I started out here years ago, with nothing. I've made a little over 1500 STEEM by manually curating content. It would have been more had a not been inactive for a total of about ten months, spread out over nearly three years. For me, with 50/50, I get a raise. I never tried to maximize curation rewards either. Simply voted whenever. I'm a content producer first though; that's the main reason I'm here. I'll benefit either way. If my post values drop at first, I could just make that up with curation rewards.