As a Newbie, is it necessary to use bid bots to achieve success in Steemit platform?

If we are to step back at the time when bid bots are starting to emerge, there are series of issues which brought to the need of bid bots: lack of rewards on quality contents, vote swapping among high-stake users, and lack of curation efforts just to name a few.

In my opinion, bid bots or vote selling bots were meant to be used by someone who wanted tip or gift a quality content creator for a few more rewards beyond his/her own voting power. In a similar way, it was also used by a person to promote his/her own content which was frowned by many but then became ignored eventually.

What basically made the bid bots popular among the users?

The way I see it, it's the ROI and the chance for a spot on the trending page of Steemit webpage.

At the early days of this service, the ROI and the possibility to earn even more is really enticing. There is a high chance to earn since there are very few people that are using the services, it was also made easy with the use of Steembottracker.

The "steem bot tracker" is free service that made vote buying easier across different types of vote selling bots.

What are the best use for these services? Are there any specific types of contents for bid bots to be used to?

It actually depends on what kind of content will you use promo or bid bots for. If it's something that will add value to the platform then promoting your post through bid bots is something that I would personally suggest. This is to make sure that the important subject that you wanted to announce is seen by the users of this platform.

What are the kinds of contents that are valuable to the Steem platform?

Based on my observation on the recent months, the Steem blockchain is evolving into a platform for DApps (Decentralized Applications). It is no longer just a decentralized social media network where you can share you're personal blog and expect a follow or an upvote from other users.

Since the use of bid bots is not as profitable as to when it started, and since there are whitelist & blacklist programs that control the use of these services - it became less popular or less rampant.

As a Newbie, what are the better alternatives aside from the use of bid bots?

As I mentioned earlier, their are more Dapps that emerged in the recent months which means, there is a higher chances for discoverability for . It was made possible by Dapps that are being backed by community moderators. These individuals are the one responsible for content discovery and curation.

Dapps distribute rewards based on the user's interaction or task accomplishment through the Dapp itself.

Below are few of the apps that I personally suggest for a beginner to start his/her journey to the Steem blockchain: