to vote when they see that you don't keep any Hive Power on your account, and they'll be more willing to vote when they see that you really care about it.

Totally agree with you on this. Personally I prefer to support people who build their stake on Hive and use their stake to support others instead of delegating it all out. For those who are active on Hive but say they don't have time to curate or their upvote is so small that it doesn't make any difference, I'd say it's not always about the financial value, but rather how you present yourself to the community. Delegating most or all your stake out for returns for yourself but not supporting others isn't cool. For anybody who's reading this and delegated a big chunk of your stake out, maybe re evaluate your staked strategy. You could be missing out on upvotes for the good content you create.

And finally to answer your query, I haven't invested any fiat into Hive. I joined quite early, and was fortunate to build my stake, but
it involved quite a lot of effort and commitment. Luck on its own doesn't get you very far on Hive, as you probably know 😉