You are correct in that you lose money over time. But, one big issue with what you say. The author makes no money from upvotes after the first 30 minutes. So, paying for randowhale or booster after the first 30 minutes doesn't get author rewards. After 30 minutes, it's a curation reward split up between the people that upvoted. Those bots are a lose lose when it comes to direct monetary compensation.
The 1 benefit I see is that you start your post out with an unvote and some dollars so maybe it'll attract people. It's the tip jar effect. If you have ever worked for tips, rule number 1 is that you put something in the jar to start the day, never have it sit there empty.
@financialcritic nice upvote power you got my friend! Thanks for the support! So just for the records, the screenshot below is from the same post as mentioned in the post above.. I lost 5 cent on the last day for the drain (and steem price rose) - and curators got an overall of 60cents..
!
Thank you for your input you made a good point that needs to be considered. The tipjar effect 😁
The topic seems more complicated than it looks at the first glance.
Anyways curation rewards for curators are max 25% of the upvote volume, so in the worst case the author gets "only" 75% of the vote volume..
Guess that makes it even with the 25-30% reward drain that occurs over time.
I'll mention this definitely in the post above, will edit tomorrow, just for the records 😁
Steemit is a science for itself
Good point...25% loss vs 30%+ for the drain. I'm going to try this out...going to try randowhale on posts that are 6 days old and see what I get as the author.