Hey post promoters! Haven't things changed on Steem this past few months!? It's always interesting to see how things evolve on Steemit, and one great change that I'm sure we have ALL noticed is the use of voting bots! Steem never ceases to amaze me, and paying to promote and advertise your posts.. and then getting that money straight back plus potentially more is just one of the paradoxical things about Steemit when compared to the traditional notion of advertising. The thing is, not everyone does make their money back.. and some people also lose quite a lot only because they don't understand the details of how bots work and how to use them.
Today I have been looking at some of the worst bots out there, and noticing how many people are getting quite upset about losing their money on them. Therefore I have decided to write a post about this so I can explain the most important details so you can choose the right bot for your promotions.
How Voting Bots Work: The Basics
The very basic principal of voting bots is that you send SBD or STEEM to a bot controlled account with a link to a post that you would like an up-vote on. A bot votes once it's voting power reaches 100%, which is normally every 2.5 hours. A bot will divide one 100% up-vote between everyone who has bought a vote in that voting cycle. The value of a 100% vote depends on the bot, and can be as little as $0.10 and as much as $1,500.
Whoever manages a bot decides how fair that bot is. Not all bots are created equally, and indeed some bots are setup to take your money with no chance of you ever getting a fair up-vote. Other bots are designed to prevent you losing too much, and allow you to make money as well. The very best bots ensure that you never lose and only make a profit! So how can you tell if a bot is worth using or not? Let me explain the crucial basics to successful bot voting.
Rule #1. Use https://steembottracker.com an amazing tool created by @yabapmatt
Steembottracker makes is possible to use bots with the best chance of success. Whilst there is a lot of data presented on this page, let me show you what you need to pay attention to:
1. VOTE VALUE:
This is the maximum amount a bot can up-vote. Note that this figure is displayed in $USD by default which can be changed to other currencies such as $SBD .
2. MIN / MAX BID
This is the lowest amount a person can send to use a bot. For some reason it doesn't show the max bid, perhaps because most people don't set one.
3. MIN / MAX ROI.**
This is a super important! The first number shows you how much you are are able to lose at most. If it says none it means there is NO limit as to how much you can lose rather than that you cannot lose anything! The second number is the most you are allowed to gain. So for example the @ecotrain bot currently shows -10% / 10%. This means you cannot lose more than 10% of your investment, and you can gain up to 10%. That is quite a fair bot, and is in fact my bot! Compare that to the bot below it, @pushbot.. ugh! I would never use this bot as it is offers you no protection on losses whilst at the same time limiting your profit to 10%. That is not cool in my opinion. The second bot in the list @voterunner at least offers you an equal chance of losing or gaining.
4. MIN / MAX AGE
This is simply the amount of time that you can up-vote after you post. In most cases you have to wait at least 20 minutes before you can use a bot, and a post shouldn't be older than 3.5 days.
5. TOTAL BIDS
This shows how many people have placed a bid on the current round of voting. It is a useful figure, but actually not necessary to look at as the next option is far better to check.
6. MAX SUGGESTED BID**
This is also a super important field to look at! If you send more than this max suggested bid you will surely lose out. In fact you should ideally bid around 20% less or more than the suggested bid to be confidant of not losing out.
7-8. LAST VOTE / NEXT VOTE
This is the amount of time until the vote happens. If you want to play it safe it is a good idea to wait until the last minutes to place a vote since you stand more chance of getting good rewards. This is because the voting is shared with everyone who bids on each round, so if you can see a good ROI when you make the bid in the final minutes it is less likely too many others will manage to place a vote as well.
Rule #2. CHOOSE A GOOD BOT!
Play it safe:
If you want to play it safe then choose a bot that has a Min ROI set rather than none. There are many bots that give you this including: @smartsteem, @promobot, @appreciator, @postpromoter, @upmewhale, @upme, @ecotrain
Max Profit:
If you are happy to take a small risk for the potential to make a a good ROI then you can choose a bot that has no MAX limit but does have a minimum ROI. The best bots for this are: @promobot, @sneaky-ninja, @estabond, @booster. These bots all have a cap on how much you can lose but either a good potential for profit or no limit on profit. Note that since these bots are quite popular it may be hard to secure high ROI even though it is a possibility.
Ethical Bots:
Bots that either provide value to Steem or offer support to good projects are always good to use. Some great examples are @jerrybanfield s bot which donates 110% of its profits to delegators and support great projects on https://fundition.io/. @smartsteem are also whitelisting people who post good content and do their best to ensure that we add value to Steem with good posts.
Bots to Avoid!
I don't have much respect for bots that allow you to lose unlimited ROI but cap your maximum ROI. That means that you can in theory lose a lot but never gain much. The worst bots for this are @buildawhale, @emperorofnaps, @upyou, @smartpost.
Check out Soliciting Power
@roelandp has created an excellent website with a list of fantastic bots that are supporting great projects and initiatives. Let us choose those bots that do good for the world as well as for our pockets, becuase that is how Steem will continue to grow and be even more amazing. Those who only think about their rewards may be missing the great and long term potential of voting bots. we need to choose our bots like we do our shops! You can view this list at: https://solicitingpower.com/
GOLDEN RULES
1. Don't use a bot with Max Suggested Bid of 0 Steem / SBD. That bot has been maxed out on the current voting cycle and you cannot make any ROI.
2. If you are going to spend a LOT then it is often wise to bid early in the voting cycle so that others can see and may not use it. Its also courteous so that you don't suddenly place a huge bid last minute and everyone else in that voting cycle gets much less.
3. Steer clear of bots that have a min / max ROI of none/10%.
4. Using voting bots does increase your reputation, and if you consistently spend a lot of
money on up-votes your reputation will rise dramatically! That is worth bearing in mind when you see others with very high reputations who are posting less than great content.. they may not be as wonderful as you think!
I'm sure there is more that can be said about being a successful voting bot user, but I hope this has at least given you a good grounding for how to start using voting bots. I would like to add that as a respect to Steem and those who write great content, it is frowned upon to place huge up-votes on very short posts or posts that have low value. People who copy images and poems or content from the Internet and use bots are really not cool, and should be blacklisted.. and often are.
On a final note, I run my own bot called the @ecotrain. If you are supportive of positive change in the world, and want to encourage and support great steemians, as well as real world homesteading and eco-building projects please do use this bot!
You can view and use https://steembottracker.com for the best experience and view of all that I have said. Very many thanks to @yabapmatt for his support and incredible tools. I know he does his very best to keep everyone happy whilst doing what he can to take Steem to great heights.
Steem on!!!
This article has been put together really well, good job! If I could add one thing it would be to pay attention to the the times that you are bidding.
There are certain times of the day and week that have less bidding traffic on the bots so you might have a better outcome with the unlimited ROI bots.
I would recommend to try to do your most heavy promotions when you think Steem price is at a low, your ROI will greatly increase if the price of Steem goes up during the 7 days.
Thanks for putting this info together, I have resteemed.
thanks for this,, yes .. like Now would be such an example of steem price going up!
This is very true, I was discouraged by the drop in the price of SBD but I recently discovered that when I use bots when the price is down, I gain when there is a slight increase in the price of SBD within the 7 days.
This is really timely for me and it's the best post I have read about how to use the bidbots. I have been fairly lucky so far with the tracker, but I was reading the ROI wrong so thanks for that. I was definitely going for the ones that seemed ethical and I'll think about using your bot too. Thanks so much for posting this, really appreciated.
Thanks a lot for the encouragement and support! It is really confusing and there is still much more that can be said on this topic.. very best of luck!
Thanks!!! Im.still very divided about them! But then, Im new and small... and thus yet to make up a strong opinion.
Very very useful and necessary information my friend! @eco-alex.
I would like to add something here. The wonderful tool https://steembottracker.com, created by @yabapmatt has an option tab 'currency' under which USD, Sbd, steem are listed. I think everyone should set the currency to sbd and also check the option 'Include 25% curation'. That will show the real vote value of the vote and the maximum potential earning after deducting 'curation reward received by the bot' because vote value shown in USD is always on higher side but the real value remains much low than that.
Also, 'total bids' do not show the actual position of bid received by the bot as it updated slowly. Till that time the bot may have received too much bid which results in a loss to the bidder. Most of the time someone sends a big bid to a bot when the bot has received the maximum profitable bid which results in a loss for every bidder, including to that person.
Your article is very useful in this situation. It is necessary to educate people on this matter which your post can do.
Thanks for this.. Especially the last point about last minite delay in update
Hey @eco-alex thank you very much for this very valuable post because I can't understood that how to use steembottracker but after reading your post I am confident and understand very clearly .
thanks for letting me know! happy to hear this! ;+_)
Great post @eco-alex! It explains bid-bots perfectly well and you pitch in good advice. I didn't know about the ecotrain bot, so I'll be sure to explore it ;) Resteeming this post as it is important information for all steemians!
very interesting post! good work
Excellent explanation friend @eco-alex! You know, lately I spent last time I pay some voting bot and this gives me a vote with profit but, then the amount of the vote in the publication starts to decrease and the day of charging I do not recover what I paid the bot, but this does not depend of the bot I think it depends on the price of steem, what do you think about that?
yes.. timing is someting i was going to write about.. but i didnt want to make the post to complecated.. If steem goes down.. then the rewards will also go down.. so a good time to use a bot is when the price has just fallen a lot and will likely bounce back. like NOW!
I don’t know why some people don’t understand that reading others article and engaging in comments will make you richer. I mean rich in thought process, seeing different side of arguments, etc.
I personally think people using bots to make money on steemit might be good people but most of them are just greedy as Wall Street bankers. lol
I don’t bot and I never will
@eco-alex first thanks i was going to pay money to bot that you mention .you saved me and 2nd very nice article with a important issue
thanks a lot, glad i could help!
it was a good article in order to represent social issue.
Follow me @ahsanbukhari it will give courage to my work.Thanks for responce
That's really good ways i often use it..
Are you sure?
I thought that depended on the Display Currency you were choosing, so you could choose SBD.
yes but the default is USD,, if you are viewing as a newbie for the first time.... once you switch it does say SBD to be clear
So you could put that information in your article now and earn a few conscientiousness points with us Germans. 😎
well.. if it makes you happy,, i must oblige
it is done to German standards
Bester Mann! 😎
This is tremendous learning article. Though I knew about Voting bots but it is now much clear after reading your valuable post.
Very interesting information @eco-alex...
great article, scanning it now. right on time for me. thanks
This post about bots is super helpful!! I havent been sure about how they function, but I started using smartsteem, and have also tried sneaking-ninja once, a while ago. I think theyare great;) I just hope that I dont get lazy with my posts, and continue producing high quality content, lol!
yes, @smartsteem rock.. pretty much guaranteed ROI and they whitelist people.. it doesnt get much better! and NO CHANCE your posts will reduce in quality.. i dont think you have that in you!
Oh your words means so much! I just had some doubt about my contents, because I have the feeling I dont reach out same as for 2 weeks ago... Strange thing!
dont worry.. ur posts are amazing! steem just gets weirdly quiet sometimes.. i wouldn't take it personally! <3
Oh ok, I will just keep them coming, then;) Thank you Alex!!
Great tutorial! Thank you @eco-alex, the bot promoting area can be very confusing. I'm resteeming this for reference. I haven't used bots yet, but may!
Thanks Alex - you cleared up a few of my question marks about the bots. I had never even considered how bots also raise reputations. I've read a few posts about bots - this is the first one that cuts through the opinions and delivers the important and useful information.
thanks jack! great feedback!
Solid tutorial! Steembottracker is a great reference. Keep up the good work!
yes boss
are you siur
best of luck boss
Good explain. You have taken me out of doubt regarding several things in the upvote bots.
The issue of "max profit" was not very clear.
Ty ♥
Realmente un post bien descrito y expresado para entender bien esto. Hace un tiempo use uno y gaste 5 sbd y no recibi ningun voto. Vamos que perdi el total de la inversión. Considero que los bots son necesarios para crecer en steemit, pero hay que utilizarlos con precaucion
is english possible? else i cannot respond
Really a post well described and expressed to understand this well. Some time ago I used one and spent 5 sbd and did not receive any votes. Come on, I lost the total investment. I consider that bots are necessary to grow in steemit, but you have to use them with caution
ahhh! thanks for sharing.. that sucks what happened! i just had one bot removed yesterday that was doing the same.. we have to watch out for each other.. it is a confusing world for sure!
@nick2018. Has recibido el voto de MYTHOLOGYUPVOTE.
Gracias por confiar en nosotros.
I’m really going to sit down and properly understand this thing. I’m excited to see if bots can help further my work of men of high value. :)
This post and several of the comments are quite useful. Resteemed for visibility. I have never used any vote bots: maybe that's why after nine months, my votes are still only worth $0.01 :-)
I've read and written about voting bots before. I've also used them. In my head, the use of them just feels really wrong.
If I see someone's post with a comment section full of upvote bot comments it puts me off immediately. I don't see a post's author with a following of eager readers I see a desperate person looking for a readership by shoving their work under everyone's nose.
I had a long hard thing about bots. Those who sell their votes to profit, simply waste their own choice to vote. I don't believe they would be voting for the buyers of the vote.
And there is no filter. You can write garbage and still buy a vote.
I would love to see this system of voting bots brought to it's knees. It takes control away from individuals and posts that the PERSON deems appropriate to upvote.
i totally understand what you say.. being pragmatic i realise that only a very few whales manual vote these days ... so in order to get ANY rewards i do use the bots.. its still early days for steem and this is a step in a direction that will change.. and you will SOON see big changes happening with a new kind of reward happening.. stay tuned for that..
Thanks for this great information @eco-alex. I am currently working on this in the trial phase and i will give you my feedback from what i have obtained based on the advice i have learned from this post. Mr Green and @thegreens
This is the best post I've read in a long time! So much great information about how to use bots. I love it!
Thank you for this informative article! I haven't read anything about up-vote bots before, but I've noticed that plenty of people use them on Steemit. I'm not really sure if I like them or not. As you mentioned, some people write great articles, but those posts get easily unnoticed if the author doesn't use an up-vote bot, since there are some many people who do. Then those posts gain popularity and rewards, even if the content isn't that great.
Anyhow, I've felt the bots are such a complicated thing, but this article explained a lot to me. :)
Awesome, I just recently started using bots to upvote my posts and I hope to increase my activities on steemit. Thanks for this useful information!
I just had a chance to read your post. Very valuable and informative.
myself I've learned a lot about bots from you already
I cannot upvote this post any more (13 days old) but i will be following you closely
I also noticed that you're very responsive. I value people like you a lot.
Cheers,
Piotr
i am in a hurry..This comment is just to read this article tomorrow
Thank you for this. I’m still very new and always wondering about bots.
I was ‘using’ one before, minnow booster.
However, they never told you why you wanted to do something and what the benefits would be.
Even asking them questions, they never got back to me.
Thank you for this.
Hey I can't seem to find your bot on the list?
Just drag the voting slider at the top to zero dollars to reveal All bots.. thanks!
Okay cool thank you.
I didn’t use your bot yet, however, I used three others that you recommended @promobot, @upmewhale, @upme and it worked amazing!
happy it worked out for you!
Hey so I used ecotrain but had a question.
I only put 1 Steem.
Just feels weird because it’s so much less than what I used on the others.
Could I have done more Steem?
You are right! The bot is building up its voting power so its only good for small bids. Many people do like this but if u want to place a large but u do need to use a bigger bot! Thanks for trying!
Okay cool. Thanks!
Hey I tried to send 1SBD through Steembottracker, it went through, but ecotrain came back returning the 1SBD, and saying I had to reply to a message.
But I did not know how to reply to the message.
Do you know what that is?