RE: why is upvoting important.
I believe its done in nodes, the more nodes you have the more powerful you are. this is what steem is based on.
the best way to get more power is to invest money into steem, place it in to your account and then you will have power. this in turn will have more of a posative infulance on votes, comments.
Before xmas steem value was very low at $0.80, but the price has risen massively, this would have been the best time to buy.
On my other account I watched my account go from $355.00 to $3300 over the xmas period, it has dropped a little bit but I know some one who is a crypto analasist, who i have met on here and face to face who says by 2020 the steem value will be at between $70 to $80 each. this is a massive rise, and my other account, if i stopped posting now would be valued at $30.000 thats a big peice of cash for blogging :)
I just invested, and purchased some steem power. I'm new to all of this, and I find that steem power has more value than the steem dollars and tokens. I'm still trying to figure out how much my upvotes are worth. Got to do more research on this. It's so overwhelming.
when you have $500 in steemit, you get a slider, this means you can give as much and as little up to what your steem power is worth. so my account at $3000 dollors lets me upvote at 100% will give the total pay out to $0.30. if i was to do 10% that would be $0.03 that how steem is right now.
My account on the name @drewturner is currently at about $3.30 and my upvote is 0.01c, if i am to up vote more than i think 10 times the value decreases.
On my other account i try not to hit 100% on any post as that wipes out my poswer after 10 upvotes so I tend to do 50% upvotes unless something is really really really good. :)
you can also check your stats of your account by using these two sites.
steemd.com
steemstats.com
For some reason tonight i can't get on to them, they might be down for a while. but they are worth a look, you have to enter your steemit name and it gives you all the details you need. no password so it seems safe to me. :)