I first discovered the use of voting bots from a video posted by @brandonfrye. It was a bit overwhelming at first, especially when it came to the ROI, but I jumped in head first and just went ahead and tried it out. I'm a visual and hands-on learner, so I dove right in and learned by doing.
After reading through my tutorial, you should be confident in how voting bots work and how to best use them.
Why do people use voting bots?
The simplest answer is to give their post a boost. Essentially you are paying the bot in SBD or STEEM for a % of their vote, which boosts the value of your post increasing the amount of eyeballs that see your post. It's a win-win: the bot is earning for their vote and the bidder gets their post promoted and gets paid out from the bot vote.
Here's a very simplistic example to illustrate how this works. Let's say BotVoter1 has voting power of $40. After the voting round ends, John bids 1 SBD, Jack bids 2 SBD, Jill bids 0.5 SBD, and Jessica bids 0.5 SBD. Total bids: 4 SBD. The bot vote would be distributed as follows:
Now, let's take a look at how to bid on vote bots. To get started, go to: www.steembottracker.com
First thing to notice is that the "Display Currency" defaults to USD and the "Include 25% Curation" option is turned ON.
The list of bots are sorted by the amount of time remaining on the current round, with the soonest expiring bot vote rounds at the top of the list. The 3 columns boxed in red are the most important.
The Next Vote column is the amount of time left to bid on the current round before the bot vote is distributed.
Vote Value is the 100% vote value of the bot in USD.
Total Bids is the total bid value in USD.
If (Vote Value x 75%) > Total Bids, then your bid will result in Positive ROI
Click into the "Details" button (blue button) to see all the bidders for the "Current Round" as well as the "Last Round". Let's walk through how the ROI was calculated based on this example:
For the Current Round, the Total Bid Value currently is at $283.20 with the bot vote value at $504.60.
($504.60 x 75%) = $378.45 and since $378.45 > $283.20, you would earn positive ROI from using this voting bot.
ROI = ($378.45 - $283.20) / $283.20
ROI = $95.25 / $283.20 = 33.63%
Looking at the Last Round, the Total Bid Value was $384.35 with the bot value unchanged at $504.60.
($504.60 x 75%) = $378.45
ROI = ($378.45 - $384.35) / $384.35
ROI = -$5.90 / $384.35 = -1.54%
If I decided to bid on the Current Round of this bot round, keep in mind that by bidding, I would increase the total bid value which would decrease the ROI. The more bids that come in, the lower the ROI.
To track this, you would have to observe how much your post increases after the bot votes on your post. From my experiences, I usually make slightly over 100% on average. There are some cases where my return was less than 100%, but the majority of the time, I make back the SBD I spend and a little bit on top.
Here's a common scenario from my bot voting experiences. I'll spend 1 SBD bidding on a bot. After the bot vote, my post increases by $3.00. The payout from this is calculated as...
$3.00 * 75% = $2.25
The $2.25 will be paid out 50/50 in SP and SBD.
So by spending 1 SBD on the bot vote, I'll receive $1.125 worth of SP and 1.125 SBD. My profit would be 0.125 SBD and $1.125 worth of SP. Essentially, bot voting is a free post promotion plus you make some on top. Sounds like a no-brainer to me!
Some bots even feature the top bot voted posts to increase your post exposure even more if you get picked. To my surprise, I was actually featured in @buildawhale's Curation Digest yesterday:
https://steemit.com/curation/@buildawhale/buildawhale-curation-digest-01-24-18
I hope this helps clarify how bot voting works and why you should use it to promote your quality posts. Feel free to comment or ask any questions you may have.
Super helpful! I've found this to be really confusing but this makes sense. Hopefully there comes a day when the community is robust enough that we won't even need bots too!
Thanks @bigtx31! A lot of people use voting bots here and if you don't use them you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. I've read about instances where people have abused the system by using bot votes to upvote "crap" posts. I'm going to stick to best practices and only promote quality posts to gain a larger following.
Thanks for that breakdown @dirkboy41 ! In a sense....I guess it’s kinda like YouTube channels trying to get more eyeballs on their page by paying Adsense to display and promote videos?
Kind of, in the sense that adsense will drive more views, but with bot voting you can actually earn positive ROI if the bot's upvote pays you more than you spent. I think of it as a free promotion can also generate positive returns as well.
Hey, love your post on this. I realize I need to learn a lot of these steemian tips in a hope to get my account going faster.
Have to digest it again later, so may ask a few more questions. :)
Thanks! Bot upvoting is definitely a must as many use them to promote their content. It also definitely helps boost your rep score up faster.
Sorry for this noob question but, after I indicate my bid, I am taken to SteemConnect. I tried entering my steemit account and steemit active key (this is the active public key and not the active private key, right?), but it's indicating "Password or key is not valid". Any possible reason why I'm gettign this error?
No worries, thanks for the question. I believe you use your Steemit password and that should work.
Thanks! Is it safe to share the password? I'm quite wary of security and revealing password to another party.
You should never ever give out your master password. You want to use the appropriate private key, most likely posting.
Great explanation!! So, when we use the bot we always should exclude the 25% curation to know if it's still profitable right? Thanks!
You would need to include the 25% curation, since 25% goes to curators and the author gets 75%.
I've noticed that during USA work hours 9-5, voting bots are competitive and it's tough to receive positive ROI. I usually like to wait until <10 minutes before bidding on the bot. I look for a bot whose ROI is > 25% with less than 10 minutes to go in the round before bidding. Hope this helps!
Also...maybe you know, which is the best moment to use the bot taking into account the 30 minute rule?
Thank you for the insightful article! It is so helpful!!
Thanks for the comment @sazih! Try out using bot votes and keep on Steemin'!
Yes! i'm still new here, once i get some SBD i'm gonna try it for sure!
Thank you for this great article, you made it clear to me now!
Glad I'm providing value - only trying to help out newcomers the same way I was onboarded here by fellow Steemians!
Yes that's a great job! Keep it up!!
Great information.
Amazing post
Good post @dirkboy41
Thank you @dirkboy41 for making a transfer to me for an upvote of 1.14% on this post! Half of your bid goes to @budgets which funds growth projects for Steem like our top 25 posts on Steem! The other half helps holders of Steem power earn about 60% APR on a delegation to me! For help, will you please visit https://jerrybanfield.com/contact/ because I check my discord server daily? To learn more about Steem, will you please use http://steem.guide/ because this URL forwards to my most recently updated complete Steem tutorial?
This post has received gratitude of 0.64 % from @appreciator thanks to: @dirkboy41.
This post has received a 7.42 % upvote from @aksdwi thanks to: @dirkboy41.
Great!!