The whole Voting BOTS in short
First, if you want to know more about the Basics of how to bid, check timing and so on, please visit my previous Post Grumpy compliant Bid Bots
Being profitable with Bots and taking care of others
Steem, as you know, is complex, so do not think that when you see 25% sign, you are earning that. Until the very last second, before the Bot makes the actual vote, things can go from 30% to -50%, just takes that user who is greedy or maybe does not know, to put 10-50 SBD last second. Also, other whales just don't care if someone from India is putting all his hopes worth 3 SBD to earn more or promote his last post.
Money talks as in the rest of the world. That's why we need to spread awareness, one to learn how it works, and second to create a better and fairer environment for those who use the tool.
Best strategies
1. Do not bid high amounts if you do it consider the size of the Max. Profitable Bid
Let's look at a "small vote" Bot, @MercuryBot;
As you can see from the larger image version there are three snaps in time< 9 minutes, 5 minutes and then with only 30 seconds left. The min. bid is 0.10 SBD and looking at the detail everybody was bidding a small amount.
So the secret here is, look at the Max. Bid and divide it through the Max Suggested Bid, i.e., in our case if 30 seconds before the max. prof. bid was;
2. Time in your bid
So with only 30 seconds left, the chances are that five bids of 0.10 could go inside the pool of Bids. Steemrobottracker is fast but is not showing real-time data most of the time, only those that have the bottracker API. Installed could be "trusted" as reliable.
The moral is; calculate how many people are left to ruin the profitability of Bid round. And this takes us to my next point.
How profitable is a vote?
This is open for debate, some Steemers consider that the Bots are promoters, and not made to give profit back. In my view, we can discuss extensively on that, but my opinion is reduced to actual calculations.
This is the $ sign you see at the bottom of all the posts and represents not USD, not SBD and not SP, but a representation of how the Rewards are distributed in the system.
I love to use this tool from @dragosroua, that guy deserves a medal honestly, where I can check how much time left I have for my next payout, and how many STU are left to be distributed to me. I do not usually use the USD equivalent since I invest and get STUs and not dollars. Calculating in USD is risky since the value fluctuates a lot recently.
Decoding STU to money
So if the $ sign represents STUs, how much do I get?. Well, generally by default, all posts give back a 50/50 return, 50% in Steem Power and the other 50% in Steem Dollars (SBD). The exception is if you choose to receive all the profits in SP.
But remember, this system encourages Curation Rewards which generally take a 25% of your STU.
So the best thing is to take your $ number and first take the 25% off.
To know the SBD value of your post we could make the following calculation; let's assume a post with STU 100.
SBD= (STU * .75) / 2 = x SBDs liquid to be paid out after 7 days
SBD=(100 * .75) / 2 = SBD 37.5
For SP there is a little trick; SP value is related on the USD value of Steem, so the higher the price of Steem is, the less you get in Steem Power since the dividend factor is higher.
SP = (STU * .75) / 2 = x / Steem USD Value (value divided by current Steem value)
SP=(100 * .75) / 2 = 37.5 / Steem USD value 5.035= SP 7.44
if the Steem value was USD 1 today, you get SP 37.5 in the example above*
Of course, the bot tracker is always calculating to USD, and it makes it even more complicated, so better look at the SBD value of your bid.
As an example let's use the next negative round;
So we can do another quick calculation before making a bid; no need to use a calculator, just round the numbers;
Should I bid? = if Total Bids > 75% of the Total Vote Value = NO
Assume a vote value of USD 4.000 (USD/5.35) SBD 747.5, If I were alone and made a bid of 1 SBD you would get it all. But let's assume other people are bidding, 2 minutes before, the total bid is of SBD 560.25, which represents already 3/4 of the total value, subtract the 25% of the curation, and you are already in the red = DO not bid.
The important points
I know this is quite a lot to digest, but if you have this guide next to you while bidding, I assure you that it will be much better. Perhaps you will notice that you need to let many rounds past, but those you do will be better.
1. Do not bid last minute high bids, chances are others will keep offering and you will make the whole round go red.
2. Having more SBD does not give you more rights, it should be a fair game for everybody, throwing 50 SBD even 2 hours before the Vote does not guarantee you someone else will not do the same.
3. Be aware that many bots are not showing current data, you could see a profitable round, i.e., 50 SBD vote value, and only 10 SBD in bids, but once you sent your offer, the tracker updates itself and there were 40 SBDs processed at the same time.
4. Do not abuse the system, upvote those posts that deserve a more significant payment. We all hate to see youtube pasted videos, memes, or low-quality posts raping the reward pool. It should be used to promote your channel.
5. We are a great growing community, and we are learning on the go, though there are no official guidelines, it would be nice if we start to see that we let others also take a little profit. Hence, try to measure your bid, as said before you could be throwing 10 SBD in the trash. Better to play with less, and then if you still lose is not much, plus you let the space for others to bid.
I hope you like my post and find it useful, if you do support me with your upvote, follow or reesteem. Not that much because of me but due to I see new users need a better guide on the bots.
Nice job and great information. Love seeing this kind of quality material on Steemit that allows everyone to be more competitive.
Thanks a lot bycoleman, I feel it is a really important topic, unfortunately, I do not have yet the impact that I would like to. I feel these things should be a post-it. Still, we minnows have a difficult time to get into the hot or trending part. As you have already noted in one of your posts, the more you pay the more up you go.
Yes, I would really like to see a "Sticky Post" button to keep great post at the top of a blog. I believe someday we'll see it.
And yes, the more successful you are perceived to be the, that faster you move towards actually being successful.
Read your articles, I'm going to use some of the great stuff. Also love the calculator you linked to -- very cool.
I'm still going with a lower than 250% bid/payout ratio since I'm OK with having some of the payout move into SP long term as well. It generally cost money to advertise, plain and simple, just about anywhere else. Getting paid to advertise is a concept that is not likely to last much longer.
I'd up vote your coment, but you got it covered at the moment. :)
The "sticky post" would be great, but I think upvotes and post value are the "sticky" function around here. As you said, we are expected to pay indirectly for that. ,
SmartSteem is the best tool so far, unfortunately does not have a lot of users so far, hence it gets under powered really fast. Though my low SP it gives me a nice small steady income for selling my vote (which only goes to Whitelisted users).
Regarding the upvotes, I paid for those votes so it pushed your comment to appear in the upper part of the comments sections, so indirectly I am paying to people see your name haha. Do not worry I am not that cheap so I will upvote you ;) I was checking SteemWorld did not use it so far. I find great to see how much the upvotes are worth to calculate better the bids and so on.
No doubt, up votes are king. I have tried to use Smartstream multiple times but it is always out of VP so you get a message back into your wallet that it could not upvote you entirely. In MB, this activity is hidden.
Yea, SteemWorld is one of my favorites - very cool design and they are still adding!
@therealwolf is the developer behind SmartSteem, maybe he can take your feedback. I also agree that MB is better in the sense you can keep your activity hidden, mainly when there is not enough VP to upvote you.
I still would prefer to do most my upvotes through SmartSteem since there I am Whitelisted with a ** rank, but we need more publicity into the tool.
This also happens with MB
But thank you for the feedback!
Yes, this is the message you will get if you send the funds directly from your wallet. But if you login to MB and do the transfers from the balance section, then there are no messages in your wallet.
See my blog on this.
BTW: I really like to see more of these tools that seek to ensure that their use is useful to the platform. I applaud you for the whitelist concept. I actually just applied myself.
I saw your post comment on Joe Parys post so I hopped over here and read it. I just played around with the bots and used some of them to see how it works and some worked and some not. I think to really understand how it works and to make money from it you have to know how to deal with numbers. Anything else is just betting and hoping. I just realized that most of the post value is back to normal or is just going down. A post what had yesterday 130 is now back down to 125. So technically all the money that I invested in the bots is just gone. And I also agree with @fullcoverbetting. Personal connection is key and if you use Instagram you know how enjoying generic comments are. Thank you for writing this and pointing out this amazing tool from @dragosroua. And what I dont get right now is that you have 110 votes but the post is under 1 Dollar??
Thanks for your comment. I also noticed that sometimes the reward value decreases, take into consideration that the reward pool is limited, so if in the meantime you are generating revenues another blogger drop a bomb with 2K in STU for one post, that will take a little from your post to be pay to him.
I agree the best, in the long run, is to establish a helpful net of cool followers, with similar interests, that's at least my vision. You will always have the "Joe Doe" commenting "Follow me I follow you," but it depends on your profile as a blogger to filter those.
About my post value, that's because I got a lot of low-value upvotes, probably a lot of minnows, some of them with 1% power votes.
Thanks a lot for your meaningful comment, see you around.
Oh now I get it! Yes that is the reason why I always support Steem Power to the Community and if more people just coming and take the money without giving back the system would collapse. See you around und Liebe Grüsse in die Schweiz :)
That is the thing is not that hard to rape the rewards pool, just see how some of the Whales behave, they have votes that are worth 100 of steems and they just upvote themselves...
That sucks...
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Send minimum 0.100 SBD to bid for votes.
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You got a 12.50% upvote from @voteme courtesy of @santana33! For next round, send minimum 0.01 SBD to bid for upvote.
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You got a 4.76% upvote from @whalebuilder courtesy of @santana33. Join @whalebuilder family at our Discord Channel. Don't let your precious stake(SP) go stale...Make it do more so you have to do less. Deligate it to @whalebuilder by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links: 50SP | 100SP | 250SP | 500SP | 1000SP | 5000SP | custom amount.
Outstanding article. I've been opposed to bid bots for a long time; although, my reasoning is independent of profitability but rather the implications towards curation. Even so, I am glad to see your argumentation outlining the often unprofitable nature of these "services". I regret not seeing this in time to vote and resteem.
If it is acceptable, I would like to repost this content while declining rewards. I would like my followers to be informed of this helpful info.
Nice work @santana33! Following you and looking forward to more.
Thanks a lot Anthony, yap is a pity that authors stop receiving credit after 7 days. That is why also bid-bots are so aggressive, you have a short attention span to make your article successful otherwise you go lost into oblivion, no matter how good it was.
I recommend you to feed other providers, like SmartSteem; see my cheap referral link below. I have also an article about it, the difference is that there are strict rules on how they give upvotes vs. bid-bots.
Feel free to adapt it, just mention the original post. Also is fine to reesteemit, I do not care that much if I do not get upvotes, it could be helpul to someone.
Thanks for your meaningful comment.
I use and vouch 100% for SmartSteem!
That's a great explanation. I hacmve been using bots lately to promote my contest and this will be really helpful. I dislike hiwever that the bots appear on comments...it would be maybe better to have a separate counter for human votes and bot votes? Also another thing maybe you know...is the promotion button worth it and measurable? Thanks for your post, got my follow! 👏🏻👏🏻
Hi @thepassenger, I am happy that you find my post helpful, that's my main goal. I agree that the main use should be promotion and not that much profit, that's why I try to spread the word on how to use them wisely and considering at the same time other users.
Regarding the Promote button, just check on the "Promoted" section, and check the top 10 posts, then go to their STU counter, the "$" sign, and it will show you much was paid to promote that particular post. Then, you will have an idea, my estimation is that to be in the top, you need to pay at least 30-50 SBD, which for minnows is quite a lot.
About the comments from the bots, I am not sure if is a way to indicate bots were paid, or to self-promote the bot services.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your perspective, see you around!
Thanks very much for your reply! Yes 30 SBD is a lot...and I personally don't go over the promoted section often. It will be better to have it directly on the feed with a "promoted" banner or something so more people actually see it.
I have a question for you: the button "Include 25% curation" should be on or off to make the correct calculations? Is it possible to be sure to get profit when we wait til the last 15 seconds using an API bot which is giving positive ROI for the round in the details section? Thanks very muh!
I am really new to Steemit and my opinion of the bots is that for most 'minnows' these are just a waste of money. If the idea is promotion I don't see how it helps. If you have only a few votes, you won't reach trending, and if you don't reach trending how will anyone new see your post? If it gets resteemed by a curation page, maybe, but just upvotes? Isn't that just worth $? As far as ROI for votes, it seems sort of like a lottery system, we throw our money in and we hope we get a vote worth more than we paid, which you showed above, is unlikely. I am pretty turned off in general by the climate of bots and 'selling' your courses on a platform which you get paid hundreds of dollars to announce your post or other random bs. It feels like it is preying on people's desire not only to make money and be heard. Maybe you have some more positive insight or can see where I may be missing something since you have a lot more experience?
Hi Killbride, that was intense hehe, but accurate. Well, you can always stay away from actually spending money. In my case just was a deviation from some other investment I had in cryptos.
I am not sure if I will be or not the next Crypto Star over here, but I always loved to write and try to share a little of what I know, or at least I do my best.
The bots thing is quite a controversy, and you will even find contradictory positions among Witnesses and Whales (steem largest power users). I see it as a re-investment since the more I pay bots, I get back Steem power and a little of promotion, people go to posts that have both high amount of votes and STUs.
I see Steemit as a Blog where I can both enjoy my hobby and earn a little extra. I would love to keep growing in followers, eventually, the rest will come.
For you as new, keep making honest and meaningful comments like the one above and you will find your spot quickly.
Thanks for your comment, I realize this is what I love the most, to write something that inspires Steemers to initiate a dialogue.
I never understood why some people bid high at the last minute, and ruin the party for everyone. I mean its simple math, that if you bid more, the less everyone gets overall, even yourself. For example, if the total upvote worth is $100, and the total bids were $40. Now if you bid $10, you get 2x profit (I am ignoring curation rewards at the moment), but if you bid $60 instead, you just get 1x. Are those high bidders so dumb not to understand this basic math? Secondly, I see some bots deliberately hanging at 100% when they do not have enough bids, waiting for further bids to come. That is clearly cheating in my opinion.
Hi, thanks for reading the post. I agree, I will not say is intentional in many cases, but most users do not know how it works. There are also a lot, who do not even use the bot tracker, they just send the same amount to all the bots they know at the same, time. Yesterday I saw that with a 40 SBD bid which ruined a green round.
I wish I had more to invest in promoting this particular post to raise awareness, there are many posts on the Bots but did not see much about how not to use them.
About the ones hanging, I am not sure what is going on, I see that from the Whales, like @Jerrybanfied, @Boomerang, and the ones alike. My "let's not be too negative" view, is that maybe is a lag on the timing for processing the last minute bids, generally due to this delay, you also go from green to red in a matter of seconds. Some people keep bidding while the timer is on 0. The other option is that they do it deliberately to have a higher return on their votes.
Also, to be aware that we are feeding users who will be even more prominent in the future, @JerryBanfield use a lot of the profit for delegation, but others I am not sure of other intentions.
I would personally love to be coding savvy and create a bot that stops processing bids once the 3/4 vote value is reached.
Thanks again for reading and adding value to the Post. See you around.
Bots are a dark matter for me. I just don’t see to use of them. I, honnestly, prefer a comment on the content over an upvote of a bot, even is this generates money or increases my rep.
To start an interaction on a reply can be more worth in the long term, cause this person can become a follower.
While steem does let generate you money, it should not be the main focus, certainly not for newbies. The focus should be interacting, which is done by quality posts or replies, money should come on the second place. Most new steemians thinks that there’s easy money and because of that are begging to be followed or upvoted!
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with the bots or the Steemians who are using these. It is just not my cup of tee!
Great post by the way!
Keep them coming.
As a new Steemian bots complicate things. Makes me question if I can succeed on my own merits or do newbies require bots to get noticed?
Can a newbie grow in reputation and renown naturally?
Do bots actually benefit the community or do they just benefit the bot handler?
The reason I am here is to share and interact with a community producing valuable quality content. Yes this is a virtual community, I still want to be involved with it versus letting it be totally dominated by bots.
Like @fullcoverbetting stated this should be about interacting with quality content verses about just making money. Money should be the reward for posting quality material.
It all depends which bots. There are bots who are fighting tag abuse or copyright in frictions.
Yes you can grow in rep naturally, but it will include lots of work. The most fast way to increase your rep is to place genuine comments on post created by higher reps. Each upvotes they will give you will increase your reputation. 1 full upvote could mean a complete jump in rep points.
Thank you for that concise answer.
Could you recommends good bots to work with?
If possible, could you like bots to avoid ( without too much risk?)
I appreciate the affirmation that the way to grow naturally is by quality resonces to higher rep curators.
I did try minnowbooster, minnowpond and smartsteemmarket. All did what I expected.
I also did try puppybot, but I won’t recomment it.
Before using then make sure to go to their blogs to find out how to use them.
On steembottracker you can also bidding bots but I never did use them! The bits I did use are flat rate bots!
I decided to try a few but did stop using them. They could give you a false feeling of appreciation!
But do your own research also because I am no bot expert!
Thank for the information. Being new, there seems to be a lot to sort out. Ill continue to do the research.
Hi @fullcoverbetting, thanks for your meaningful comment, not like the friend above Gupta haha.
I agree with you, I do bid and find it useful but also tiring, and consumes my bandwidth which I would prefer to spend in a more "human" way. That's why, my main idea is about respect in the community and to let others participate, otherwise looks like the Wild-West with so many abuses going on. We need a certain balance for the future. Also, if you know who is behind robots, well, our witnesses, so they profit from this FOMO bidding for bots.
I look forward to more users like yourself, thanks for the time to read and comment.
Your welcome!
Thanks for this useful information. I loved it.
I ask myself how you did to read so fast, and aside, you love it... still no upvote ;) Thanks anyway
Thanks for all this insight. Im definetely not doing that anymore and I also already warned someone about not doing it. Instead I did it.. xD But I was in a mindset that my bid would actually bring the vote to like +15%. I was used to using @upme. Well lesson learned :/
Hehe no worries, good that I made a positive impact, we are normally so sure that the bids are profitable, but we felt into a trick, we do not see most of the vote back on us, the profit is on the providers.
You got a 1.37% upvote from @mercurybot courtesy of @santana33!
You got a 2.06% upvote from @nado.bot courtesy of @santana33!
Send at least 0.1 SBD to participate in bid and get upvote of 0%-100% with full voting power.
You got a 0.64% upvote from @allaz courtesy of @santana33!
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You got a 5.28% upvote from @bid4joy courtesy of @santana33!
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This post has received a 3.36% upvote from @msp-bidbot thanks to: @santana33. Delegate SP to this public bot and get paid daily: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP Don't delegate so much that you have less than 50SP left on your account.
Sneaky Ninja Attack! You have been defended with a 1.10% vote... I was summoned by @santana33! I have done their bidding and now I will vanish...Whoosh
This post has received a 7.37 % upvote from @sleeplesswhale thanks to: @santana33.
You got a 3.70% upvote from @whalebuilder courtesy of @santana33. Join @whalebuilder family at our Discord Channel. Don't let your precious stake(SP) go stale...Make it do more so you have to do less. Deligate it to @whalebuilder by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links: 50SP | 100SP | 250SP | 500SP | 1000SP | 5000SP | custom amount.
That's amazing , great post thanks for sharing :)
Is it ironic that it seems like this post was upvoted by a lot of bots?
Am I reading this thread correctly?