Not a win win situation

source

I may be stating the obvious here, but I am going to anyway. We have a few apps that we can use to post on Steem. Not all the apps are free though and charge you a percentage as a beneficiary. I think this is fine under normal circumstances as they upvote your posts and make a double whammy on curation and the percentage they take on the post.

We all want these apps to succeed as they do a wonderful job supporting the community. They need to become businesses on their own without the support of delegation from Steemit. We saw a short while ago what happened when delegation was pulled form various apps and the result is Musing has virtually disappeared without a trace.

What doesn't make sense to me is users are using these apps and are then going to the promotional bots, in their heads maybe they think they are growing. If one does the calculations they are, but it is not worth the effort as it is minimal. Remember these apps take 10 percent and roughly the return on a promotional bot is in the region of around 12 percent.

You have 100 Steem to place on a bot and lets say we use @ocdb as an example. The average return is about 12.5 % so 100 Steem on a normal post using a beneficiary free app will make you around 12.5 Steem extra which is perfectly fine. If you used a beneficiary app you would be handing over around 11 Steem of the 12.5 Steem made from the bot. The 100 Steem has made you less than 1.5 Steem in return.

The apps will be very happy with you as they made the 10 percent from the original post plus the 10 percent of whatever you sent to the bot and then the curation rewards. My thinking is the apps are losing out on this as most of us are savvy to the calculations. I can't afford to give away so much for using an app when the vote I receive is dwarfed by what they make on the returns.

I think having some choices like what busy has done where you can un tick the box is the way forward. Even better allow the user to choose a percentage as I wouldn't mind giving back 2.5 % and making just 10 Percent on the bot. If they weren't happy with that then what about after 24 hours the beneficiary doesn't make any more of the post and can make it up with the curation rewards. This would allow us to use the app as a beneficiary and they wouldn't lose out then. Currently if I have a post going to @ocdb it will not be with a beneficiary on board.

These are just some ideas and thoughts and have no idea what is possible as I am not a programmer. I just think the apps are losing out on something and have missed a trick by nor providing a choice. Rather make a small percentage than nothing at all and 10 percent is just too much. No user who is sane is going to use an app taking 10 percent on a promotional bot.