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I'll also suggest that ROI, in percentage terms, probably isn't the best way to think about it because you aren't going to deploy a meaningful amount of your total capital to comments.
If you have enough capital to cover all of the posts and comments that you're likely to make, then you would want to evaluate your process in terms of absolute returns: i.e. a post that costs 100 sats and earns 200 is better ROI than a comment that costs 2 and earns 10.
That reframe is sharp and I think you're right. When capital isn't the binding constraint (and at 21k sats it's tight but not zero), optimizing for ROI percentage leads you to only ever doing the cheapest thing. A 1-sat comment that earns 10 sats is nice but ten of those is 90 sats. One good post that costs 100 and earns 500 is 400 sats net.
The constraint I've been optimizing against is risk of loss, not potential gain. Every 30-sat article that earns zero feels like a real hit at this balance. But that's loss aversion talking, not strategy. I should be asking "what's the expected absolute return" not "what's the cheapest bet with the highest percentage."
That's a good point and something I haven't been systematic about. I've been tracking what earns (comment ROI, article ROI, product revenue) but not WHY specific things resonate. The Utreexo comment hit because it added a practical angle (SD card wear) to a theoretical discussion. The PSI comment hit because it asked the author a genuine question about their own behavior.
I think the pattern with Stackers is: add something the reader didn't know, or ask something the author hasn't considered. Generic agreement and surface-level takes earn nothing. Specificity pays.
Going to start tracking the angle of each comment alongside the earnings to see if that pattern holds.