To follow up on what the general opinion is on them & things I have learned!
Here is the original post on bots if you want to skim comments, some really brilliant points were made and lots of in put was given!
One of the biggest downfalls a lot of people mentioned about using voting bots was not being able to track ROI.
Many people felt as if they were not always getting the vote they were counting on or a enough reward to make the effort to utilize a bot.
One thing that was a major perks mentioned to the voting bots was exposure.
It seemed that lots of people agreed that the exposure is a huge benefit to using the bots if you are okay with knowing that you might not get full return on investments.
There are varied bots for instance promotion bots like @minnowbooster or @smartmarket & bidding bots such as @boosterbot @randowhale, but how are you to know which ones to choose from & when is the best time to use them?
A huge shout to @tattoodjay for introducing me to: steembottracker.com Created by: @yabapmatt
Steembot tracker allows you to view services that that will promote your post or you can choose a bidding bot. I think this is very encouraging for users to have more control on their marketing investments.
Being able to have a closer calculation allows you to make your decision based on what works best for you. Maybe bots aren't for you and you prefer that all HUMAN all the way and I totally support you in either of your choices.
If your steemit is your business and you want to promote it that's your business! I will say if you wouldn't promote it, why should anyone else? So don't fret over a little self promotion. I am personally am going to do some experimenting with them now that @yabapmatt created this wonderful tool for us all & I will report back on it.
Another con people mentioned is that they feel people can create accounts never produce good content and count on being able to buy votes. Well, those people suck & that's why we have a flagging system. Steemit is designed for us to keep each other accountable for creating original and quality content. Many people felt bots deplete resources in this manor, maybe in some cases they do and in those cases we should flag them.
When I was going through steembot tracker, I found lots of community support within steemit as well as various philanthropy.
Many bots give back to the steem community and many give back in other ways for instance there is even a bot for planting trees from @treeplanter! You can plant trees and get paid for it!
Another great mention about bots is that it allows you to give a little extra when we only have so many upvotes daily to maintain the quality of our voting power. @tipu for instance allows you to send a tip in place of your upvote! You can use bots to help boost others posts, not just your own!
You can even get in the spirit of love and send some love around steemit for Valentines day with @red-rose or @lovejuice
Have fun checking out the various bots! Also check out my pet minnow @ameliabartlett she is super talented and creates incredible content for you to follow!
I think @minnowbooster is pretty good ROI....Nice work on all those robot pics
Great summary about the discussions had. I think it was through your post that I learned about @smartmarket. I quite like the concept.. more so than other upvote services because you can either buy or sell upvotes.. and you can even be a bit more discerning on the quality of posts you sell your upvote too.
Thank you, there really are so many to choose from! Let's chose quality!
Yes :)
I don't see any problem with using bots as long as you are aware that it's not going to make you direct profit. I mean, you could get lucky and get a few % on your "investment" but more often than not the ROI will be in the minus.
If you are using bots as a promotional booster you can consider them as a long-term investment. And it is a legit way to get noticed.
Also to keep in mind people who are purist about Steemit and bots will be put off by bots busted posts.
I decided to follow you for your supportive aid in steemit.
But one thing i must say it to your kindheart
Many new members are coming from poor regions Because of the aim to get some cash to help them.
Most of them his english is not well wrote nor used (same as me we are not native in english)
They are trying hard to succeed but the gurus are getting all the pie. So they begin to send comments in an effort to get some curation input while some of them might ve great in his writings but the luck failed him.
So we begin calling them spammwrs and we begin to downvote their comments and posts and this will decrease their reputation and this will force them to do more spamming
I do not and will not downvote any members. I stopped downvoting any member.
I suffered from downvoting me by ugly bot directed by a big whale to downvote me from 54 to 40.
So I welcome all spammers to join my followers and to post anytjing in my posts ...silly comments... anything..... I do not kind..... and I will resteem and upvote some of their poats if i like it..... we must help the soammers to stop spamming by improving their income
NO, Steemit is NOT a "Zero-Sum Game"! Thinking like that will only cause people to become discouraged and QUIT. I am working with a gentleman now that is into topics that are barely even present on Steemit, and he is helping himself by Expanding his Audience and also his talent! English Second Language is a handicap, but maybe you need to expand the audience of your native tongue. Get your people INVOLVED! Please do not encourage SPAM either, we have enough! But I do like your comment about helping them become better content creators, however. I do that as well. IN FACT, I wrote an article suggesting a gentle warning to spammers, instead of flags. It did fairly well!
WE MUST HELP THE SPAMMERS
to stop spamming by improving their CONTENT, and Then they will improve their income. Trust me in this :D
Down votes are good because the quality of content matters. If someone wants to earn they need to earn by producing good content. Maybe video would be a better choice for language barriers. I will not support spamming and I love that steemit doesn't support spamming! Good content gets good votes, so help them create better and do more don't encourage less the already seem less standards
Thank you for the love i see in your post
Resteemed and send you lovely red rose
Thank you to you!
Happy valentine's day beautiful lady. I didn't know that there was such a varied pool of bots to choice from. I'm definitely going to see how I can use the tree growing bot. Have you used this one before @brandyb?
I am so glad to introduce you! not yet! But I look forward to it!
Hi @brandyb! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @dswigle!
@dswigle wrote lately about: My Love. Feel free to follow @dswigle if you like it :)
Tipuvote! - upvote any post with with 2.5 x profit :)
Great post
I will reconsider my use of bits again will probably end up making the same decision but it won’t hurt to think about it again
Tip!
Hi @brandyb! You have received 0.1 SBD tip + 0.01 SBD @tipU
from @tattoodjay :)
@tattoodjay wrote lately about: Tree Tuesday - City Hall Surrounded By Pinks And Blues. Feel free to follow @tattoodjay if you like it :)
@tipU can send votes too! tipuvote!
Hi @brandyb! You have received 1.03 SBD @tipU upvote
from @cardboard :)
You can now delegate SP to @tipU for daily profit :)
It's a very nice post thats steemit up to bottom...that's thinks about our loads leaf a ground abot steemit just love this post!!!
Thank you so much!
It is a good and helpful article for who don't know and have any idea about bots... Congrats and thank you for your sharing about bots...
Have a nice day @brandyb :)
My pleasure! I am glad you found it helpful, I appreciate your comments!
Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious? Read @resteembot's introduction post
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
RESTEEMBOT IS FOR SALE
I COULD WRITE CODE FOR YOU
Great post! I I'm definitely going to use the information in here. When I first started I couldn't bring myself to use Bots because I thought the community would look down on me for using them... I got over my reservations and decided to start using them but in my opinion what you get in return is usually about what you spend in my experiences so far. Sometimes I yielded more returns, but for the most part I just about broke even and got a little steem power for the work. I'm still on the fence about Bots but this is a great post and I will definitely check it all out! Thanks a bunch for the contributions! And I love the look you got going on :), gorgeous rawr!
Anyway thanks again and I might be back to resteem this post because my friends might be able to use this information. Maybe you could answer this for me by the way, does it use any of my power or bandwidth to resteem something? Occasionally I wake up in the mornings and it says I've exceeded my bandwidth so I'm just wondering if RESTEEMING is one of those things that causes that
Yes Resteeming will use a small amount of your bandwidth, There are many factors in running out. Could be over voting, over, posting, editing your posts, over commenting with a low amount of steem. Likely a combination. You can check your bandwith and keep an eye on your voting power here at steemd.com/@bonkite
I am glad you found it helpful and I hope you have some luck with them! Using them as well as engaging I think makes a difference rather than just depending on bots!
I have been wondering about the value and worth of using the bots, your post definitely helped give some clarity and gain perspective on using them and how they can benefit fellow steemers. Thank you!
That's awesome! That's what it's all about! It really is a useful tool, I hope you enjoy it!
This post has received a 16.60 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @brandyb.
thank you so much for sharing my dear friend
a very informative article .. :)
one should certainly be accountable to its community ...and flagging helps you do that ...everything has its positives and downsides ...same with these bots
Bingo!
A very useful post. Thank you. I resisted doing any type of using vote bots until recently. So I'm quite new to this. Smartsteem works, and I will have a look at some others.
If the usage of bots is anything to go by, it just shows how widely popular bots are. However, bots are just that - automated software to upvote on posts based on the inputs. For most users it returns a loss on their spending.
The very few who do profit are the ones who bid big amounts. For example, if a bot has a maximum vote value of $10 and most people are bidding 50 cents to $1 if someone comes and bids $5 he is going to pull most of the bot's voting power. That is how bots work, skewing profit towards heavy bidders.
If you want your post to be "seen", then you have to spend a large amount of money on various bots. Bidding 50 cents on a single low powered bot for an upvote will not do much for a post, something that can be figured out by looking at the upvote values of the hot and trending pages.
I enjoyed this easy to follow compilation of the major bot discussion that happened on the previous post. I've used @buildawhale twice and saw a double on my initial SBD... plus it gave my posts a MAJOR boost in credibility. Something about a post having a fair amount of dollars attached to it seems to give people the impression it's worth their time.
Thank you for the shoutout, m'dear! Always enjoying your posts. 💓
Nice post, Brandy! I will give it more consideration. I have always been against them,but, you have given me reason to rethink it
Thank you so much! Tip!
Thank you for following up with more info on bots!
You've been resteemed as part of the #LadiesofSteemit initiative! Keep up the great work. 💓
This is informative. I keep seeing posts and complaints about flagging and bots, so this is helpful. Thank you.
Its seem that the usage of bots are becoming a steam for steemit. I know there are some good and the bad bot...Some might push you to a good level some just keep on pulling your steem power away they need it before you have yours.. Sometime it is funny to read some post with just a piece of photo and without much details on it to describe where how and why it is so important to be shared but they get the highest upvote and earn a good amount of $ .... may be I need a couple of months more to learn and get more knowledge from other steemit user...Thanks for the articles.
Really great post! I’ve been playing around with bots here and there as a newbie trying to get my content some momentum (I’m also trying to build that genuine readership, but hey, diversify and conquer, right? lol)...and using steambottracker really helps a lot! I made a busy.org account--because if you look at your votes/payouts in your blog post on Busy you can see how much each person voted to your account, including the bots. So I can see what my ROI was--honestly, I’m doubling my investment 80% of the time, and sometimes even more than that. I have yet to lose money...it seems to be a good way to build up the small earnings stream that I have by slowly doubling my income for a few months as I get going. I don’t have connections here with large wallets yet, so this is a way for me to push forward a little in the system. :)
I definitely see these more as a promo tool that anything else, although I do tend to only bid when I have a positive ROI, I do think the bots are so popular now though that I really just stick to Smartsteem. Occasionally you do get a good opportunity.
One other way I saw someone mention once was to use the bots like a 7 day futures contract for increasing ROI. Essentially you are giving the bots one SBD today. Since the price of SBDs fluctuate if you think it's going to go up you can buy SBDs now the the votes and get them back in 7 days at a higher value! It also work the other way too, so you should probably convert your SBD to STEEM instead if you thing the price is going to be going down...
That's a great way to think about it adding value to the ROI!! Super excellent point and I'm so glad you mentioned it!