It's not a black and white issue. I can see you are working hard on this. Do the 'bots' make you much profit? Might you actually make more by not using them if it got you more support from whales? So many questions. You have a good following and I would think many of them would be supporting you regardless of whether you are on the trending page. As it is that is not an interesting place for many of us due to all the low quality posts getting boosted.
Steemit was intended to reward good quality content through community moderation. Buying votes bypasses that. It may boost your reputation too, but that's not due to people liking what you do. It just feels wrong to me and I think it harms Steemit in general. I want this platform to succeed and so do many others. Others just treat it as a profit opportunity. I'm not accusing you of that, but the freedom we have here allows everyone to do what they want, with the proviso that others can exercise their voting power to pass judgement.
I wish you all the best with what you do. I may well vote up some of your posts and I wouldn't flag you as I have with some posts that didn't deserve massive rewards. Not that my vote makes much difference.
The bots don't really make me profit (not saying they never have).
They provide me visibility that is allowing a slow but steady organic growth.
If I had whale support...I wouldn't even use the bots.
And...your support and respect has priceless value to me...it makes a huge difference, regardless of the monetary value of that support @steevc