This happened to me posted a few minutes ago:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@coinz/finding-your-voice-on-steemit-com
Using #steem and #steemit among others and was swarmed by bots, at least 30 upvotes which amounted to nothing. Wondering if avoiding those categories would mitigate the problem at least temporarily?
Is being swarmed by bots like that hurting my post's money making potential?
The swarm of votes is probably artificially elevating certain posts in the 'hot' category at least, so in that way it might have helped you. But it also hurts other valuable content by pushing it artificially lower in the list.