_{Note: this is not financial advice. I am not a financial adviser. This is just for fun. Whatever you do don’t ever take the advice of a fiction writer: we make stuff up, it’s what we do.}

My experience in curation after Investing in #SteemLeo, #Palnet #Sportstalk and #weedcash

A couple of weeks ago @fitinfun invited me to read this post by @abh12345 which talked about creating multiple accounts to ensure you made the best use of voting power from your staked tokens.

At the time I had a fair number of PAL and LEO tokens that I had staked after the airdrops (and I had bought a few too). After thinking about it for a short while I realised how much sense it made, so I created two accounts (@felt.buzz.pal and @felt.buzz.leo). A few days later I thought it would be fun to invest in some other tokens too. I chose WEED (because it has been established for sometime) and SPORTS because although I am not a huge sports fan I know that there is a big market for discussing sports. If any Tribe is going to succeed it will be one about sport! I created two other accounts (@felt.buzz.weed and @felt.buzz.sports) and (thanks to the fall in the value of STEEM) I bought a fair number of tokens (and powered up my steem account too)

I decided to keep these accounts for curation only (i.e. I would not create posts with them). That way any earned tokens were the result of curation and not earned from posts. I decided to keep records of the value of the tokens (in relation to Steem) and the amount I earned from curation (and the value in steem).

By comparing the earnings I made in curation from my Steem Power to the tokens I could see if it is worth investing more in the Tribes.

My Steem Power was 2759 (I have vested more than this, but a large proportion of my SP is delegated so 2759 was the total available to me for upvoting, and earning from curation)

On the same date my total staked tokens was worth approximately 2050 in STEEM (this value obviously varies depending on the market value of each token): my staked LEO tokens worth approximately 492 in STEEM, PAL 1175, SPORTS 230 and WEED 149

The last three days I have received curation awards from my new accounts. Let’s have a look at how they performed.

Firstly how much do I earn in curation from my Steem Power? Steemworld tells me my earnings are between 1.50SP and 1.90SP per week. Not enough to retire on, then. Even if we generously round it up to 2SP per week and pretend HF21 has happened and double it to 4SP that means that for each Steem I have powered up I earn 0.000207 Steem Power per day. Hardly a huge investment return

So how did the tokens do?

All the rewards in curation from the tokens out-performed my STEEM account. I thought that may be possible. But I was shocked at by how much

Even after I adjusted the amounts (taking into account the 1% SteemEngine charge to convert back to Steem), and taking into account the fluctuations in token value, and pretending that HF21 had happened and my SP curation awards were higher, the amount I earned in tokens in 3 days was around 7.5 times the amount I earn in SP in a week!

At the time of posting the curation rewards of my four tokens was approximately 30 steem in 3 days.

PAL was the lowest return in curation rewards (taking into account the value - in Steem - staked) for every steem staked I got approximately 0.00123 steem back per day

LEO was next with 0.00295 steem back per day for every steem staked

WEED did much better with 0.00557 steem back for every steem staked

SPORTS is the best performer with 0.02843 steem back per day for every steem staked (yesterday when the prices were more favourble the return was 0.04)

Observations

PAL and LEO are both reasonably stable price-wise - at the moment at least - WEED is more variable (the price is higher today than it has been all week). SPORTS is extremely variable (it has fallen from 0.006 last week to 0,002 today).

Price variations

If you are looking to make a quick buck then investing in curation is not the way to go (you can earn far more in tokens by producing a post than you can in curation - even with 50/50 awards).

There is a fair bit of gaming the system going on. Particularly in SPORTS there are people with multiple accounts upvoting their own posts (some of them are valid posts just loaded with self votes and votes from their alt-accounts, some are just upvoting their own pointless comments). I am careful NOT to use my curation accounts to upvote my own posts (however tempting that may be).

SPORTS is possibly overvalued - even though I think it is perhaps the most promising tribe, and the one that could provide most value to STEEM. The post payouts are sometimes obscenely high. I can see the price falling quite heavily, although it would have to fall a hell of a long way before it was comparable to the other tokens in value for money stake-wise). There are lots of people looking to cash in their tokens, which will drive the price down. Others will look to stake, some for the benefit of the Tribe and some just to game the system some more. I know @sportstalksocial are looking to BURN tokens, but they may struggle to battle with the people who are playing the system (even though there are people trying to manage this by downvoting abusers, it is clear some of the people gaming the system have huge accounts now).

My curation rewards may go down next week as the way I upvote has changed this week. This is due to a couple of reasons: there are more people from my feed using these tags (particularly since @actifit began using the #sportstalk tag in their posts), I am therefore upvoting smaller accounts with lower payouts, which will effect my curation payout. I have also begun to recognise system abusers and not upvote them.

The reason my PAL curation rewards were lower than the others may be linked to the way I vote too. I use that account mainly to reward people on my feed. Often these are low projected payouts so my curation rewards will be less. I guess if I used my SteemPower account to upvote Trending posts my SP curation rewards would be much higher.

I only know one or two people on my feed that use the #weedcash tag, and there are less posts anyway (so bigger reward pot, and higher rewards per post).

#SteemLeo is quite specific too. I only upvote relevant posts and tend to upvote higher payout posts because they are usually more interesting and relevant. There is little evidence so far that Leo has been targeted by people gaming it.

The next steps

I don’t intend to sell any of my tokens for now. I will be staking everything I earn in curation for at least a month*. After that, maybe I’ll move half of my curation earnings back into Steem and power them up.

I have bought a few Marlians and staked them to @felt.buzz.marl This is an untested Tribe (no rewards have paid out yet), but it is part of the #teardrops system created by @surpassinggoogle and I wanted to support him.

Last Thursday I increased my investment in Tokens (and powered up some SP too) again (following drop in steem). The results of that investment will be known this week. I don’t intend to invest any more fiat in the system for now. I want to play with what I have. *I may use some buy of my curation rewards to buy into some more tribes, I’ll see how it goes.

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Thanks for reading. I welcome your thoughts, comments, and criticism!
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The NEW @SteemFiction book has been published! Currently available on Amazon for the Kindle it is now available as a paperback too!

Dead Silence

9 tales of MURDER from some of your favourite STEEM writers! They are @jeezzle, @manoldonchev, @stinawog, @giantbear, @blueeyes8960, @jayna, @janenightshade, @improv, @felt.buzz

Check out the trailer for the book!

I have a story in it called The Still Blood-Soaked Path

A YouTube documentary film-maker visits a remote island to investigate the horrific murder of a young woman, and the subsequent suicide of her killer almost thirty years ago. But was the young lover really responsible for the brutal slaying of his girlfriend? And if not who was?
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Follow @SteemFiction to find out MORE!

Here are some teasers to whet your appetite…

@felt.buzz's tale
A YouTube documentary film-maker visits a remote island to investigate the horrific murder of a young woman, and the subsequent suicide of her killer almost thirty years ago. But was the young lover really responsible for the brutal slaying of his girlfriend? And if not who was?

@improv's tale
Tia, Tehana, Nida, and Ibrahim live intertwined lives, though they don't know it. When one of them is murdered, the secrets unravel in a furious flurry. Did one of the others do the deed?

@janenightshade's tale
Sarah has a chance to make a lot of money serving drinks at a secret cocktail party given by a super-rich mystery man. But when she arrives at the party, she discovers that her fee comes at a dark price.

@blueeyes8960's tale

Now working with the League of 100, C. J. McCallister solves a murder mystery in her own "mind bending" way and doles out the perfect epic retribution.

@manoldonchev's tale
The seasoned freelancer knows business and moral responsibility don't mix well. Still, IInspector Janskiy has chosen to adopt a certain mysterious girl, despite the dangers involved. It all gets even more complicated when it's young Jule's turn to prove herself a worthy investigator and reach her own crossroads

#.REVIEWS of the last @SteemFiction book *Voices In The Darkness

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^{@steemfiction - Voices In The Darkness: 8 supernatural tales by 8 Writers from the STEEM Blockchain}

Have you heard of #STEEMfiction? @steemfiction are a collection of writers (led by @jeezzle) on the steem blockchain, and we published a book! https://steemit.com/steem/@steemfiction/steem-fiction-s-first-short-story-anthology-is-now-available-on-amazon-com-voices-in-the-darkness-tales-from-the-steem

Please could you help us by following @steemfiction? We'd like the book to succeed for Steem as much as for us!

Voices In The Darkness is now ALSO available as a paperback!

If you want a taster of what is in the book, the video below shows me reading the first 900 words, or so, of my story, The Tell-Tale Dead

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@steemitbloggers has evolved! We are now the #PowerHouseCreatives
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Do your posts need some more luv? Come and meet @theluvbug!
Resteems, and upvotes for quality posts!

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Supporting the Steem Family

Join @thealliance

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Join us at the Freewrite House for fun and games!!! Weekly drawing for SBI memberships and so much more!!

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