Writing posts and getting followers is only 50% of what you are suppose to do here. CURATION EXPLAINED.

Can you make money upvoting posts? Or even downvoting posts? Exploring other blogs makes you money too.

Exactly one-half of the steem blockchain is based upon authors getting paid for the content they create.

The rest of the value here, comes from curators, and investors.

Let's talk about curation.

Curation is like being a janitor. All of us are in charge of upvoting good posts and downvoting bad and cheating posts.

Now, most of us have no problem upvoting good posts. We do that, because, if we have a good post, we also want people to upvote us too. So we share the effort by visiting other blogs upvoting and commenting so we're seen and we're paying-it-forward by doing it for other people too.

What about downvoting? Why would you ever downvote someone? Isn't it just easier to walk away and let someone else do it?

As your reputation level increases. I think most people start at Reputation level (25).... being able to downvote because of your reputation level and steem power becomes more and more important.

Let's give some examples.

You are a Reputation level 48 user, you have about $700 worth of steem power. While you are looking around steemit, you see some newbie with Reputation level 32 (with steem power $42) plagiarizing, copying posts from the internet, and trying every trick possible to flood the blockchain with crap content.

When you downvote someone like that... This is what happens:

• (1) It is the responsible thing to do
• (2) Since a level 32 is so far behind you, even if they attempt to downvote your posts, it will not have any real effect
• (3) You can help the effort to curb their evil behavior "while it is still early" which may get them to stop
• (4) Since you are more experienced, you can explain to that person what they are doing isn't right in the comment, and maybe give them a link to a helpful page or post that goes into more detail.
• (5) A larger dolphin or whale user that comes upon the same post, sees you DID comment, and DID downvote that user who was basically breaking socially acceptable rules of the system, has a greater chance of upvoting your comment and following you.

What reasons does someone downvote a post? If you've never done it, this is the popup box that shows up:

So when you consider downvoting something, for legitimate reasons, all of us will appreciate it.. There's a couple things not mentioned in that popup box, that I'd like to add:

• (1) Only downvote someone that is several reputation levels lower than you (At least 5).. If you are reputation level 48, feel free to downvote someone level 43 or younger if they are obviously abusing the the trust bestowed upon them as a responsible steemian user.
• (2) Don't downvote immediately. Try and appeal to the person first. Explain what they are doing is wrong (if it is wrong) and give them a chance to correct their behavior. A couple of explanations and warning helps. Some people will listen. Some won't.
• (3) I know it sounds weird, but many new users to steem think they are the first one to figure out how to "game the system" for rewards with cheap content, copy/pasta (cut/paste), spam, running an amateur bot, or upvoting their multiple accounts. Once they are caught doing something wrong, soon as a spotlight is cast on them, the majority will stop right away.

So how can you make money downvoting? Or explaining to younger reputation users that they should behave?

• If you are successful, that is one more new account that won't attempt to steal rewards from the daily reward pool that is allocated to authors.

• It stops one person from doing it, another person from watching that behavior and saying "look at that guy. He's trying to cheat. I know how he does that... I'm going to do it too"

• Abuse of the system these ways are like a fire burning on your stove. Do you put out the fire now, or do you wait until it grows and starts burning down the house? We have to keep stomping out these small fires as quickly as possible

Ok, what about upvotes, and visiting other people's blogs? How does that make me any money?

When you upvote a post, especially within the 10-30 minute period after it was written, and that post goes viral, if you were one of the first people to recognize it was a good post, you can make handsome curation rewards by doing so.

• OH! @intelliguy, I think I know what you're saying. I can just upvote as many popular posts as I can, and some of them will pay me well, right?

• NO. Not quite. You'll run out of voting power if you keep doing that. It also depends on how many VESTS you have.

VESTS? What is a VEST? I know what STEEM is, and SBD is, and STEEM POWER is... now you're talking about VESTS?

Steem Power that you hold (as a locked in investment until you power down) is quantified as VESTS. You might have only 500SP (steem power), but that is known as a very specific number of VESTS.

If you are a huge whale, with lots of SP (and also lots of VESTS) and you upvote a viral post early (10-30 minutes after it was posted) and contribute a lot of your voting power to it, and it gets a high payout, you also, gain a large curation reward from that too.

Q: Uhhh.. I'm not a huge whale, and my SP is under $500 worth, so that doesn't help me. How can I still make money?
A: The extra bonus of upvoting other people's posts and writing comments still gets you noticed. When someone comments on your blog, especially someone you're not familar with, have you ever read their beautiful comment, then clicked on their name and went to go see who they were? What type of stuff they write? Most of us do that... Human nature is to be curious

This is a lot to learn, can you summarize the basic points for me?

Yes.

• (1) Visit other people's good blogs, upvote them, comment on them, and help keep "good stuff" being valued high and appreciated on steem. This is my duty, your duty, and everyone else who uses steem to have as a duty and responsibility so good blog posts get rewarded.
• (2) If you happen to show up and see someone cheating the system with crap posts, intended or not, it is up to you, and me, and everyone else, to downvote or at the very minimum explain to them, they're not doing it right, and by constantly uploading bad cheap content, it hurts everyone equally.

I already know this is a complicated subject, so please ask your questions below, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Can you make money upvoting posts?

A: Yes, depending on your steem power, or if your comments are upvoted and noticed.

Can you make money downvoting posts?

A: Yes, a downvote to a scammer, means they won't make very much, which means more good rewards for everyone else who is acting properly and making good posts has a better chance of getting paid better. (including you)

Let me give you one last example:

Just recently this user comment-spammed my wallet named @oguzdelioglu and here was his comment:

So with the help of https://steemd.com/@oguzdelioglu

I was able to trace his tracks and history.

He is a new account, this month, created September 2017.

He claimed he didn't spam anyone.

Yet he has over 800 posts (comments + articles) in less than 30 days. It turns out, he was using a BOT to automatically run around upvoting people's posts with generic comments, hoping to make automated curation rewards and build followers.

@oguzdelioglu is from the country Turkey. He's a gamer, and SEO person, and a programmer. He's under 30 years old, and he thought with his technical skills he could write automated bot scripts to make money while he slept.

He started with reputation level (25) and now he's reputation level (-1) now.

He thought he could gamify this blockchain to his benefit, with his technical expertise, and when it didn't work as expected, he figured he'd wallet-spam all people with reputation level (60) or higher. That didn't work either. Experienced users investigated his username and saw where he ran a bot and was trying to cheat the system.

His last words in his latest blog posts were removed, and edited, and he replied in turkish:

bunun farkındayım ve bir daha bu şekilde davranmayacağım.

translated into English it means:

I realize this and I will not behave this way again.

What does that mean? It means that my efforts, @pfunk's efforts, and a half-dozen other people with high reputation downvoted his post and explained to him that trying to cheat the system in the first month you are here is a terrible idea.

I'll refer to this bad situation as an accident scene.

I was on the accident scene with comments and downvotes to take care of this, and explain it to him, when @pfunk doing his regular monitoring of the situation, saw me there already and upvoted my single comment to almost $10 USD

At this point, it wasn't about money for me, doing what I did.

I just wanted to stop the spam and the possible cheating of the system.

Shouldn't you want to help do the same?

Together, all us can keep good posts treasured, and junk posts thin, if we curate well. :)