![curate.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmR7GYmFKvve8KBMEqq4tpWRQrQnWEfvAiKTVCjzzTYuLC/curate.jpg)

I've been learning more about Steem and lately trying to understand and *figure out* curation through experimentation, trial and error. From day one here on Steemit I have been upvoting posts and comments that I've found interesting, or that I find interesting and are pretty popular. Now originally, like most newcomers, I was upvoting to my hearts content until I learned more about *voting power* and that power decreases as you continue upvoting. The current recommendation that I understand as best practice is that you should vote approximately 12 times per day so that by the next day your voting power has fully regenerated to near 100%. At this point, I have yet to break anything over a **.02 SP** curation reward which amounts to a few cents. A majority of my curation rewards are in the **.001 - .005** range. So in evaluating my curation history, I currently have the ability to make a few cents maximum about 12 times per day with the recommended voting pattern. ### There are 3 potential ways to curate significantly 1. **BE WEALTHY - Have a significant amount of SP (delegated or owned).** We're talking more than $20,000 worth of SP to move the needle of curation rewards. We all understand that with investment in Steem comes power to assign value to authors' content and in return earn curation rewards if that content strikes a chord with the community. You'll need to buy in with a large investment in SP or you'll need to spend money on renting delegated SP. I have browsed through a handful of profiles to view their curation rewards and having less than $10,000 in SP won't get you very far if you are curating other peoples content. To really earn anything serious for curation you need to have > $20,000. 2. **BE LUCKY** - If you don't have $20,000 or more in SP, you're going to have to get really lucky to earn anything more than cents or fractions of cents on the platform. The only way you'll likely earn anything worthwhile will be to sneak in a vote on a post or comment before a whale gets their vote in. With all the **curation trails** and **auto upvoting** that's possible, that is going to be really tough to do. Which leads me to my last method... 3. **BE A BABYSITTER** - Having an insignificant amount of SP means you will need to get pretty lucky to earn something decent on a curated piece of content. To get lucky you need to beat a whale, or the crowds, to get ahead of the curation rewards curve. The only way to do that is going to babysit the New pages and scour for good content or good authors and try to sneak in your upvote fast. Not too fast though or you end up giving significant amount of your rewards back to the author in the *reverse auction*. ### There really is only one true method. Out of the 3 methods above, the only real way to earn decent curation rewards is to invest heavily in SP. Because the entry fee for good curation rewards is $20k+ that is going to be left to the very few on the platform who have access to that kind of money to invest. Using a [quick search on SteemWhales](https://steemwhales.com/?p=30&s=total) we find that about **750** accounts have $20k or more in account value (not necessarily SP). There are **250,000** registered account as of the writing of this article. Doing the math that means **.3%** (note that's not **3%**) of accounts are making decent earnings for curating content. There will be a few oddballs who earned something decent by getting lucky ... lottery kind of lucky. ### What is the attraction here? Let's face it, the #1 selling point for Steem is that you can earn money *doing the things you do* on Facebook, Twitter, [insert other social network here]. > Steem is a blockchain-based social media platform where **anyone** can earn **rewards** **This is the main headline on Steem.io**, earning is the core selling point. Why else would anyone abandon their social network of choice to come over here where likely none of their network even exists yet. Curation is touted as one of the 2 ways someone can earn on this platform, the other being getting your own content curated. But at the $20k buy-in price to make curation worthwhile, it really isn't accessible but to a fraction of a percent of the entire community. **It makes me wonder if I should just start upvoting my own content.** **I could earn *significantly* more by just upvoting all my own comments 12 times a day.** (I know that's not the right mindset or spirit of the platform, but it is reality that a whole lot of new users will have when they realize that earning without considerable investment is pretty hard. Not just a handful of new users too ... millions of them as discussed with [Hardfork 0.20.0 'Velocity'](https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/proposing-hardfork-0-20-0-velocity)