Automating my Qurator monthly sub | Also introducing the 'qskip' tag

Image provided by EwkaW#3765

Yesterday, my Steemian friend @partitura wrote about "Creating my own personal claiming and staking software and run it on a Raspberry Pi". He drew inspiration from my original post "Quick and dirty, claim and stake for all Steem Engine tokens". Now I am drawing inspiration from my original inspiration with this post on Automating my Qurator monthly sub!

@qurator is a membership service that provides daily upvotes to registered authors. The goal is to support and authors who genuinely put effort into their content. To learn more about joining Qurator, visit their registration post. There used to be a 3 STEEM fee to join Qurator but it's now free! (you still need to be manually approved of course).

Once you have been approved (or if you are already a member), you'll need to do at least one of three things to get a daily upvote. New members will get upvotes from an equivalent 1000 SP account for 30 days. See the table below:

Source // Qurator Discord

Here's what I'm currently doing:

1. Delegating 250 SP (x10 = upvotes from 2500 SP)
2. Upvoting @qurator posts (1:1.1 ratio return), using https://steemrewarding.com
3. Monthly sub of 4 STEEM (upvotes from 4000 SP)

Since I'm a nerd, I don't want to have to manually send this 4 STEEM each month. So I wrote a simple NodeJS script which is scheduled via cron on the 1st day of each month.

You can modify the script to suit your needs but I won't be held responsible for whatever happens ;)

You'll also notice that I only use a single active key. How does this work if you want it to control multiple accounts, so you ask? Basically I'm granting active authority to a 'master' account which I use in my script. This makes your script much neater (and more secure) by only having the one key in the file.

You can use my simple webpage to grant active/posting authority to any account. All actions on this page use Steem Keychain, so no passwords are required for input.

e.g:

Here's the script:

#! /usr/bin/env node
  
var user    = process.argv[2];
var to_user = process.argv[3];
var amount  = process.argv[4];
var memo    = process.argv[5] || '';
if( process.argv.length < 5 )
{
  console.log( "Usage: %s <from_username> <to_username> <amount STEEM|SBD> [memo]", process.argv[1] );
  process.exit( 1 );
}

const Steem = require( 'steem' );
const activeKey = '5xxxxxxx';  // active key of account with active authority

console.log( 'Transfer %s from %s => %s [%s]', amount, user, to_user, memo );
Steem.broadcast.transfer( activeKey, user, to_user, amount, memo, function( err, result ) {
  console.log( err, result );
} );

Here's my cron jobs (@leysa's is also automated!):

# Qurator sub
00 01 1 * * /home/ec2-user/Steem/steem-transfer.js contrabourdon qurator "4.000 STEEM" "sub `date +\%b`"
00 01 1 * * /home/ec2-user/Steem/steem-transfer.js leysa qurator "4.000 STEEM" "sub `date +\%b`"

The date +%b command returns the current three letter month (e.g. Aug).

Let's say you send 4 STEEM with the memo sub Aug then you will get daily upvotes from @qurator similar to a 3000 SP account for the month of Aug.

You could also use this script to automate any other regular transfer (perhaps a savings plan?).

'qskip' tag

I'd also like to thank @scrooger for adding the qskip tag option for Quartor. You can add the qskip tag on posts that you want Qurator to skip upvotes on. I like to save my Qurator upvotes for my best content, so this way I have some control over what Qurator rewards.

Witness voting

I highly recommend you use one of your witness votes on Qurator. They are doing good for the Steem community. Vote here or through Steemit.

And while you're there...

Consider using one of your witness votes on untersatz!

Run by myself and organduo—supporting the community with regular contests: Easy SBI Contest, Pinky and Spiky Drawing Contest and Secrets of Organ Playing Contest. Also powering the popular giphy bot and donating STEEM for deemarshall's creative contests.