Hi, thanks for the post. It took me awhile to realize that you really needed to almost triple your bid to profit. However, I mostly use bots for visibility. You can write a great post, but you won't get rewarded if nobody sees it. Also, I didn't notice if you mentioned http://www.steembottracker.com/ to help track the bots.
Anyway, I think using them can be sort of fun. It almost introduces an element of gamificaiton to the system. As long as they're allowed, I really don't see anything wrong with using them. As always: Buyer Beware.
@theinsideout: Thanks for your Input. I didn´t mentioned http://www.steembottracker.com on purpose, expecting people to ask for tools.
http://www.steembottracker.com is a good way to track them, but you must be careful since the tool does not have real time maintenance. And not care is taking of listing scammers bots. To me a Scammer Bot is one that collect SBD when their truly value is less than 0.56 or 0.60
That is why I trust more https://steemworld.org and I must confess I used the http://www.steembottracker.com to create my own Airtable UPvoting Bidding List.
Some Dolphins, Orcas and Whale Bots have too raped my wallet. I fired them. I will never used them again whatever be the reason for not performing according to their preaching. I cannot name them, but care has to be taken on executing due diligence before using them.
One cannot planned nor profit with Upvoting Bidding Bots that really do not perform in real time or that live in poor servers. Leassons learned...
And I agreed. Upvote Bidding Bots must be used for Marketing rather than for wishful thinking of getting reach without working. I still continue testing, while I am making some SP, but boy... I am fast and doubt average people can even manage and react at the level this game commands.