It seems reasonable to me that people are buying SBD on the market to use for bid bots. The bots are making a market in the SBD. I likely have seen the post you’re referring to. In this case they spent a lot of SBD to get this result. Other accounts I see investing smaller amounts such as 5-10 SBD aren’t getting the same RIO due to less visibility. So maybe there is a fine line between the investment amount, quality of post and ROI. I wrote an article today arguing that the trending tab is more of a promotion tab. It’s my argument that if you use bid bots, you shouldn’t be allowed to hit the trending page. You can check out the full article here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@brettcalloway/steemit-s-trending-tab-is-misleading-the-community

Thanks for the post! All the best! :-)