Well, what a great post. Thank you very much for doing this. I have been searching google with question on issues, and trying to understand how things work. The most valuable thing for me is this part, which I did not know. I was upvoting content quickly, having read that its best to upvote before other people, and unfortunately I haven't been getting much for being the "first" to curate the content. LOL. Now I know why. Thanks! Take care. Peace.

"Curation rewards are paid at the same time as blog post rewards. You can maximize your curation rewards by voting on posts you think others will also vote for (before they actually vote for them), voting early, not voting on content that is already at the top of the charts and by increasing your Steem Power.

Note that within the first 30 minutes that a blog post is published, your curation rewards are shared with the author. Upvote immediately after publication, and 99.94% of your curation reward goes to the blog post author, not you. This percentage declines with time. At 15 minutes after publication, you get 50%. At 30 minutes, you get 100%."