Great point there - I'm still getting the gist of things on Steemit, so I wasn't 100% sure on how much you'd have to utilize your voting power/how effectively (curation timing, etc) as well as the dollar cost average you paid per SP per day/month - while also trying to calculate and measure in (while difficult to even do) the daily swings in Steem/SBD pricing/etc.

Smartsteem is an excellent option it seems - I've signed my account up and referred a few people already, and have a small interview lined up with the lead dev (as soon as I get my lazy ass to do it). I've also applied to be "whitelisted" which can then put you upwards of 210% returns. So far it seems to be a great option for utilizing all of your votes daily in an effective way, even whilst paying out their 15% fee - since you still keep all your curation rewards, too.

Will be interesting to see how much could be made daily/weekly/monthly from using Smartsteem once I hit dolphin or higher. Could actually be a decent sum!

Thanks for an excellent comment and addition to this post!