๐ BidBots -- Yea or Nah ? ๐
Lets talk about Bid-bots ....
Do you use them ? Good vs. Bad and everything inbetween.
How to use Bid-bots ..
Correctly using bid-bots can be an expensive lesson to learn. You could spend a ton of your hard earned SBD or Steem and end up with massive negative ROI ( return on investment ).
To use a bid-bot you first need to find one and you can do this by visiting https://steembottracker.com/. Once there you will find a list of Bid-bots in which you can choose from. To send a bid simply send the desired amount of SBD / Steem through your Steemit wallet to the bid bot and paste the url of your article in the memo section.
I found a bot -- Now What ?
So you went to https://steembottracker.com/ and found a bot.
First make sure you check the min and max bid values the bot accepts. Some bots will return invalid bids and some will not. For example you don't want to bid 0.10 SBD if the min bid is 1 SBD. This is a good way to loose your SBD and get no bid in return.
The second thing you want to be looking at is the min / max age of posts the bot will vote on. Allot of bots won't vote on post that are not at least 20 minutes old. Some will not bid on post that are older then 3.5 days. The min / max varies per bot. If you send a bid into a bot for a post you created 4 days ago without checking the max age of a post the bot will bid on, you might not receive a bid and may not get your SBD used to make the bid back.
The third thing you want to look for before placing your bid is the total value of the bots bid. If a bot has a total bid value of $1 and you are looking to promote your post with a $5 upvote then the bot with a total value upvote of $1 isn't going to get that done for you. You will either have to use multiple bots or find a bot with a higher value vote. All these values can clearly be seen on steembottracker.
A good way to see if your bid will be profitable or not is to look at the graph section on steembottracker that says Max Suggested Bid. DO NOT bid more then the suggested unless you want to get a poor return on your investment. Allot of bots will return your funds if the bid round is full to protect you against receiving massive negative ROI but others do not and will accept any bid sent to it.
Good Vs. Bad Bots ...
Everyone's opinions varies on bots. Some will not upvote a post if they see an upvote bot was used on it. Others only dislike the ones that don't have min / max post aged attached to them. I am here to tell you there is no such thing as a good bot or bad bot. Each bot owner is doing the same thing.... selling a service and profiting from it.
Some dislike bots that don't have a min / max post age requirement due to the fact that curation rewards are diminished for upvoters for the first 20 - 30* minutes of a post creation. And for the reason that authors can profit from a last minute upvote from a bot with no Max age requirement just before the 7 day post payout has been reached. These are all personal choices and don't make a bot good or bad. HOWEVER ... you should keep in mind that Steemit is self policed so using such tactics may get your post flagged and diminish your rewards.
If you are going to use bots, I have one last tip. Don't send in bids until minutes before the round ends as last minute bids can be the difference between a break-even / positive ROI and negative ROI.
Yea unless you get a negative ROI then Nah.
I may have mentioned this to you before but just in case I haven't. I noticed you use the same bot for voting on multiple of you comments during the same round. What you are doing when you do this is voting against yourself. Which could cause negative ROI or at the very least a diminished ROI.
Firmly on the side of "nah," but you already knew that. :p
I'm one of those stuck in the middle. I don't like the abuse of bots but they can be great for promoting your article / post / contest.
Just to play devils advocate here .. let me lore you to the dark side ....
Some are "human" bots who actually check the content before voting on it. They will adjust their vote based on quality of your content and sometimes won't vote on it at all. Steembasicincom, Its a great initiative but when we boil it down its a bot service. You send in $1 steem for continuous votes instead of just the one.
Have I lured you yet ?
Nope, not lured! Here's why:
Something like 40% of this site's SBD and STEEM is going through themOver 30% of curation rewards to go bots, more than 25% of all earned SBD is sent to them, and over 10% of all revenue on the site is pulled in by them, which means that a few individuals are pocketingthe majority ofa large portion of the reward pool. This is terrible for the internal economy.If so, they're doing a terrible job at it and it's not working as a site-wide solution because not everyone subscribes to it. It's not in their financial interests to reject people's money.
@steembasicincome is technically a voting bot, but it's fundamentally different. The intention is not for one person to profit off of taking other users' money without even caring that people can cheat their way to the top. It's a group fund that you contribute to once, which requires that you sponsor another user, and gives people a very tiny boost (0.025 per share) which ensures that people at least hit the minimum payout on their posts.
Excellent reply ...
Some bullet points in response to your reply :
Where did you get the 40 % number from ?
The rich / more fortunate taking from the poor / those who have less has been happening since the dawn of time and won't stop.
Agreed about placing " Promoted " content ( which should include any article / post that has paid for votes on it ) in the " Promoted " section. Another way is to have an Organic Posts section that list all post with 0 paid for votes on them.
I never said the human bots that don't upvote bad content didn't accept the bid money. I can't speak for all but I have seen some that will not only not upvote a post but will also keep your funds and possibly flag you as well.
There are a few different types of voting bots, @steembasicincome is just another type. It's purpose and how it functions doesn't change what it is. Don't get me wrong its a great initiative but its still a voting bot.
No matter what system is in place people will find a way to take advantage.
Thanks for the reply.
The 40% number: one of the witnesses did a detailed data scrape last month that included all sorts of information including bot incomeโIโll see if I can find it.
Yeah, people have been stealing from other since forever. Does that mean we should enable them and give them the money they need to do it? How is that logically any different than shrugging your shoulders and saying that people are going to phish and hack each other and then giving them the tools to do it?
No need in finding the article .. I was just curious as to where the number came from.
I wouldn't call what some bidbot owners are doing stealing. They offer a service, seeing value in your purchase or not is up to the individual using the service. Plus Its like anything else. You need to educate yourself before using / spending your hard earned money on.
A person willingly uses a bot ... no-one willingly gets hacked or joins a phishing scam.
Here's the post I was thinking of. I messed up the number but it's still pretty bad (I suck at remembering numbers--will edit my previous comment so as not to mislead any readers going forward). Over 30% of curation rewards go to bots; over 25% of all SBD earned goes to them, and over 10% of all earnings total go to bots. If you think about that, it's a HUGE amount of money, enough that if any one of those bidbot owners decided to cash out and go retire in Costa Rica tomorrow, they could crash the price of STEEM easily. It also means that all of that money is being taken out of the reward pool the rest of us share.
I think they're stealing from all of the users of the site by hoarding the reward pool. Sure, the people that "feed" them with SBD/STEEM are doing it willingly, but the rest of us are not. We're so quick to come down on haejin for "stealing" from the reward pool (I object to the use of the term "reward pool rape," which people like to do) but what he's doing is causing a minuscule fraction of the damage that the bots are to the internal economy. And they're doing it knowing that it's cheating newbies out of what little money they make.
Those numbers are interesting. Looks like Steemit works the same as funds in the real world work. The ones at the top have the majority.
The only problem I have with hajin upvoting himself constantly is that ( from what I seen ) he only upvotes himself / upvotes others very little. But ultimately that is his choice to make.
The way I look at it is .. he invested and is currently reaping the rewards of his investment. He is free to do so just like anyone who wants to flag him is also free to do so.
As for taking money out of the reward pool, that is what we are all here to do. We didn't invest to just keep our funds on Steemit forever. We want a return on our money / time. And as you said .. the reward pool belongs to everyone so each individual gets to decide what to do with their share of it.
And that takes me back to the bid-bots. I don't view it as stealing. When you pay for a good and receive that good or service it isn't theft. The buyer gets a return on their purchase. Didn't like the return ? Don't use the service again .. just like you would do in other aspects of your life.
I should clarify that Iโm not trying to act holier than thou and say my moral compass is better than anyoneโs. Iโm not a bidbot owner so Iโve never been in their shoes. I acknowledge that itโs easier for me to criticize them when Iโm not the one making the decision. On the flip side, itโs not in their interest to do whatโs best for the site, so they canโt be relied on to make ethical judgments either.
You weren't coming off that way and I hope I am not either. Nothing wrong with a healthy debate / discussion.
I am on the fence about bid-bots. Remove them completely or join in seems to be where my opinion on them is headed. Admittingly I still have some research to do before I form a complete opinion on the matter.
I agree with the contest part and promoting interest articles.
Isn't it the beauty of the site to be found by people who really are interested in the contents of our publications ?
The bot aspect is like being on a double-edged sword you can get a lot of upvotes (some bring you 50+ upvotes). In a way I would feel more comfy with the idea of having people voting directly for contents and providing comments instead of comments like:
"Congrats you got an upvote of.0.9% courtesy from @name6 (often the author himself)"
Bots are great when used to promote a post from another member we appreciate to read instead oneself.
I know that you offer such service regularly ๐
Sometimes it just needs to be a matter of unselfishness, I think this is also the philosophy of the steemit.com founders.
What's your take ?
Giving a " tip " to an author is great use of a bidbot.
The purpose of having the XX amount of upvotes on your post is to make the article look active. For example someone is browsing Steemit and both you and I have an article on cooking.
For this example both our articles contain the same information and is equally as good as the other. One article bid bots were used on and fake upvotes purchased and the other article is organic.
The article that the bidbots were used on would have more cash value added to it and show more upvotes and likely more replies due to the article being in the " hot " or " Trending " Page of its tag. The organic article would have less making the article look less active. And while they both may contain the same info ... the user browsing Steemit is going to naturally click the article of interest with the most activity on it due to the fact it looks like that is what everyone else did, making the promoted article look like the better article.
I one used them with the goal to improve my reputation, it worked well and I got from 41.8 to 43 1.
The ROI aspect did not impress me much to say the least. I think there is good and bad in everything, we all have to see how interesting it can be for us.
I think the best part is interaction with other members, not always fruitful but it can be an asset with time.
Funnily Music Vids bring me way more partners, sounds better than followers, than any other system. This part is probably off-topic.
In the end it is a decisionnal aspect which leads us to use bid-bots or not
I forgot about mentioning the increase in rep score that's possible with bots.
Thanks for bringing it up and thanks for your comment.
No worry. I am there to help ๐
You know me slowly but surely
Your post๐ ๐ BidBots -- Yea or Nah ? ๐ was resteemed by @valentin86
Thank you for using my service
Best wishes โบ
Thanks for the free resteem !
I have never used the bots ... I think that using them is to take advantage over other users, however I have observed how they are used by everyone from very new to experienced ...
Thanks for your comment.
;)
I used bots heavily for awhile. Put all my rewards back into bots and rolled for a couple of weeks. My experience was mixed. By bidding late, and only picking bots in the money, and spreading my money over several bots. I stayed a little positive but not much. Lots of work for questionable return. The other side about bots being counter to the spirit of Steemit, I agree with but I don't begrudge those who choose to use bots. They are choosing their experience. I don't think it is as rich as developing friends within the community but to each their own.
The thing is ... when you hit the trending page you are more likely to find some of those friends quicker. It speeds your accounts growth. Plus when the post you promoted with a bid bot gets noticed by a steemian sometimes they visit your blog and upvote other post as well. So your return isn't only on that one article / post.
As you pointed out its allot of work to make sure you are coming close to breaking even with bot use. I know for a fact I am not but all my SBD is generated from my posts and winning contest.
I think the key for long term success on Steemit is growing your account with a handful of others and visiting each others blog and upvoting and supporting each other as you all grow. Once all accounts involved grow to the point of each upvote being worth something thats when all the previous hard work pays off.
I have mixed opinions about them, but I think it can be a good idea to use them when you have some excellent content you want to promote. I think my understanding of them is not the best though, I have seen some people who %%# post three times per day and bid up each one massively. Any idea why they do this? It doesn't look like they are making a profit
It's possible some of the larger votes on bots with higher min bids allowed may have a higher return as less are using them due to the cost. I have no clue if thats true of not as I don't have enough SBD to test that out or haven't done any research on it.
We also have to keep in mind that we not only get SBD returned on our bids but also Steem Power. So we have to calculate the value of both we receive and compare it to our bid to get a more accurate ROI percentage.
If we break even or slightly under with out bid we gained allot more exposure on our promoted post then if we didn't which hopefully gave us other benefits such as more followers that will upvote our future post.
Think of it this way .... in most instances when you spend money to promote a service / product there is no gntd of any return. Here on Steemit ( with a little research ) you are almost at least gntd to get 90 % + of that money back.
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Thanks for the free resteem.
For me it's a "Nah". I personally remain unconvinced that they offer anything of value to the platform as whole, but rather primarily serve the interests of their owners.
I agree that the owners are the primarily beneficiaries of the service.
Thanks for your comment.
without bid-bots if you come into this place with less than a few $10k you can beg for handouts and try to write a stephen king novel every week and still be old and grey before you're worth anything, yea, definite YEA, its not even about the roi, its about the growth, your SP grows if you invest, it grows more than it would, which means your vote value increases
which means YOU grow, by investing in yourself even if no one else would so eventually you can actually DO something :)
yea, definite YEA ! yes yes yes yes yes !
It's certainly hard to grow on here. Its extremely hard to grow without an initial investment. It can be done but its not the norm. Steemit is a game where most are more interested in leveling themselves up then helping others level up.
well i think that's a sound strategy :) its kinda hard to help others up if you have a vote at 0.0025 at the start , you can't even vote yourself up over dust treshold like that. That's why i sometimes get the impression some of the "whales" like their position as benevolent enlightened content dictaor a bit too much, you know :"kiss the pope's ring and repent", lol
and all will be well, OR ELSE, ... or else try crawling from the mud by yourself, right ? a few hundred at the very least and a certain level of interaction unless you got 50 years time or unless you know someone who will just delegate you a few thousand SP right off the bat, all too true , sounds a bit like that old legend on how the "1%" holds all the money, a tale from a distant time in a galaxy far, far away ;-)
then again ... as someone here once said to me at the start when i was under content-nazi flag fire and downvote carpet bombing
"you gotta see the game for what it is " :D
If everyone was to use that strategy then no-one would grow.